Posts
6438
Joined
10/16/2014
Location
Buda, TX
US
Edited Date/Time
6/4/2022 8:27am
99.9% of us will never face a pee test, so where and how much for the good stuff? Asking for a friend.
Watch this ^
The Shop
Just my .02 if you want, theres a ton of review videos on Youtube..
Pit Row
another disclaimer... i have never smoked a cigarette, smoked weed, put a chew in my mouth or done any sort of drugs in my life..... except for the fact that i have taken PEDs (or steroids as we used to call it back in the day).
one last disclaimer.... i am not going to spell check anything so sorry if my spelling or punctuation pisses anyone off.... i know that really gets a few guys spooled up around here.
it started off from bodybuilding. right after high school i got into bodybuilding. i was always heavily into athletics but not gifted enough to take sports past high school. i was strong as an ox as a kid and some of my lifting records still stand at my high school some 26 years later. as i got into college i just focused on weights and about half way through my freshmen year i met a kid that was starting to compete as a bodybuilder. i was hooked. i loved the building of the body as well as the nutrition side of it. i competed 100% naturally for 2 years. however, within the first year i realized that most anyone that was competitive at any weight class was using something. there are very very very few people genetically gifted enough to compete and actually be competitive that are not using something. the heavier the weight class, the more they are using and the longer they have been using.
long story short, i was scared to death to use any "drug" and i therefore researched for over a year before i took anything. now back then, there weren't nearly the laws nor the stigma attached to steroids and i actually had a doc and a pharmacist (both were friends an NO.... they absolutely did not provide me with anything other than guidance as to what was "safe" and what was not as safe). i competed for another 3 years while using the drugs. in that time i went from a lean 165lbs (lean as in 6-8% fat.... not lean as in ready to step on stage) to 216lbs with roughly the same body fat. the largest i competed at was just under 193lbs which may not sound like much but i am 5'8" on a good day and the skin folds on my belly were as thin as the skin folds on my penis.... ripped was an understatement.
i stayed away from all oral drugs with the exception of fairly small doses of anavar. everything else was injectable (which is real fun for a guy that hates needles). the base drug for all bodybuilders is testosterone cypianate with the ananthate version being a close second only because the ananthate is painful. testosterone is 1:1 androgenic to anabolic. androgenic meaning it gives us men our manly attributes (thicker skin, facial/body hair deeper voices etc) and anabolic meaning constructive or building. the stronger anabolic drugs are 3:1 anabolic to androgenic. this is why they have the ability to put so much muscle on a person in a relatively short amount of time.
there was a ton to learn and i am glad i had the guidance of both a physician and a pharmacist. there is such a multitude of drugs out there and some can have some serious side effects. most of the guys in the gyms rely on "bro science" and came out with a lot of unwanted side effects. also, some drugs work differently and are used for different times during the bodybuilding season. for instance some drugs aromatize (or convert) to estrogen more than others. these are the drugs that are never used shortly before a competition because they cause subcutaneous water retention and make a person "smooth" or soft looking. others like trenbolone (mentioned above) have very little aromatase factors and are actually used pre-contest to give the person a much harder look.
they all have side effects... some almost not detectable and others are much more so. a steroid that most people have heard of is Decadurobolin or just "deca." super common in all sports. what you don't hear about that much is "deca dick" or the inability to have an erection. it happens with a number of the anabolics. one of the scariest has to do with red blood cell production. more specifically the increased red blood cell production. the more informed athletes that used PEDs get their blood tested at least every 6 months to ensure that their red blood cell counts are not to high. as your red blood cells increase, the viscosity of your blood increases. too high and you are primed for a stroke or heart attack as your blood gets too thick. i remember an interview with Lance Armstrong where he said his trainer used to say in a thick accent "all you need are the red cells." endurance athletes want the extra red cells for their oxygen carrying capacity. its a wonder that more endurance athletes haven't dropped dead from the levels that i have heard them having.
