I understand your logic.
It is based on the assumption that once muscle has been built, regardless of how it was built, you can easily maintain it simply by training hard and eating enough.
Once it's there it will stay there unless you do something that can cause muscle loss.
It would be great if it worked like that. Much less bodybuilders would have to risk their health by staying on drugs year round, for many years.
Sadly it doesn't work like that.
If you had been in contact with a large number of drug-using bodybuilders, or even drug-using gym rats, you'd know that when one goes "off" they eventually lose a large proportion of their gains. Not all of them, but a significant proportion. And that, even if they train really hard and eat a perfect diet. And the changes go beyond a simple loss of muscle: the look is actually a lot different, more so than the simple change on the scale would indicate.
I've know bodybuilders who "only" drop from 230 to 220 when they go off, but they look like they lost 30+ lbs of muscle... it's not even that they lost fat, but the muscle they have look a lot flatter... this is possibly due to a decrease in water./glycogen storage in the muscles.
But the fact is that you cannot maintain all the muscle you added while using drugs. And the longer you relied on them, the more muscle you will lose.
What are the reasons? There are several theories.
1. Increase in cortisol post cycle. Cortisol is a catabolic hormone. One of it's impact is the breakdown of muscle tissue, especially if it's very elevated and stays like that for a long period.
HOWEVER cortisol is also a necessary hormone for the human body. It is used for the mobilisation of nutrients for fuel and reduction of inflammation among other things.
When a bodybuilder uses steroids the action of cortisol is significantly decreases. Why? For two reasons:
(1) cortisol and testosterone/steroids use the same second messenger (the second messenger is what sends the message to the nuclei of the cell once the hormone is bound to the receptor). So if you saturate your androgen receptors by using a lot of steroids, most of the second messengers are used to send the "anabolic" message to the cell nucleus. This leaves only a small amount for cortisol to send it's message. So cortisol's message doesn't make it through. As a response the body will either increase it's cortisol production and/or the number of cortisol receptors. This doesn't matter while you are using steroids. But when you stop you find youirself in a situation where your body is overproducing cortisol, has an increased number of cortisol receptors... this leads to a VERY catabolic (muscle wasting) state and now you don't have the anabolic hormones to compensate. Not only that, your own testosterone production is down for some time after you stop using steroids. So your body is literally in a "lose muscle" mode. And training more will not help, in fact it can hurt because the harder your train, the more cortisol your produce.
(2) certain steroids and cortisol antagonists (dianabol and halotestin for example). They block the action of cortisol... this also creates the state mentioned above where the body upregulate it's cortisol production which makes you prone to lose muscle FAST when you stop using steroids.
2. Decrease in intramuscular glycogen storage: steroids increase glycogen storage in the muscle. In other words you will store more of the carbs you eat inside the muscles in the form of glycogen. And each gram of glucose stored also pulls 3g of water inside the muscle. Steroids also increase creatine storage in the muscle (especially anavar) which also pulls in water. Then there is growth hormone which is known as a muscle cell volumizer: literally inflating the muscles with water.
All these things make the muscles appear a lot larger. Even if you didn't gain an ounce of muscle, you would still appear to be a lot more muscular because the muscles are fuller. You can easily appear to have 7-10lbs of muscle more simply by storing more glycogen, creatine and water in your muscles.
When you stop using the drugs you will lose all that water. So even if you didn't lose any muscle at all (which is not the case) you would appear significantly smaller and less muscular.
3. Myostatin upregulation: Myostatin is what ultimately determine how much muscle your body can carry. Animals born without the myostatin gene basically grow muscle non-stop without "training"... just look up "Belgian blue" which is a cow type born without myostatin. Steroids, especially long term use can UPREGULATE myostatin... that's because your body doesn't want to carry more muscle than it's naturally intended too. Steroids and other drugs makes you put on a lot more muscle than you are intended too. At one point the body will upregular it's myostatin in an effort to prevent excessive muscle growth. When you stop the drugs, myostatin stays elevated and you do not have the benefit of the anabolic state from the drugs. Elavated myostatin can make you lose muscle, even if you train, until you reach a level that your body feels as more "natural", or within it's genetic limits.
There are other mechanisms at play like mTor but this already gives you a pretty solid view of the question.
It is unrealistic to believe that you can maintain the muscle mass gains via drugs, even if you train hard and eat well. You will not lose everything, but you will look like a totally different human being.
OBVIOUSLY someone who used very low amounts of drugs or not for extended periods or those who didn't reach a muscularity level beyond their natural limit will be able to maintain more of their size than abusers.
And regarding DLB; you use the fact that she is the same size on stage and off-season as an argument for why she isn't using. Knowing the bodybuilding/figure world I see it more as a proof that she is using drugs year round which is why she is still muscular and lean off-season.
Don't forget that she makes a lot more money from her off-season activities (guest pose/appearances/sponsors, website/videos, services) than her competitive ones. So if anything she would have more incentives to use drugs off-season than pre-competition.
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