Why Do Anabolic Steroids Stop Working? by Jerry Brainum 5/23

 

A few years ago, I was in New York City to cover a contest for a bodybuilding magazine that I was writing for. One afternoon, I went into a local restaurant and saw a familiar face I hadn't seen in a while. This man was a top amateur bodybuilder in the late 80s. He had won the AAU Mr.USA contest, the heavyweight category at the NPC Nationals competition, and seemed destined to become a top pro. That appeared to be confirmed when he won one of his first contests after turning pro. But soon after that, he seemed to go downhill in his contest appearances, culminating in a failure to place in the same pro contest that he had won just two years earlier. After that, he disappeared from the contest scene. I thought he had a fantastic physique, as he showed no apparent weak points, and had the requisite muscle mass to compete successfully in the pro ranks. Naturally, I was curious as to why he had opted to drop out of the competition.

After some pleasant chatting, I asked him why he no longer competed. His answer surprised me." The drugs don't work for me anymore," he said. He went on to explain that no matter how many anabolic drugs he used, his body didn't seem to respond to any of them. He couldn't make any muscle size gains, nor did the drugs that formerly helped him achieve a ripped appearance work, either. He then asked me what could have caused this troubling turn of events. I asked him if he had experienced any health problems related to drug usage, and he told me that he hadn't. They just didn't seem to do anything comparable to the way that they had worked for him in the past. This wasn't the first time I had witnessed this type of situation, where the anabolic drugs seemed to lose their effectiveness. I suspected a few causes, but based on existing science, I couldn't say for sure if they were the true causes of this man's problems with the drugs. I offered him a few options, but I never saw or spoke to him again, and he never returned to competition. 

This raises the question of why most anabolic steroid drugs fail to work as well with continued usage. I've observed over the years that with nearly everyone who uses the drugs, no matter what their goals are, the drugs always work best when they are first used. After that, there often comes a period of diminishing returns. It's not that the drugs don't work at all, but rather that they don't produce the same degree of results as they did when they were first used. This likely explains many of the current rumored drug regimes used by many competitive bodybuilders. When I competed in bodybuilding in the 60s and . . .