so here is my take on my experience with them. i took them in cycles for 3 years. i stopped after i had gotten engaged, was about to start a career (a real career) and new laws had come into play that made having them a serious crime. i never once had "roid rage." in fact, i was never in a better mood. i never got acne (though i would say i had a few extra zits than normal). when on the sauce my nuts were in fact 1/3 their normal size (makes sense... they werent needed so they atrophied). once i made the decision to stop using them, my strength and physical size were back to my 100% natural size within 1 year no matter how hard i trained and i would say back to within 80% within 6-8 months.
how did i feel while on it.... in all honesty.... AMAZING! i was always in a great mood. i had the ability to study in school much more intensely and for longer durations. i was full of energy (not spastic, just always ready for anything and never tired until it was time to call it a day). never wanted to be caught in sweat pants because woodies had to have happened 50 times/day (your sex drive is largely controlled by your testosterone and i was injecting 100 times the amount naturally found in my body... if memory serves, about 600mg/ week). i was bigger, stronger and faster than i had ever been. i could recover from workouts insanely fast (which is a big part of the reason the drugs work so well). i just generally had an amazing sense of wellbeing.
having said that, these are not the drugs that someone would want to use for an endurance sport like motocross or GNCC racing. at least not at the levels bodybuilders use. some steroids yes (testosterone for sure) but just to recover faster, not to look like the hulk. more mass requires more oxygen, thus the reason marathon runners don't look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
fast forward to my late 30s... i started noticing some things that i just attributed to getting older i felt as though i were getting moodier, had less energy, had troubles recovering from workouts, riding, working hard around my ranch etc. i also felt as though it took longer to recover from injuries. a good friend of mine who is 10 years older than i am suggested that i go see a doc here in town that specializes in mens health and hormone replacement therapy. turns out that back then he had already been seeing him for a couple years and he said what i was explaining to him were his exact symptoms. turns out his testosterone levels were really low and that his life had changed dramatically for the better since being on TRT (testosterone replacement therapy). years went by and i never gave it much thought but every so often, we would be talking and i would be complaining about something and he would say.... "you need to go see dr #$%^@" and get your levels tested and he would remind me how great he felt. in 2017 i was diagnosed with an intradural extramedulary tumor at the C2 nerve root. the short version is that its a small benign pea size tumor inside my spinal cord. the docs think that theres a good chance that it could have been caused from one of my 2 neck injuries i had as a kid and believe it could have been in me for decades. its not growing (at least appreciably at the moment) but has caused some weird neurological issues that i had noticed for years but came to a head in 2017. most of it is just sensory stuff mixed with bouts of feeling motion sick for no reason. at first i thought this was the reason i had the mood issues etc mentioned above but my buddy still insisted to go get my testosterone levels checked. a year ago this month i decided what could it hurt so i got tested (i was 43 at the time). "normal" range (depending on who is testing you) is somewhere between 340 and 900 for men 18 to as old as they come... its a massive range. i was 206. the doc joked with me saying i was ready to buy feminine hygene products.
before he had told me what my results were, he asked what brought me in. i told him that i just didn't feel like i used to. i felt like i had half the energy i used to. my drive to work as hard as i used to was way down (both personal and professional). and the biggest thing.... i didn't feel like i dreamed anymore. not that i didn't dream when i slept but i didn't look forward to things in the future like used to... especially the little things in life. now don't get me wrong, i didn't want to go jump off the nearest bridge but my general enthusiasm for life just wasn't what it was.
