[crimsonpowder]

Since steroids are demonized, I had to make a throwaway account. Testosterone does not increase aggression, even when given in doses far above natural limits. [1] [2]

When I'm not programming, my hobby is bodybuilding. To make it as a bodybuilder, you have to use steroids. With a sample size of ~30 (fellow lifters and me), I can tell you that more testosterone makes you calmer, leaner, and bigger. My stress and anxiety on steroid cycles vanishes and all that's left is confidence, even with powerful steroids like trenbolone.

This study was designed by some of the most incompetent people around. Athletes inject long esters every 3-5 days and these guys were doing a shot every 8 weeks. Athletes take additional drugs to control the conversion of testosterone into estrogen (the hormone behind acne and mood swings). If I had designed this protocol, it would've looked like standard Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT) plus an injection of nandrolone decanoate every week (which is great because it heals your joints). Of course, good luck selling bi-weekly injections.

For decades we shouted about reefer madness from the rooftops, arrested millions of people and threw them in jail, and expanded corrupt government agencies because marijuana was "dangerous". It seems like we're learning our lesson on that front and I hope we get our act together when it comes to hormones.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8855834

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12062320

[inimino]

> To make it as a bodybuilder, you have to use steroids.

What does it even mean to "make it" in something you do as a hobby? If you're willing to risk your health to play competitive games, go ahead, but to say you "have to" sounds like you're rationalizing a bit.

[crimsonpowder]

I'm trying to get my IFBB pro card. Natural drug-free bodybuilding as a hobby is healthy. What I'm doing is not. I have no delusions about this.

[chris_7]

> To make it as a bodybuilder, you have to use steroids.

Does this not disqualify you? Or is everyone just cheating like in cycling?

[crimsonpowder]

There are divisions that are tested--monthly polygraphs and urine/blood. You've never heard of them. When people think about bodybuilding, they imagine freaks, which is not a natural state.

In software, we say: good, fast, cheap; pick two. In bodybuilding: big, lean, natural; pick two.

You can have a lot of mass and if you carry extra fat, or you can be shredded to the bone and carry a lot less lean mass. Naturally, the lower fat reserves run, the higher the chance that catabolic hormones break down lean mass. If you want to be big, lean, and win shows, you need to take the growth and steroid hormones to flip some bits on the config files in your muscular/adipose tissue to allow it.

Your DNA is the software for your body. Hormones bind to receptors on cells, get transported into the cell, bind to internal receptors, and then this complete structure moves into the nucleus where it transcribes certain DNA sequences into RNA chains that will be fed through ribosomes to produce proteins (your hardware).

Steroids/hormones (everything from vitamin D to testosterone) is the body's mechanism of editing /etc/* and calling kill -HUP on select daemons. Steroids evolved as the process for doing this because it's biologically impractical to grow a nerve ending to every single cell in the body.

[FilterSweep]

Unless you have a homozygous myostatin deficiency, you can't compete without using them. Very similar to cycling.

[sp332]

You might be thinking of weightlifting, which is not the same as bodybuilding.