Are we just all addicts?

[TheOtherOne55]

Its the entire board is a mix of addicts and obsessives, thats all.

I wouldnt say im addicted to gear...this past 16 months ive been OFF and on 100mg for the longest stretch since starting using. Is it tough sometimes? Yeah. But it has reaffirmed that im actually addicted to the gymmm...not the gear itself. I cannot take a step back or away from the gym. That is a fact. But i can take a step back from gear. And the vast majority in this thread are probably a mx. It honestly depends on WHY you got into this life anyways. If you came here to pick up chicks and define yourself, you probably love the gear because it equates to how you view yourself. If you just love training, you're ok. I wish it was a black and white thing but it isnt....lots of grey area.

Also as someone who hasnt been below 240-250 in yearsss, i do agree that its a size thing. Or at least that is a MAJOR part of it.
But the comment about, "we dont see classic guys or physique guys dying." You're right, we dont. But thats because, not to sound rude, but they didnt BUILD anything. To me its not the gear itself, its the years of adding additional weight and strain on your natural frame. If you are supposed to be 6'0 190 and you spend 10-20 years of your life at 260, everything is going to wear down a lot quicker. Joints, organs, all of it. Those are facts.

 

[qbkilla]

Its the entire board is a mix of addicts and obsessives, thats all.

I wouldnt say im addicted to gear...this past 16 months ive been OFF and on 100mg for the longest stretch since starting using. Is it tough sometimes? Yeah. But it has reaffirmed that im actually addicted to the gymmm...not the gear itself. I cannot take a step back or away from the gym. That is a fact. But i can take a step back from gear. And the vast majority in this thread are probably a mx. It honestly depends on WHY you got into this life anyways. If you came here to pick up chicks and define yourself, you probably love the gear because it equates to how you view yourself. If you just love training, you're ok. I wish it was a black and white thing but it isnt....lots of grey area.

Also as someone who hasnt been below 240-250 in yearsss, i do agree that its a size thing. Or at least that is a MAJOR part of it.
But the comment about, "we dont see classic guys or physique guys dying." You're right, we dont. But thats because, not to sound rude, but they didnt BUILD anything. To me its not the gear itself, its the years of adding additional weight and strain on your natural frame. If you are supposed to be 6'0 190 and you spend 10-20 years of your life at 260, everything is going to wear down a lot quicker. Joints, organs, all of it. Those are facts.

We don't always agree but this is spot on, all of it!

 

[krman]

Yes, but I guess we have to ask ourselves, who isn't an addict in some way in their life.

 

[pimpman]

We are ALL that mouse pressing the button to get the dopamine. Whether it's food, sex, money, a medal, a trophy, we are all born hopelessly addicted to dopamine. Satisfaction, reward, rush, thrill. And thank god we are. Can you imagine the dull grey, depressed, apathetic and morose society we'd be if we weren't in need of it?

Even love is an addiction of sorts where at its strongest, a person's love will die two weeks after they do. They are that hopelessly dependent on each other.

Addiction in this hysterical last few decades has reached a fever pitch. Go ahead, purge yourself of everything addictive by nature in your existence and see how fulfilling your life becomes. You'll be fulfilled alright. Permanently. Or even easier, why not go grab some Arby's and head to the beach. Enjoy a delicious meal then walk into the sea and leave it all behind?

You think a race car driver, test pilot, or mountain climber has a good life expectancy? You think companies are lining up to sell them life insurance? These bodybuilders did what they loved. Lived on their terms. I'm not going to soil their memories by painting them as selfish junkies.

You're so right that im dite ot scares people here

 

[johnjuanb1]

Most bodybuilders are very OCD with an extremely addictive personality in general. You have to be to want to ensure the pain we go through everyday for years with the food, weight lifting, cardio, and injections.
Am I am addict?
I prefer to think of myself as cat shit crazy! (Definitely cats, not bats).

 

[epoxy]

There are a lot of BB'ers that were previous drug addicts. Addicts often just swap one addiction for another and then justify it by saying that new "addiction" is less detrimental than the previous one. Case in point, my father was an alcoholic, he got sober, clean, hasn't drank in 20 years. What did he replace his addiction with? Sugar. Now, I know that's not nearly as bad from a first glance, but it's still an addiction nonetheless and one that is used as a crutch for a disorder that affects brain chemistry, being reliant on a substance for some reason. This guy can't go a single day without eating a pint of ice cream. AAS is not a substance addiction, it's a mental addiction to looking in the mirror or hitting the next PR, but still an addiction nonetheless.

