What are the dangers of taking steroids?
Gary Wadler: Well, these are- first of all, they’re controlled substances for a reason. They are dangerous drugs. And they’re wonderful drugs when you have a medical need for them. In fact, most of the medical needs have disappeared over the years for anabolic steroids. We use other drugs. What are anabolic steroids? Anabolic steroids are nothing more or less than synthetic derivatives of the male hormone testosterone, and molecules have been modified for a variety of reasons which we can get into, but fundamentally they’re all variations of the testosterone molecule. And, you know, we have a surge of that in puberty and then it levels off. But people have taken anabolic steroids to try to become more than they otherwise would be. So they’re looking for increased strength, improved recovery time, more aggressiveness, assertiveness, more acceleration. It does work. You can’t just take the anabolic steroid and go to sleep and wake up stronger. You do have to work out, you have to put you
