I had written some months ago about a friend of mine who decided to get his hands on some black market steroid tablets and within 6 weeks he had injured himself. This was after he had experienced massive gains in both size, definition of muscle, and a huge boost in strength. We had no illusions about this... it was definitely entirely because of the steroids. That much was evident.
Prior to him going on the juice, we were about the same size and strength. After a month on it, he was easily 30% stronger than I was despite the fact that he hadn't been hitting the weights more frequently, adjusting his diet in any way, or changing anything else about his life. It was purely this 1 milligram tablet per day that gave him a huge advantage.
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Now make no mistake. This steroid was not prescribed to him and upon doing some research I have found out that Trenbolone, or tren tabs as they are commonly referred to, were never intended for human use. They were developed to make cattle larger for the meat market but someone out there decided it would be a good idea to use that same product for humans. I am sure there were a lot of casualties along the way when the "correct dosage" was being determined.
Take my friend for example: He just assumed that since the tablets were individually wrapped, that you were meant to take one of them at a time.... he toyed with the idea of taking more than one since he didn't immediately experience any difference in the way that he felt. Once he started to feel rather bad anytime that he wasn't working out he went to look online at some dodgy forums and found out that most people will only take 250 to 500 micrograms per day.
My question is "why TF would you package them in 1mg tablets then?"
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this is not my friend... i promised I would keep his identity a secret since the drugs he took are in fact, illegal
He kept messing with the dosage until he ended up tearing some muscle tissue and this put him out of action for a number of weeks. For a normal person, I think this would be a tell-tale sign that you shouldn't be doing this sort of thing but he was already addicted to the additional strength as well as the fact that his definition and muscle mass was increasing at a rate that probably isn't possible without tren.
After feeling like butt for nearly 6 months on this stuff, he finally decided one day after aggravating the same muscles that he already tore once, that he was going to stop using the stuff. This just happened to coincide with when he was about to run out of tablets as well.
I applauded him for being sensible after all those months of just throwing caution to the wind and god only knows what sort of damage he has done to his internal organs. He isn't going to go back to them but this is where the crappy part enters the picture.
He is gradually, but without doubt, losing his gains and strength as time goes by. He tries to do the stacks and plates that he used to bang out on the regular while he was juicing, but he simply can't do it. He is also noticing a gradual, but very real reduction in muscle mass no matter how much protein he eats and how much he lifts.
I think this is one of the real dangers aside from the obvious ones like overloading your kidneys and liver that ends up getting almost anyone that uses - it is well documented.
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Arnold probably isn't a great example because he is quite old now, but he has come clean about his PED usage in the past, although he doesn't talk about it a great deal. It is quite well known in the bodybuilding community though that you don't just take roids in order to get to a certain size and then lay off them and somehow magically maintain the level of ripped. It simply isn't possible.
Based on my friend's experience I have learned a lot about how these things function and how dangerous they can be. Not only are you at risk of hurting yourself and possibly causing very serious problems for your internal organs down the line, but you establish a dependence upon them that you can not lay off of unless you accept the fact that your super-human gains are not sustainable without them.
For me personally, I am happy that I never got involved with them although I do have to say that I was quite jealous when my friend started leaving me in the dust despite our very similar workout routines. I think that a lot of this is perpetuated by Hollywood and the fitness industry as well as popular influencers who lie and say that they got that way from various supplements that they just happen to sell on their own websites.
Once you have spoken to someone that actually experienced what it is like to be on the juice and then transition off of it, your eyes are opened quite a lot as to what is really going on here. These days when I see someone that is super jacked in the gym, I just presume that they are on the gear. Unfortunately it doesn't seem terribly possible without it. I think it is important to just accept that fact that people can't get to that size without chemical assistance, and therefore it is better to never aspire to it.