I agree with AT about Andro. In my opinion, steroid use isn't as unsafe or crazy as the general public believes though. I'm not necessarily advocating their use or saying being that muscular is worth taking anything artificial with potential health risks either.
OTOH, plenty of long-term body builders have used steroids for decades without medical consequences:
Some of them are carcinogens, other aren't, some aromatize, others don't, and some of them are relatively safe in small doses.
I can think of no better example than some of the testosterones, such as testosterone enanthate:
Since the late 90's it's been (one of the steroids) prescribed as a long-term male contraceptive in similar (conservative) doses as are sometimes used for body building, with the same yearly blood work and regular monitoring for problems.
Ten times that amount of the same steroid can help someone achieve a ridiculously massive, "ripped" physique, with many more potential health concerns and side effects than a light user of the same drug. Just like the difference between drinking one beer a day and half a case a day.
Body builders get in trouble with steroids primarily because the amounts used for body building are typically as much as ten times the dosages prescribed for their intended medical uses. Some body building competitors are more willing to experiment or play Russian Roulette with drugs known to be dangerous, and there's also an addiction element where one's self esteem is linked to very extreme muscularity, too.
From what I've seen in gyms, though, the guys who've been taking the "safer" drugs in dosages they were meant to be used (for other things) seem to have no health problems. The guys taking massive doses and multiple drugs simultaneously are usually pretty obvious by virtue of their overdeveloped physiques, male pattern baldness, "roid rage", high blood pressure, edema, pimple covered shoulders and thighs, and often bitch tits, which sometimes go away after cessation of steroid use but as often as not, require surgery to remove them.
But to put things in perspective, even unconservative use of steroids is less harmful than say, smoking cigarettes, and smoking doesn't even build any muscles. Moderate steroid use is probably less harmful than heavy, long-term drinking for another example, and sun worshipping is responsible for many more documented cases of cancer than are steroids, too. So, while it may not be the safest thing in the world, and it may not be worth the "benefits" to everybody, it's not really any more crazy than some other habits that we all accept as perfectly "normal" that are no doubt equally (or even more) harmful.
Personally, I have less of a problem with adults who knowingly take the steroid risks than with the health food supplement industry that uses (almost exclusively) steriod-built bodies to push worthless "muscle building" supplements with names purposely concocted to SOUND exactly like popularly known anabolic steroids (Boldanon, is a perfect example and the obvious subliminal connection intended by the makers of anything called "Boldione") that do absolutely nothing toward that goal. Even the word "stack" is derived from a steroid user's term for combining multiple agents, so it's totally hypocrytical to present "steroid free" supplements and then market them by doing everything possible to establish a suggestive link between them and the real steroids to which they're supposedly intended as "safe alternatives".
<small>[ 06-28-2003, 10:23 PM: Message edited by: ProWritingServices4LEOs ]</small>
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No longer ignoring anybody here, since that psycho known as "Josey Wales" finally got the boot after being outed as a LE imposter by B&G978. Nice job. 
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