I'd wager that most of us have been there at some point over something. Gambling, sex, video games, anything. When you "need" something that is not necessary but you crave it and your life feels worse off without it, or worst case, meaningless...there you go.

 

[cage99]

Yep, I am…. And I’m totally fine losing several years off my life to live this life! I was okay with this the moment I started down this road.

Cage

 

[iron lifter]

sometimes i wish i never tried gear. now i can't train without it. i hate that cause its like whats the point man. its like driving to work in a ferrari than having it break down and having to take transit which takes 3 times as long to get to work. rather just stay at home and not work and start when the ferrari is fixed.

i also tend to not eat clean when i am off, so my solution is to never come off i do low periods but i am always on something. its like normal to me.

 

[sandiego_2008]

There are 113 million obese people in the USA currently. Damn near every commercial on tv during a professional sporting event is an ad for fast food. Talk about drug addiction; and yes, food is a drug. I’d rather be addicted to looking like a superhero than looking a typical slob who can’t keep from shoving garbage down their throat.
Am I addicted to looking ripped year round and being told I look 40 instead of 53? Fuck yeah I am! Who doesn’t have a passion for something? Money, power, sex, food, muscle, getting high, getting drunk, gardening, cats, dogs, cars, looking pretty, sniffing hair(Come on, man!).
I will say this without being specific: if you have abused AAS/HGH then the odds are your heart is enlarged. Nothing to panic over. Just reality. Be careful not to put things in your body that are known to cause carditis/pericarditis. Use some common sense!

Not to down play the damage that AAS/HGH can cause but I often watch My 600lb life show and i'm absolutely shocked by the sheer amount of abuse the human body can withstand. People in their 30s & 40s weighing 700-800 + lbs, almost completely immobile, masses of sagging, large lymphedema hanging everywhere. Yet their hearts don't give out.

 

[danieltx]

Not to down play the damage that AAS/HGH can cause but I often watch My 600lb life show and i'm absolutely shocked by the sheer amount of abuse the human body can withstand. People in their 30s & 40s weighing 700-800 + lbs, almost completely immobile, masses of sagging, large lymphedema hanging everywhere. Yet their hearts don't give out.

Many people who've been on that show have died and usually in their 40s/50s. It's like bodybuilding but a quest to build the most fat instead of muscle.

 

[johnjuanb1]

Not to down play the damage that AAS/HGH can cause but I often watch My 600lb life show and i'm absolutely shocked by the sheer amount of abuse the human body can withstand. People in their 30s & 40s weighing 700-800 + lbs, almost completely immobile, masses of sagging, large lymphedema hanging everywhere. Yet their hearts don't give out.

I saw that a few weeks ago. Omg, the woman I saw could eat. It was like a shark taking down a huge sea lion in seconds. And she was yelling at her husband, “I’M HUNGRY!!!!”

 

[sandiego_2008]

Many people who've been on that show have died and usually in their 40s/50s. It's like bodybuilding but a quest to build the most fat instead of muscle.

MANY of them are still alive as well. These are people who have been grossly obese almost their entire live with diabetes, blood pressure issues since teenagers yet they refuse to even get out of bed.

 

[sandiego_2008]

I saw that a few weeks ago. Omg, the woman I saw could eat. It was like a shark taking down a huge sea lion in seconds. And she was yelling at her husband, “I’M HUNGRY!!!!”
View attachment 155780

The one common theme among all those slobs is they ALL guzzle gallons of regular soda a day, ive never seen one with a bottle of water.

 

[Lift2staysane]

Yes and no. As a recovered addict I see both sides. However lifting is what has gotten and kept me clean. I am addicted to the gym, the training itself. There is no way I could return to my old rec drug addicted self. My entire routine is about work and the gym now. Zero time for partying ever. I plan to lift til the day I die. I'm well aware of the risks with gear and have accepted them.

I feel there is a big difference in rationalizing ones rec drug use compared to PED's. I do daily cardio and eat clean mostly, doing my best to reduce any side effects.

When I was addicted self care was the last thing on my mind. I looked and smelled disgusting.

I shower twice a day now and don't look nasty. So if this lifestyle is considered addiction so be it. I'm more functional than I was addicted to rec drugs. I OWN my days now.

 

[epoxy]

sometimes i wish i never tried gear. now i can't train without it. i hate that cause its like whats the point man. its like driving to work in a ferrari than having it break down and having to take transit which takes 3 times as long to get to work. rather just stay at home and not work and start when the ferrari is fixed.

i also tend to not eat clean when i am off, so my solution is to never come off i do low periods but i am always on something. its like normal to me.