he told me that what i was telling him were classic signs of low testosterone and that i had 3 options... the first was do nothing. the second was to try an oral drug called clomaphine (it is a drug that works with the HPA axis to help us produce more testosterone... we as body builders used to take it while coming off a cycle to kick our own endogenous testosterone back into production). they have mixed results with this method but some do really well on it. number 3 was to get on a weekly injection of testosterone. this is what my friend has been doing for 10+ years. he said that he would happily help me with any method i wanted. in the long run we decided the weekly injections would be the route i would go. i give myself the shot every thursday morning right when my alarm goes off. not a fun way to wake up but in all honesty, it absolutely is painless. still not the way to wake up for a guy that has always feared needles. lol
now this is not a doc that just prescribes this because he can make a ton of money doing this. he is one of our leading ER docs in town who had gone through a head injury that messed with his pituitary gland pretty well shutting off his own production of testosterone. after years of not knowing what was wrong and feeling really lousy, a colleague of his suggested getting his own testosterone tested. he was extremely low and after a very short time on the replacement therapy it had made such an impact on his life that he decided to go back and get more training on the subject. he has said that he has actually thought about leaving the ER to work with men on this subject full time because he feels like he has more of a positive impact on peoples lives than he does in the ER. needless to say i trust the guy and he is now my doc and prescribes TRT to me.
so how do i feel now right at 1 year after starting? AMAZING! now don't get me wrong, i am not taking super human levels of testosterone like i did back in my bodybuilding days. i inject 120mg once a week and at my last blood test i was floating around 1100. yes that is slightly higher than what is considered normal but there are people who are naturally much higher than that. 200mg is kind of the gold standard dose that most docs start people off at. i feel that my energy is back, my drive to work and work hard is back. i'm not tired until its time to go to bed. and though i felt like my wife and i had a very good sex life, it is insanely good now (thank god my wife has a libido like an 18 year old man lol). physically, i havent felt this good or looked like this since i was in my 20s. in fact, i didn't realize the drastic physical change until this past winter when we got back from kauai. we were looking through pictures and i about shit myself when i saw a pic of the two of us with our surfboards. i mean i knew i was getting bigger stronger, and losing fat but i didn't realize as to what extent. that inspired me to set some goals for my 44th bday. now mind you i have never lost the urge to workout and workout hard. i even have a pretty extensive gym in my house so i have maintained a level of strength. but i decided i wanted to bench press twice my bodyweight (i got that), 44 wide grip pullups (im stuck at 36), 475lb ass to calf squat (stuck at 460) and 100 dips (got that easily) by my 44th bday. in all honesty i physically look about 90% of what i did when i was in my early 20s prior to taking any PEDs. now granted all the aches and pains are still there but even then my mental outlook is such that they don't bother me as much.
most importantly, i have that zest for life again.... i dream.... i look forward to things in the future big or small. i just feel like me again.
now along with the testosterone i also have to take an aromatase inhibitor. we have enzymes in our body that break testosterone down into estrogen. this is something i took as a bodybuilder as well to keep estrogen under control. this is very important not only because we don't want all the unwanted side effects of estrogen like gynocomastia (aka bitch tits), water retention etc.... it is also known that increased estrogen levels can "wake up" the prostate cancer gene that we as all men carry. as we age, our bodies start to decrease test production but increase estrogen production. the beauty of monitoring and controlling my estrogen is that it is thought to decrease the likelihood of prostate cancer.
when i first started TRT, i was embarrassed to tell anyone. now it has such a positive impact on my life i tell everyone which is the reason i felt the need to mention it here.... i know "Jonny Depp" isn't a "spring chicken" and while he may have been joking with this thread... he may have had a little curiosity about PEDS. and on the subject of PEDs.... unless you are dealing with a doc directly in guiding you, DO NOT DO IT. there is so much science behind it that a guy or gal could really damage their body if they just randomly start trying different performance enhancing drugs.
but if you are a guy in your mid 30s or older and just noticing that you arent yourself anymore, think about getting your test levels tested. it might be the best PED you ever took that made you feel like you again.
sorry for the novel, just thought maybe it might be of help to someone
another positive is it forces me to stay on top of my physicals and blood work. i was terrible about that before starting.
Ostarine made it through stage three clinical trials where a bunch of 80 something couch potato's were given 1 MG, didn't train and all gained muscle and bone. Most people take 20 MG's.
Last but not least, MK677, growth hormone secretagogue. Makes you produce more HGH. Does so by activating the Ghrelin chemical so you will get real hungry.
Of course they aren't approved for human consumption so please don't take any of this stuff.
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