Top 5 Facts Getting Jacked On Steroids

A-Rod. Sammy Sosa. Lance Armstrong. These athletes’ steroid scandals, along with many others, make it clear that steroid use is more widespread in professional sports than we’d like to admit. But just how do they get away with it? Disgraced cycling champion Lance Armstrong said for him it was a a matter of timing. Traces of the drug gradually disappear from the bloodstream, and this process is often helped along by giving the doping athlete a transfusion of clean blood. Mike Tyson, though he apparently didn’t use steroids, hid his cocaine use from drug tests using something he called “the whizzer.” Here I should say that we can’t actually show you what these devices look like, so you’ll have to use your imagination. So devices like the whizzer or Whizzinator can be filled with somebody else’s clean urine, whipped out and emptied right in front of an unsuspecting drug test administrator.

A study conducted by a group of Swedish researchers revealed that those who tested positive for steroids were twice as likely to have been convicted of a weapons offense than those who hadn’t used steroids. That’s not to say that steroids necessarily cause people to go out and start bashing stuff with cricket bats–or hockey sticks if it’s Sweden, I guess. The study found no difference in the rate of violent crimes, sexual offenses or crimes against property between the two groups. What the researchers theorize is that there's an incentive for those of larger musculature to be carrying weapons if they're involved in crimes-–because they are the muscle on the job

You’ve probably already heard that after an athlete stops juicing, they will often lose some, though not all, of the sweet gains their steroids gave them. But they may end up losing a lot more than that. Research published in the last few years has found a clear connection between steroid use and higher rates of mental illness including depression, aggressive behavior, concentration problems and even memory loss. I guess you just can’t have brains and brawn.

Since anabolic androgenic steroids are essentially synthetic testosterone, there’s a whole cascade of side-effects that vary somewhat depending the user’s sex. While both sexes experience significant increases in muscle mass and strength, the extent varies largely on the type and amount of the particular steroid. Both sexes are also subject to increased aggression and heavy mood swings; more commonly referred to as “roid rage.” Men tend to suffer from shrunken testicles, head hair loss, and enlarged breast tissue, while women are known to undergo a deepening of the voice, clitoral enlargement and occasionally chest hair growth.

According to a paper published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, the typical user is not a cheating Olympian or an over inflated power lifter. Rather, they’re well-educated males around the age of 30 and earning an above-average income in a white-collar occupation. They’re more interested in physical self-improvement than in winning trophies, and they carefully monitor their steroid intake, working it into a fitness regimen. You know: a little cardio, some pilates, a syringe full of synthetic testosterone in the butt, man boobs... The uzje.

Which of these facts got you the most pumped? For super fit Top 10s and hair-in-strange-places Top 5s, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.