John Romano - How Steroids Became the Scourge of America

This might seem like a sports topic, or even a performance enhancement topic, but it feels to me like a male topic. At the bottom line, what we are discussing here is the demonization of the male hormone, testosterone. Yes, some women do use steroids, but generally not testosterone (women tend to favor more anabolic and less androgenic substances, for obvious reasons).

On the surface, legislators talk about cheaters, which is deceptive. They held congressional hearings on steroids in baseball, where a handful of athletes were using the drugs, but they have never held hearings on professional wrestling or bodybuilding, where ALL of the athletes are using steroids (as well as growth hormone, insulin, clenbuterol, corticosteroids, and other PEDs). More to the point, there are a lot of ways of cheating, hell, pitchers do it all of the time (the Yankees have been caught twice this year "doctoring" the ball on the mound, but you won't see congress holding hearings on spit balls, or pine tar on bats).

In addition to being a male issue, this is also a transhumanist issue. Steroids are ostensibly little more than a chemical means to expand physical capabilities. Used wisely, and with a doctor's supervision, they can make us bigger and stronger with few side effects. One wonders why the government opposes this technology, other than that steroids have been demonized as a result of their abuses, not because anything is inherently wrong or dangerous about them.

Sadly, I can't really see this changing anytime soon, unless all drugs are decriminalized.

Steroids: The Birth of a Demon

How Steroids Became the Scourge of America

by John Romano
Jun 9, 2014

Here's what you need to know...

•  Due to harsh laws based on Reefer Madness-like myths, the personal use of steroids for aesthetic purposes can land lifters in prison or get them fined for more money than they probably have. Ironically, steroid usage in sports, which these laws were created to curb, has not decreased.

•  Steroids and other PEDs have been in widespread use in bodybuilding and Olympic lifting since the late 50s. Their usage in baseball, the Ben Johnson debacle, Lyle Alzado's questionable death, the Lance Armstrong farce, and the sad case of Taylor Hooton brought steroids to the forefront. Politicians and those with agendas took full advantage.

•  Although it has many medical uses and is now commonly prescribed to aging males, the illegal use of testosterone puts you into the same criminal category as a heroin addict. And science has never backed up the hysterical claims made by anti-steroid zealots.

"I think it's absolutely disgraceful that our government should be in the position of converting people who are not harming others into criminals, of destroying their lives, putting them in jail." - Milton Friedman

The following account is something I lived through and was a small part of. It is my view of the fascinating history of how steroids emerged as an ergogenic aid in sports and subsequently became an ominous facet of the modern age - becoming criminal while at the same time assaulting the very core of America by representing a proposed danger to our youth and, worse still, sullying the most hollowed of all things American - baseball.

This odd journey, especially the inception, involved numerous colorful characters from all over the globe who together eventually created a culture. Many of you reading this have adopted this culture without perhaps knowing the full extent of what it means to be a steroid-using bodybuilder and how it got that way.

I find it unfortunate that the younger guys embracing our culture today have to adapt to a whole different set of circumstances regarding steroids than my contemporaries did. Today you have to understand that the general public - the people you deal with, work with, live next to - believes that "steroids" cause a plague of maladies, from liver, brain and kidney cancer, to heart attacks and strokes, to psychotic episodes that end in madness, mayhem, murder and death. Given the current state of the public discourse, if your next door neighbor found out you were a juicehead, he'd probably wish you were a heroin addict instead.

Back when I adopted our culture it was perfectly acceptable to drive down to Mexico and buy all the real pharmaceutical gear I wanted, at incredibly low prices, and drive it back to LA with no problema. And no one cared if a bunch of guys down at the gym took steroids. We didn't bother anyone. We were totally under the radar and really not doing anything that wrong, certainly nothing even remotely felonious.

Well, it's not like that today. Not only are steroids listed by the feds in the same class as narcotics - with prison time for possessing, importing or selling them - the media has also driven the "Reefer Madness" hysteria to such a degree that there are families in Kansas who believe Gold's Gym is the incubator for the Zombie Apocalypse. What hatched such two-headed insanity? I'm going to skim over the last 30 years and describe what I believe are the milestones that lead to the concomitant criminalization and vilification of the very sex hormones our bodies produce.

The Perfect Steroidal Storm

The demonization of steroids in America has been perpetuated by three equally reprehensible yet powerful groups: vocal alarmists with agendas who incite hysteria based on fiction, the media who reports it, and the vote-hungry law-makers in Washington who believe they can do something about it.

In the 80-90 years that steroids have been around, they've gone from virtually innocuous, unknown medical compounds to a public menace nearly eclipsing heroin, cocaine, amphetamines and club drugs, with federal penalties for distribution and possession that can put you away for a fairly extended part of your life. How did the media wrap itself around this issue and funnel politicians, athletes and bereaved parents into promoting one of the biggest scams in US pop culture?

I've been around the block a few times, seen a bit of the world with all of the bark off, but I can't for the life of me think of another situation in which a single topic has gotten so misconstrued as that of performance enhancing drugs. With the mega amount of intellect in the demonization camp regarding PEDs, any person of reason would have to ponder... why? Unfortunately, when it comes to this group of drugs, most, if not all, common intellect goes right out of the window.

It was about that very same time 24 years ago that noted economist Milton Friedman uttered the words quoted above, and President George H. W. Bush signed house bill HR 4658 IH "Anabolic Steroids Control Act of 1990" into law, adding anabolic steroids to Schedule III of the DEA's list of controlled substances: the same legal class as amphetamines, methamphetamines, opiates, and morphine. Subsequently, in 2004, the law was amended to add prohormones and other "steroid like" compounds to the category, thus criminalizing anything that even remotely resembles testosterone or its effect. Later, the US Sentencing Commission reconvened to raise steroid penalties.

