Bigger, Stronger, More Complicated

Just finished watching Bigger, Stronger, Faster*. Wow. Changed my worldview about steriods. Confirmed a lot of what I suspected after reading Gladwell on the topic. Namely that we, as a country, need to have a much more intelligent discussion about steroids than we’re probably having.

First off, the idea that steroids are somehow a “shortcut,” as Bush labeled them in his 2004 State of the Union, is kind of a misnomer. A shortcut suggests what I’ll call The Popeye Theory of Steroids, which is that all you have to do is take them like Popeye’s spinach and all of a sudden you’re a superhulk.

Not so much.

It’s more like this. Without steroids, if you work your ass off, eventually you could lift, say 400lbs. On steroids, you could work your ass off much, much more and lift 700lbs. You’re not reducing the amount of work necessary, you’re increasing the amount of work possible. Like one guy says in the movie, guys on steroids train harder than guys who are not. This is not because they have a better work ethic. It’s simply because they can.

This is part of a very old paradigm. The notion that technology (and drugs are a technology) somehow makes our lives better by decreasing the amount of time it takes to accomplish a given task, thus giving us more free time to do whatever we want. Put simply, technology makes us lazy.

This almost never happens.

What actually happens is that we end up doing more of whatever that task is that just got easier. The washing machine suddenly makes it take less time to do a load of laundry? Guess what? You’re doing more loads of laundry than ever before. Steroids suddenly make you capable of growing more muscle? Guess what? You’re working out that muscle to its fullest potential.

So steroids are actually the opposite of a shortcut. They’re a completely different, and longer, route to a different destination.

Another misconception is that we know how unsafe steroids are. Actually, we only really know how unsafe they aren’t. The film asserts that, for example, only three deaths a year are attributed to steroids (I believe they cite the CDC here, but I’m still looking for confirmation). No long term studies have been done to give us the kind of data that we have on, say, cocaine. What studies have been done suggest that steroids are pretty much like any other prescription drug. You do too much, you’re fucked. You use it in moderation, it’ll do what you want it to. This is unlike, say, heroin, where there really is no moderate way to use it.

So if we can agree that steroids don’t belong in a category with crystal meth (which is how the DEA, AMA and FDA felt when Congress first asked them for recommendations on how to classify them), we can discuss other reasons to demonize them. Namely, fairness. It is cheating to use steroids. Why? Because the rules of the game say so. Just like they say it’s cheating to use sandpaper on the ball. Easy.

But let’s back up a little bit more. Why do the rules of the game say it’s cheating? Well, it can’t be because of the Popeye Theory. Athletes who use them are actually working harder than those who do not. Are we penalizing them for that? Well, they get an unfair advantage over players who don’t use. Except, if they’re working harder for that advantage, is it really unfair? Well, steroids cost money, so the athlete or team with more money gets an unfair advantage. I’m not even going to dignify that one with a rebuttal, except to say that if you can afford eye surgery (I’m lookin’ at you, Tiger) is that an unfair advantage? If so, I recommend that you give every team the same amount of money to spend on everything (and not just a salary cap).

Perhaps the best compromise is to simply have a Steroid League. Do all the drugs you want. Those who want to play with their “natural ability” (that means no surgery, not even contact lenses, and if you want to be really anal you could argue means no exercise that uses technology – even then would training at a high altitude to promote red blood cell generation count?) can play in the Normie League.

Guess which Barry Bonds would play in the Normie League?

The best part of all of this would be the kick-ass names the druggie leagues came up with:

The Cincinnati Juicers

The Kansas City Speedballs

The New England Crackheads
(actually the name of a Fantasy Football Team I had once)

The Seattle Black Tar Heroin Scrotum Injectors

And so on…

On the other hand, if you want to say that using drugs, even if they aren’t as bad as PCP, sends the wrong message to kids, then the powers that be have to stop profiting off of them. Steroids saved the MLB’s no-ratings-gettin’ ass in the same way that day laborers make business possible for many of the people demonizing illegal immigration. If you’re going to be black and white about things, pick a side.

Oh, and this will all get ten times more complicated when genetic doping, which doesn’t use any drugs, becomes the norm.

Anyway, the film’s director, Chris Bell, makes a lot of these points more elegantly than I, interweaving a compelling personal narrative to boot, so check it out.