This is something that happened to me for a while when I started using DNP. Everyone likes to preach not to rely on drugs as a crutch and they should just be tools in the toolbelt kind of stuff. People go in with the right intentions. I found myself taking a month of each year using DNP to get back to where I wanted to be, then slowly letting myself deteriorate over the next 11 months knowing I could just use DNP again to remove it. Not a great way to look at things. Now of course, I didn't let myself get FAT or terribly out of shape seeing as I could always fix a years worth of abuse in about a month, but still, I let it be a crutch in the sense that I knew it would be there to fix the problems I caused for myself each time.

 

[epoxy]

Yes and no. As a recovered addict I see both sides. However lifting is what has gotten and kept me clean. I am addicted to the gym, the training itself. There is no way I could return to my old rec drug addicted self. My entire routine is about work and the gym now. Zero time for partying ever. I plan to lift til the day I die. I'm well aware of the risks with gear and have accepted them.

I feel there is a big difference in rationalizing ones rec drug use compared to PED's. I do daily cardio and eat clean mostly, doing my best to reduce any side effects.

When I was addicted self care was the last thing on my mind. I looked and smelled disgusting.

I shower twice a day now and don't look nasty. So if this lifestyle is considered addiction so be it. I'm more functional than I was addicted to rec drugs. I OWN my days now.

I'm not knocking you at all, because this is how a lot of us feel, but this is the prime example of justifying the addiction from it being a lesser evil than the previous. At the end of the day, the "addiction" itself is no different, but looking at from the perspective of the crash course you used to be on being vastly worse for you in the short or long term, it's easy to make the justification. And then you have the varying degrees of that being based on your AAS usage, dosages, etc. To just be on TRT and working out and taking care of yourself, to blasting 1g, 2g, 3g, so on and so forth. Everyone has a risk tolerance, everyone's risk tolerance is different. There are people that would say "At 3g of gear a week my life was probably in danger of ending short, but I've dropped it to 2g a week and I feel great and I don't think that's the case anymore" - when it's likely still most certainly the same case.

 

[epoxy]

This one has my brain working in overtime - but I think it's also relevant to point out that we see obituaries of these guys and gals every day, and yet here we are. I think the initial shock and being faced with our own mortality wears of rather quickly when you start to analyze things. Someone who dies that was here doing what we're all doing, we can easily say that we don't know the whole picture. That alone is justification enough to say "Well, that won't be me. Maybe he had rec drug issues. Underlying conditions." endless variables. Maybe you have underlying conditions, maybe I do. The easiest justification one can make is that you could wake up tomorrow and get hit by a car, life over. Whereas with AAS usage, there's no definitive answer to the length that your life will be shortened by your use/abuse/whatever you want to call it. I can tell myself "If I die 1-2 years early, no big deal." It fits within my personal inherent risk tolerance. But if I knew I was actually going to die 15 years younger than I should have? I'd quit today. But that's just not the case because we'll likely never know until it's too late, like a lot of guys here have proven.

 

[Lift2staysane]

I'm not knocking you at all, because this is how a lot of us feel, but this is the prime example of justifying the addiction from it being a lesser evil than the previous. At the end of the day, the "addiction" itself is no different, but looking at from the perspective of the crash course you used to be on being vastly worse for you in the short or long term, it's easy to make the justification. And then you have the varying degrees of that being based on your AAS usage, dosages, etc. To just be on TRT and working out and taking care of yourself, to blasting 1g, 2g, 3g, so on and so forth. Everyone has a risk tolerance, everyone's risk tolerance is different. There are people that would say "At 3g of gear a week my life was probably in danger of ending short, but I've dropped it to 2g a week and I feel great and I don't think that's the case anymore" - when it's likely still most certainly the same case.

Totally agree with you. I talk with my shrink about my anabolic usage and we both agree it's a slippery slope.

 

[junker]

yes. you're all drug addicts. especially the ones who rationalize using.
not me tho. i dropped to trt and aint lookin back. well, i upped it to 250 a week and gonna add deca.....wait.
but dont compare bb'ers to pro athletes. bb'ers aint athletes. they're much more like the 600lb lifers. big to be big for no other reason.

 

[tom1234]

Yes but a better addiction than lots of others; had periods in my life where abused rec drugs and BBing is the lesser of two evils IMO especially in terms of mental health.