2. USING THEM IS TANTAMOUNT TO CHEATING. Taking a substance that makes you stronger or helps you improve your recovery time is nothing more than cheating. Unless that substance is creatine, which, despite never having been studied on a long-term basis, is okey-dokey. Why? Because it only helps you a small amount, whereas steroids and human growth hormone are exponentially more effective. You see, you can improve yourself, you just can’t improve yourself too much. You’re already a really fucking good athlete, okay? You don’t have to rub everyone’s face in it. That really pisses people off.
3. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR KNOWING EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE PUTTING INTO YOUR BODY. If you want to stay clean, you must be vigilant. No excuses. You are a pro athlete now, so everyone will expect you to be an expert in advanced body physiology. So get cracking. Go to Section XII, Subset A, Section 12, Article 8 of your league’s collective bargaining agreement and look up which substances are banned. Then cross-reference that list with the ingredient labels of each and every product you buy. Of course, some of these substances may be legal in trace amounts, so you’ll have to check the percentage of a certain ingredient, then write out a proportional equation to figure out the exact metric amount contained in a single pill, and then double-check the CBA to make sure it is equal to or below that value.
The media says this is an easy thing to do, so I don’t want to hear you complaining about it.
4. NOT ALL PERFORMANCE-ENHANCING SUBSTANCES ARE BANNED. There are many performance-enhancing supplements that are perfectly legal to take and taste like complete and utter shit. Products such as Weight Gain 5000, or Joe Weider’s Super Whey Fuel, or anything else at GNC that will make your sweat smell like pet food. These are all substances that give you some of the benefits of cheating without technically cheating. The key is knowing the difference between a drug and a supplement. You see, a drug is an ingestible chemical compound that is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. A supplement is an ingestible chemical compound that is not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. You see how that makes sense? Good.
5. YOU CAN TOTALLY GET SOME AT ANY GOLD’S GYM. Let’s say you decide to cave in to the pressure and take performance-enhancing drugs. The first thing you need to know is where to get them. And let me tell you, Gold’s Gym is the place to go for steroids and / or closeted gay sex partners. Just stroll on in, head to the free-weight room, and look for the forty-five-year-old Italian guy who looks like a personal trainer but is actually just a customer harassing other customers about remembering to work the negative. He’ll be the one doing shoulder shrugs in jeans, a tank top, and Lugz boots. Ask him to spot for you. Compare workout routines. Grunt together. In no time, you’ll have yourself a shady friend who will latch on to you like a goddamn lamprey. After a week of hanging out together, tell him, “You know, Todd, I’m really hitting a plateau on my dead lifts.”
Say no more. Within seconds, words like Clomid, Clenbuterol, and buffalo mating stimulant will pour out of his mouth. He’ll procure every known steroid for you to sample, direct from the nearest Mexican apothecary. He’ll show you how to use them. You can inject them, swallow them, rub them in, smoke them, insert them as suppositories, drop them on your tongue, spray them in your nose, or bake them into cranberry muffins. Your new gym friend will show you the best way to do it, and then do it with you! Then, you two will wrestle naked in the steam room for an hour. Within days, you’ll find yourself more powerful, more energetic, and more prone to slamming your loved ones against the wall at the drop of a hat. Welcome to your new body, my friend. Soon, the aggressiveness you try so hard to rein in off the field will consume you entirely. You’ll be like a superhero, with bonus raping ability.
6. IF YOU’RE GOING TO TAKE A PERFORMANCE-ENHANCING SUBSTANCE, TAKE HUMAN GROWTH HORMONE. There is no reliable test for it yet. So binge away. Oh, sure, people will say there’s “anecdotal evidence” of you cheating. And yeah, there are a few horrifying physical side effects, such as cranial doubling. But who gives a shit if it bags you an extra $100 mil? So you have an abnormally large head now. Big fucking deal. Buy an Escalade with a sunroof. Problem solved.
7. IF YOU TAKE THEM, YOU ARE IN GOOD COMPANY. Using steroids doesn’t have to be your dirty little secret. Find a teammate or a group of fellow players and make it a dirty big secret. It’s much more fun to engage in illicit behavior in groups. At least, that’s what I’ve found. The number of professional athletes who have allegedly used PEDs is huge, and only growing: Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens, Rafael Palmeiro, Floyd Landis, Mike Webster, Lyle Alzado, Darrell Russell, Sammy Sosa, Ben Johnson, Marion Jones, Tim Montgomery, Ken Caminiti, Jose Canseco, and pretty much the entire roster of the WWE. Sure, many of these people are dead, or disgraced. But, should the same fate befall you, you’ll at least have someone to commiserate with.