Building muscle.

Getting better at sports.

Becoming stronger, faster or more driven on the athletic field of play.

These effects can be achieved through hard work, proper diet, and the correct amounts of weight and cardio training.

But, that takes time and dedication. It takes habits, built over years, spending long hours perfecting one’s craft.

There are no shortcuts — or at least, there were none.

But, in the middle of the last century, anabolic steroids were synthesized, in order to boost testosterone in men.

And, while these have a specific positive medical effect in those who cannot produce the appropriate amount of the hormone, they also have a significant effect on one’s ability to build muscle mass.

“A steroid is a subset of PED (performance enhancing drugs), which are anything that could be seen as something outside of the natural body that could potentially enhance performance,” sports medicine specialist Dr. Daniel Clearfield said. “Now, I mean, there’s steroids that we use in medicine, like cortical steroids. That’s not what we’re typically talking about.”

Instead, the more commonly used­ — and abused — kind of steroids are the anabolic kind. These steroids, which are illegal, drive hormone production in the body, which can have all sorts of immediate, positive effects.

“(Anabolic steroids) tend to be either testosterone or derivative of testosterone,” Clearfield said. “They can definitely help with muscle growth, help endurance, help with recovery, and help with fat reduction.”

Unfortunately, these initial boosts are often too good to be true.

Steroid use can have a laundry list of side effects across the body, especially when continued over a substantial period of time. Some of the most devastating effects are found in the cardiovascular system.

“There’s a lot of seemingly positive things that steroids can do, but there’s a lot of negative things they can do to the body as well,” Clearfield said. “They can increase the risk of heart failure, cardiomegaly (enlarged heart), and heart attacks. Additionally, they can lead to blood clots, stroke, or even kidney damage or failure.”

Beyond those more pressing and serious effects, steroids can also change the chemistry of important reproductive organs, rendering them useless or severely damaged over the course of a person’s life.

“Steroids can lead to other kind of side effects, such as gynecomastia, which is development of excess breast tissue,” Clearfield said. “They can lead to atrophy of the gonads, or testicular atrophy, and then they can also have numerous effects on the skin, including severe acne and baldness.”

Finally, some of the most life-altering effects of these medications can be on a user’s mental health.

“They can also lead to several different mental things, such as mental instability, psychosis, delirium, and mania,” Clearfield said.

Despite all those side effects, Clearfield has observed a concerning rise in steroid use, especially among younger athletes.

This trend is especially dangerous because, when the body detects extra testosterone in the body, it naturally limits its natural methods of testosterone production.

This doesn’t pose as much of a problem for teenagers, who are already naturally producing lots of testosterone. However, as these young users progress into their 30s and 40s, their natural testosterone production declines.

Thus, a gap appears between people who never used steroids and former users, because those former users had already limited their natural testosterone production.

Younger athletes, despite this well-researched knowledge, are still engaging with these dangerous substances.

The culprit?

According to Clearfield, social media and the loosening of the taboo around PEDs might be the guilty parties.

“We’ve seen an uptick, and I think social media has had a huge impact on that, just because there’s influencers out there that are showing off and saying ‘hey, I have this unique physique that I was able to achieve’,” Clearfield said. “Also, it used to be much more villianized if you were using it.”

But, at St. Mark’s, the use of anabolic steroids is a non-starter. Their prevalence, and negative side effects are all reasons that students are required to steer clear.

“(Steroids are) never allowed here,” Strength and Conditioning Coach Kevin Dilworth said. “That’s a no negotiation conversation. I’ve had kids have questions about it, but the questions led to a point where they understood that steroids are unhealthy for you.”

Clearfield, who is competing in his first bodybuilding competition (as a natural, non-PED-taking athlete), has found an alarming increase of steroid use in his circles of other bodybuilders in the gym.

“I’m surrounded by people that are taking stuff,” Clearfield said. “I hear the discussions in the locker room, or in the gym — it’s just commonplace.”

Another reason behind this spike might be the pursuit of unrealistic or extremely hard-to-achieve goals, especially in an abnormally short period of time.

“We’re very much in a ‘I want it right now’ kind of a society, where people don’t necessarily feel like they have to work as hard to be able to get to an end point,” Clearfield said. “So, people are looking for shortcuts.”

Dilworth echoes that sentiment, encouraging athletes to stay away from quick fixes with negative side effects like steroids and other substances like creatine, which can be harmful in the wrong dosages.

“What everybody’s looking for in today’s age is quick enhancement, right?” Dilworth said. “‘How can I get things fast? And the next thing that’s on the table now is that creatine is starting to take the place of steroids. I can buy creatine in the store, right, but not knowing the proper usage and dosage of creatine can have some of the same similar effects of steroids.”

Instead, Dilworth pushes athletes to find healthy, natural ways of improving their physical health, which has proven positive effects on muscle growth and sports performance.

“I have had conversations with people or athletes that talk about creatine, because they’re coming to me at a young age,” Dilworth said. “But, naturally, you don’t need to do anything to rush the process (of muscle growth). The first thing you need to do is just make sure that you’re going to commit yourself to the discipline, which is training, working out, eating right, doing the proper things in order to allow the muscle to get enhanced.”

The idea of delayed gratification is extremely prevalent in the values of the school, so Dilworth aims to design his weight programs around that premise.

“We want that instant gratification as opposed to delayed,” Dilworth said. “As opposed to saying, ‘Man, if I just wait a little bit, it’s gonna taste even better’. It’s more or less getting athletes to understand the principles behind it, for their benefit.”