just wanna share some experience (although not a lot or experience from my part)...
I can just repeat the same thing these guys said, and the member after me would repeat it, and so on. and end up with a 22 page thread talking about how dumb it is to go high on doses and what not. More than likely, you are not convinced about this, and you are checking out other boards to see if one of their "vets" says "go 1500 mg, if you stop gaining, go 2000 mg!"... cuz that's what you want to hear.
anyway, let's talk about the people who said they "abused" AAS for 2-10 years, then realized that they could've made the same gains on 10 mg of dianabol every 7 years. No, you can't make the same gains. you can maintain what you built on a lower dosage, but you couldn't have built it on low dosage. yes, if you were genetically gifted by having a super normal reaction to gear (like those who look like nothing naturally, and somehow blow up on 250 mg of test) you could be huge at 1500 mg test per week, and when you go down to 750 mg after building what you have, you will maintain most of not all the muscle you have. and you will look better due to less bloat, and feel better due to less bloat and lower blood pressure.
another issue is talking about your dose... Rule of thumb: if anyone asks about your AAS use, either tell them you never used them (and make it look like you're offended by his question, and that you'd never ever go near something as fatal and dangerous as AAS), or tell them "never more than 500 mg total aas for 10 weeks max. i usually take about 6 months off between cycles"... I train a lot of people in my country, and some of them are on AAS. there's not much knowledge going around in my country about AAS, because most bodybuilders aren't that educated and they don't understand english. I trained many people who started off telling me "i only did 300 mg of prop and 300 mg of primo for 6 weeks"... a couple of months later they say "i've been cycling for 7 years"... a couple of months later they say "yeah, i've been on before for more than a year"... after that when you tell them to use slin at 5 iu per workout day they say "no, i did it many times man... 5 iu doesn't do anything.. i have to take atleast 20 iu twice a day to feel soemthing"... from "i only did 1 cycle of primo at 300 mg and prop at 300 mg for 6 weeks" to "i cycled year round before i met you with more than 2 grams of gear, shitloads of slin, and a ton of GH"... most of the high dosers look really good, but they fuck up when it comes to the diet and training. you fix up their diet and training, cut the dose in half, and they look better. If your gains stop on the dose you're at, your diet is perfect, and training is perfect... there's nothing else to do but to up the dose. that's the truth. if some people here get to 220 lbs stage weight at under 5'10 with less than 1 gram of gear, good for you. you're one in a million. this doesn't apply on normal human beings.
as for health and abuse and what not... everything is relative... to a normal person, protein and creatine and working out like we do will kill you and make your life shorter. it's bad for you health... blah blah blah... for a natural bodybuilder... doing 250 mg of test per week for 10 weeks is suicide, it will shrink your penis, make your nuts fall off, fuck your cholesterol up, increase aggression and makes you slap your mom whenever she says hi, and makes you commit suicide during pct... for enhanced leisure bodybuilders... 500-1000 mg total anabolics for 12 weeks on 12 weeks off is healthy, good, and won't shorten your life, but anything above that dosage or longer than 12 weeks is suicide... for competitors... 4-5 months on with 1.5-2 grams of really harsh gear (tren, halo, winny... etc) is justified because you are competing... if you aren't competing you shouldn't do that, because they say so. for the big guys who aren't genetically gifted... 3-4 grams of gear 6 months a year, and 1-2 grams of gear the other 6 months is what it takes to get big... it's justified by "not wanting to live that long"...
at the end of the day... you make your own decision. do we have proof other than "look at this bodybuilder... he did 3 grams per week for years and now he's dead at 35"... and "i know a guy who does 5 grams of gear per week for 4 years straight and he's perfectly fine at 50 years old"... and we have "he went up to 1 gram of gear and diet at the age of 28"... let's face it, most people won't tell you that they do meth, cocaine, and/or heroin with those 2 grams of gear.
if your old enough... you can make your own rational decision. everyone has his own justification. you don't have to justify yourself to people around here. you have to have a justification for YOURSELF!!! ONLY!!! (if you are married... and have children... you have to justify it to those people too and have their approval... cuz if something happens to you, it's not just game over for you, it's game over for them as well)
hope that helps