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Steroids for a 14 year old
My friends younger brother came up to me talking about how he wants to be some big sports star in high school and all that, and hes saying that he wants to take steroids only for a couple of years in order to bulk up.. and hes asking me if ive heard of any problems for kids of his age who take them.. hes only 14... which is ridiculous, i know! he wants to do it so he can get a scholarship after high school in order to afford to go to college. I'm obviously going to advise him not to take them.. but what should i say and how should i say it? What exactly would they do to someone of his age?? i need to know everything.. I really want to educate myself on this so I can not only educate him, but scare him into not doing it.
please help.. thanks
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First, we're not doing your googling for you. Google "risks of steroids" and "Risks of steroids in adolescents" and you'll find a host of things that are all negative about using them.
On a more direct route, steroids won't make him a sports star. Best case, he gets bulkier sure. But not all that much stronger. Steroids don't build efficient muscle, they just build muscle, and without the work and natural ability that all people who are skilled at sports put in, it's not going to do a damn thing for him.
Second, in a not worst case scenario people figure out he's using steroids. He gets kicked out of every sport he's in. They don't tolerate that in students, it's not legal in professional sports so what makes you think it would be legal for him?
Third, real steroids are expensive as hell. The stuff that real professional athletes use cost thousands upon thousands of dollars a year to afford. At 14, he cannot afford the real stuff. So his choices are a) to go to a GNC and get protein powders and such which don't really do much at all without the work I mentioned earlier or b) to use dangerous shit put together by God knows who that is just as likely to kill him as do anything positive.
Fourth, scholarships are a terrible thing to bank your future on. What if it all works beautifully then he gets injured? It's sports, it happens. I played football in high school and I know someone who screwed his knee up so bad that he had to quit playing in high school, and he was scholarship material. Even without an injury, you have to really, really be good at what you do. You don't get a scholarship because you took steroids and played, you get a scholarship because you have a natural gift of some kind and you also put in all the work.
Ever heard of Vince Young? He was a quarterback for UT for a few years. He went to a rival high school of mine, I knew him pretty well. Vince was gifted as all hell throwing passes. He could land the ball on a foot target on the ground from 60 yards away 10 times out of 10. It was almost magical to watch when you weren't the team he was destroying.
Vince worked his goddamn ass off. He was gifted, sure. But he also practiced passing for at least an hour every day of his life once he got into high school. Summers, holidays, Christmas, weekends, every single day. He practiced the parts of his game he wasn't as good at, hand offs and tackle dodging and so on. By the time UT was taking a look at him he was a good QB in every single area except for passes where he was absolutely gifted.
That's who gets scholarships. People who go in for steroids to get into a sport don't.
There are better ways. If he's 14, he can get emancipated when he's 17. Emancipation removes your parent's income and lets you get financial aid for college. He can then look into a 2 year degree. Learn to work on engines, learn to work radiology equipment or be a physical therapy assistant, learn to be an electrician or AC repair tech. Spend two years at a minor school which financial aid will pay for, graduate with a skill which will provide him with a stable income which will let him save up and plan to go back to school later.
That's the smart way. Find a way to get college paid for that's a sure thing. Financial aid, a night time job like waiting tables or something, and room mates so you can save money on expenses like rent and bills are how a bunch of people I know got through college.
Once he has a stable income, if he wants to go back to school he can. It doesn't have to be quick, he can wait, or he can take a few hours a semester until he gets what he wants to get done, done. Eventually, he can do whatever the hell he wants.
His plan will not work. It won't. Even if everything goes right, he's competing for scholarship spots against people he will never meet, people who might well be far more gifted than he will ever be who he can't know that he is competing with and can't use as a measuring stick to get better.
It's like being handed a gun, told that there is a target in the dark somewhere you need to hit after they blindfold you and spin you in a circle until you're dizzy. What are the chances you hit that target?
And yes, specifically, there are a ton of potential long term negative effects for anyone who takes steroids which will be even worse for a teenager in puberty. Steroids fuck up your hormone balance. Too much testosterone. Your body ups your estrogen to compensate.
You know what that means? Tiny balls and big tits. That's right, guys grow literal breasts. And then they're off the juice, and their muscles go to shit, and they gain weight because of the increase of natural estrogen production, and they're miserable because they sacrificed their body's health for some goal that ended up not really getting them what they wanted in life.
Ask your friend if he wants to need a bra after he takes steroids and still ends up not being good enough at a sport to get a scholarship.
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