Why do athletes take anabolic steroids?
Milana Borisev
Economics, Business Administration majors
September 8, 2006
Better performance is what every athlete is striving for, but why they need to consume anabolic steroids in orders to succeed? One of the reasons is to increase their mass and the other is to enhance their performance. On the other hand there are also costs of taking anabolic steroids and that is the issues that I will try to concentrate the mostly.
Anabolic steroids[1] are class of drugs that was primarily used when people had AIDS and start losing their mass. In 1934 former German president used this drug to stimulate and increase the aggressiveness of his dogs.” In 1954, during the Olympic Games was the first use of anabolic steroids as abused drugs.”[2]
Most of the people who take this type of drugs are aware of benefits and also of cost of consuming it. Some of the consumers are using it because they benefit from it in the long run, such as those ones who have necessity to increase the level of testosterone in their body. In most of cases if the anabolic steroids are consumed by prescription there is less chance to experience some serious side effects. On the other hand, those athletes that consume this type of drug are looking at their current situation and their short terms goals. Most of the athletes are taking these drugs in order to increase their body shape and also to try to match their intensity. Chris Woolston[3] discussed different costs of using anabolic steroids, and some of them are: overgrown breast muscles, women can develop facial hair and a version of male pattern baldness, both sexes can suffer severe acne, high blood pressure, high level of cholesterol, and tumors of the kidney or liver. Athletes who abuse steroids have been known to suffer heart attacks and strokes before they turn 30. “It is very interesting that about 2.7% of American adults had consumed anabolic steroids at least once in their life.” One of the most often consequences of using anabolic steroids is change in mood. This mood changes are the most likely to occur after the effect of anabolic steroids stop.
There is large percentage of student athletes that consume drugs. In 2002 it was reported that since 1991 the usage of anabolic steroids among student athletes increased for approximately 2%.
Students Reporting Steroid Abuse[4] 1991–2002Year / 8th Grade / 10th Grade / 12th Grade
1991 / 1.9% / 1.8% / 2.1%
1999 / 2.7% / 2.7% / 2.9%
2001 / 2.5% / 3.5% / 4.0%
Table 1
Students Reporting Steroid Abuse 2002Timespan / 8th Grade / 10th Grade / 12th Grade
past month / 0.8% / 1.0% / 1.4%
past year / 1.5% / 2.2% / 2.5%
lifetime / 2.5% / 3.5% / 4.5%
Table 2
From the table 1 and table 2, we can see that largest increase between 1999 and 2002 was in 2002 among students 10th and 12th grade. As I mentioned before most of the effects that athletes can experience from consuming this drugs were long term ones and very harsh for the body. The over dosage of these drugs could cause in most of the humans cardiovascular disease, including heart attacks and strokes.
The marginal cost of consuming one more dosage of anabolic steroids gives more chance of experiencing some of the diseases that I mentioned. The cost of therapies and medication is also considered as marginal cost that will occur if athletes experience steroids over dosage. All of those effects are long term effects. On the other hand the marginal benefits, of taking one more dosage of steroids, are incremental increase in the body mass and at the moment better performance. The marginal costs that athletes get from the consumption of the steroids are just temporary and at the moment they maximize their utility but in the long run the effects are harsh full and a big chance in causing death.
Most of the athletes decide to use the steroids when they experience the shortage of power and energy and inability to perform the way they want during the game. Some of them on the other hand decide to use steroids because they are not satisfied with their body after they had worked hard for last couple of months. Athletes now entered the economic range of athletic training so called diminishing returns. They had reached their maximum and any additional training only marginally contributes to increase their performance. At this stage, some of the athletes are trying to go against the law of diminishing marginal returns[5] and start to use steroids. Steroids will allow athletes to improve their body shape and to continue in better performance but this is just for a short period of time. This temporal effect of steroids and increase in physical performance will led to once again diminishing returns. In this case the diminishing marginal returns are much different from the once that occur first time without usage of steroids. Continuing consumption of steroids leads the athletes to the period of negative marginal returns where different kind of sever consequences can occur.
References:
- U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/concern/steroids.html#6
- Mottram, David R.; George, Alan J. – Volume 14, March, 2000 ;“ Anabolic steroids”
http://journals.ohiolink.edu:20080/local-cgi/send-pdf/060808130840330286.pd
- Dallas council of alcohol & abuse; March 6, 2006, “Steroid Abuse in today society- statistics” http://www.gdcada.org/statistics/steroids.htm
[1] Group of synthetic hormones, which promote the storage of protein and the growth of tissue.
[2] Mottram, David R.; George, Alan J. – Volume 14, March, 2000 ;“ Anabolic steroids”
[3] Health and medical writer- consumer health interactive ,
[4] Use of substances that contains anabolic steroids to increase muscle mass. Such steroids can have many side effects when misused, including psychiatric problems, liver tumors, reduction in the size of the male genitals and sterility, and heart damage.
[5] Beyond a certain point, adding additional units of resources to a production process will provide successively smaller increments of additional product.