“Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football” is a new book about anabolic steroids and performance enhancing drugs in American football written by writer Matt Chaney. Chaney is an admitted steroid user who experimented with anabolic steroids when he played collegiate football for Southeast Missouri State in 1982. His master thesis analyzed the media coverage of anabolic steroids and performance enhancing drugs in American football in the 1980s and 1990s (”Excerpt: ‘Spiral of Denial’ reveals culture of steroid abuse in football,” January 3).
Professor Charles Yesalis, a top steroid expert, gives the book a glowing review.
Before you read this book, make sure you can handle the truth about drugs in football. Why? Because Chaney lays it out for all to see. He thoroughly documents the widespread problem in NCAA football and the NFL. He details the lies, obfuscation, and denial on the part of coaches, athltes, sport journalists, politicians, and, of course, us the fans! Oh, one other thing: This book is one hell of a read.
The general public assumed that the New Orleans Saints players who failed recent drug tests must have used steroids. After all, they tested positive according to the criteria of the NFL policy on anabolic steroids. Unfortunately, the NFL Policy on Anabolic Steroids and Related Substances is a misleading name for an anti-doping policy; it includes all performance enhancing drugs and masking agents IN ADDITION to anabolic steroids. Furthermore, New Orleans Saints Deuce McAllister, Will Grant and Charles Smith tested positive for bumetanide, a prescription diuretic and NOT an anabolic steroid.
Anti-doping skeptics point to the fact that bumetanide can be used as a masking agent for anabolic steroids. Fair enough. However, attorney David Cornwell reaffirmed assertions that his clients McAllister, Grant and Smith did NOT use anabolic steroids. He alleges, with ample evidence, that the positive tests were unintentional and the result of consuming a dietary supplement Starcaps that was spiked with bumetanide. … Read the rest of this entry »
NBC Sports claimed that NFL player Deuce McAllister tested positive for anabolic steroids using the headline “Report: Saints’ McAllister positive for steroids” in spite of the fact that the banned diuretic bumetanide was the culprit. The sensationalistic, highly misleading and false headline may have been the result of media ignorance about anabolic steroids. Bumetanide is NOT an anabolic steroid.
Even though the article explicitly identified bumetanide as the banned substance for which McAllister tested positive, NBC Sports may not have known that the diuretic bumetanide was NOT an anabolic steroid. Reports of a “rash of positive steroid tests” in the NFL by news websites here and here and here and here are highly misleading and false since none of the players are alleged to have used steroids.
We expect the general public to be grossly ignorant about anabolic steroids. But the failure of the media to accurately identify the drugs involved in anti-doping protocols in unacceptable. The layperson may think that all performance enhancing drugs on the banned substances list are anabolic steroids. But it is the responsibility of the media to accurately report information.
Of course, the fact that the NFL’s anti-doping protocol is referred to as the “NFL policy on anabolic steroids and related substances” (or as is most commonly referenced - the “NFL steroids policy”) just lends itself to the perception that an athlete who violated the “NFL steroids policy” was using “steroids.”
The NFL’s Miami Dolphin announced that they will implement the NFL ATLAS & ATHENA anti-steroid education program at six local Florida high schools. While the programs do have some empirical support for reduce teen steroid use, the researcher behind the program, Dr. Linn Goldberg, has been known to argue a causal connection between anabolic steroids and paranoia recently stating that steroid use ”makes you paranoid.” Goldberg defended the statement at Steroid.com.
It is not that steroids MAKE you anything, it promotes changes in neurochemistry that make the susceptible more likely to suffer these effects. To believe that powerful hormones don’t cause these changes are to deny both behavioral evidence and evidence of neurochemistry. It is causal! It just requires the susceptible individual. (Emphasis added)
Chicago Bears guard Terrence Metcalf was suspended for four games for violating the NFL policy on “anabolic steroids and related substances.” Metcalf insists who was not using anabolic steroids and did NOT test positive for anabolic steroids. He is telling the truth. He really tested positive for a diuretic (that is not a steroid and not a performance enhancing drug).
But given that the NFL’s steroid policy includes all performance enhancing drugs and doping masking agents, the general public assumes violations of the policy involve steroids. Any athlete who is found in violation of this policy must, fairly or unfairly, defend themselves against the societal stigma of “steroid use”.
Former NFL player Tony Mandarich admits to using anabolic steroids in an interview with Inside the NFL on Showtime today; more noteworthy is the fact that he was addicted to alcohol and prescription painkillers early in his NFL career. Yet rumors of steroid use were the dominant explanation for his disastrous bust as a second round NFL draft pick of the Green Bay Packers.
Steroids allegedly destroyed his body such that he could no longer play football at the level he displayed in college with the Michigan State Spartans football program. You know a substance has reached the pinnacle of demonization when it is used to both dismiss spectacular performances (e.g. Usain Bolt) and account for disappointing performances (e.g. Tony Mandarich).
The San Diego Union-Tribune has done its own “Mitchell Report” of sorts on performance-enhancing drugs in pro football. The baseball Mitchell Report had 85 names going back to about 1993. The accompanying list has 185 names linked to such drug use dating to 1962 and also 85 names since 1993. It includes 52 former Pro Bowl players and four Hall of Famers.
The “Schrotenboer Report on the Use of Steroids in the NFL” confirms that the Mitchell Report was a waste of money. Major League Baseball paid over $20 million to the law firm of former Senator George Mitchell to compile the “Mitchell Report.” The substance, if not the verbosity, of the Schrotenboer Report exceeds that of the Mitchell Report detailing football players who were publicly linked to steroid use over the past four decades. Schrotenboer was only paid the salary of a staff writer for a major newspaper.
Steroid education expert Linn Goldberg is in the news again. The NFL recently earmarked $1.4 million for Goldberg’s ATLAS and ATHENA steroid education programs. The programs do have some empirical support showing that they reduce teen steroid use. However, we are concerned with some of the inaccurate side effects promoted by Dr. Goldberg in the media, like the “fact” that steroids cause “paranoia.”
“Unlike many other drugs, kids don’t admit it because it’s not cool to be on steroids, not to mention the fact that it makes you paranoid,” explained Linn Goldberg, professor of medicine at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland.
NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Terry Bradshaw admitted to using steroids in a radio interview with Sports Illustrated’s Dan Patrick. It was unclear as to whether Bradshaw was talking about anabolic steroids or corticosteroids.
We did steroids to get away the aches and the speed of healing. My use of steroids from a doctor was to speed up injury, and thought nothing of it… It was to speed up the healing process and that was it. It wasn’t to get bigger and stronger and faster.
Bradshaw dismisses the anabolic effects of the steroids that he received via injection from the Pittsburgh Steelers’ team physician. As an NFL broadcaster, Bradshaw would presumably be very familiar with the controversy surrounding anabolic steroids; it seems that he would be careful to confirm whether or not he was referring to anabolic steroids and NOT corticosteroids.
It seems likely that Terry Bradshaw did use anabolic steroids since the widespread use of anabolic steroids among his Pittsburgh Steeler teammates has been well documented by Bradshaw’s late teammate Steve Courson. … Read the rest of this entry »
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