Today, in America, it is possible to be sentenced to 30 years in prison, and fined up to $5,000,000 for the possession and distribution (or importation) of testosterone, the very same hormone that human males and, to a lesser degree, human females, have been carrying around in our bodies since the early dawn of man. Let that sink in for a minute. Did I just say thirty years and 5 million bucks for testosterone? Yes, I did. We're talking about America here, not North Korea, right? How could such an insane thing happen? Well, let's work backwards.

Muscles, Narcotics, and Prison Time 

First let me give you the sentencing guidelines as they stand today to give you the full magnitude of just how far we've come since the dawn of testosterone in the lab - the very same hormone that half of the American male voting public used to produce when they had testicles.

In the wake of the BALCO case, high ranking government agents were incensed over the four month slap on the wrist Victor Conte received after the government spent four years and over 50 million dollars chasing and prosecuting him. On March 27th, 2006, the US Sentencing Commission amended the sentencing guidelines for anabolic steroid cases by changing the way steroid quantities are factored to effectively increase sentences. The Commission's amendment made injectable and oral steroids comparable to other Schedule III drugs in a 1:1 ratio. That means that now, instead of the 50 pills that used to equal one unit, one "unit" of oral steroids is now one pill. One "unit" of injectable steroids goes from a 10 cc bottle down to half a cc.

Naturally, the government's 1:1 ratio is wrought with stupidity, not the least of which being the absence of any language pertaining to the potency of a particular drug. In the eyes of the law, a steroid is a steroid. That means a 5 mg Anavar tab is as equally felonious as a 50 mg tab of Anadrol, or 1 cc of equipoise being equal to a Sustanon 250 preload.

The guideline change also pays no attention to the diametric differences between steroids and other Schedule III drugs. All Schedule III drugs are narcotics that elicit an immediate, mind-altering effect when used for recreation, while steroids actually elicit a beneficial physical effect and no mind-altering effect. Unfortunately, no cogent argument can usurp the law of the land, which under title 21 U.S.C. states that possession of just one tablet of any steroid is now a federal crime punishable by up to one year in jail for a first offense, and up to two years in prison for anyone with a prior drug conviction.

And, if you think that's bad, you really don't want to get caught "distributing" steroids. The following increases apply to possession with intent to distribute, importation and internet sales.

[For convictions of a] "controlled substance in Schedule III, such person shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of not more than 10 years and if death or serious bodily injury results from the use of such substance shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of not more than 15 years, a fine not to exceed the greater of that authorized in accordance with the provisions of title 18, United States Code, or $500,000 if the defendant is an individual or $2,500,000 if the defendant is other than an individual, or both."

"If any person commits such a violation after a prior conviction for a felony drug offense has become final, such person shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of not more than 20 years and if death or serious bodily injury results from the use of such substance shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of not more than 30 years, a fine not to exceed the greater of twice that authorized in accordance with the provisions of title 18, United States Code, or $1,000,000 if the defendant is an individual or $5,000,000 if the defendant is other than an individual, or both."

What could this mean to you? Let's imagine you have a buddy down at the gym who picked up a few bottles of test for you and a few of his other buddies while he was down in Mexico. On his way back to the US he was detained by US Customs and searched, uncovering 30 or 40 bottles of various steroids. Certainly nothing out of the ordinary - for bodybuilders.

He was brought before a federal magistrate and charged with importation and intent to distribute a Schedule III drug. The judge looked at the unit amount of juice and figured he better not kick back to the state the prosecution of such a high-level steroid kingpin and assigned the case to federal court. And he probably won't grant bail because your buddy is considered a flight risk because he's an accused importer with alleged ties to a foreign country. Since the feds tend to feed upstream, they're not too likely to offer your buddy a deal to follow him to your house and wear a wire. But, the possibility does exist, especially if the investigation is being handled by inexperienced agents who, based on the unit amount and country involved, think they're investigating a savage steroid cartel.

If your buddy doesn't have a good lawyer he'll be convicted of steroid importation and possession with intent to distribute, and if it's his second offense, he could be looking at 20 years in prison. If someone gets hurt using the gear he imported then add another 10 years. And then there's the seven-figure fine...

While such sentences rarely ever see the top of the guidelines, the potential still exists, under the law, for a 30 year sentence for what would amount to a few bottles of testosterone you picked up for a few of your buddies along with your own. More down to reality, for a first offence: up to two years just for having it in your possession and up to five if you're importing and distributing anything even remotely considered rich.

The government has made sure there's no such thing anymore as a slap on the wrist for steroid crimes. The shameful truth of today is, if you're a national level bodybuilder and had all the gear you were going to need all year to compete hidden in a small trash bag under your bathroom sink, and your door got kicked in (after you accepted a package from a controlled delivery), the unit amount of all the gear in your house makes you a kingpin dealer and - if you don't have a good lawyer - you're going to pay a hefty fine, lose your house, your car, your job, any licenses you might have, the local media is going to portray you as something just shy of a child molester, you're going to prison for a long time and when you get out you'll have nothing coming; your felony record will haunt you long after you're off paper. Interesting risk that poses to a great many competitors these days.

Any reasonable person who knows anything about these drugs knows this is a tough pill to swallow, especially when you consider how steroids compare to other legal over the counter drugs, not to mention cigarettes and alcohol. To any reasonable person, the government's position on steroids is nothing short of lunacy.

Sports, Congress, and "Protecting the Children" 

How was public opinion swayed so far away from the truth? The media drove America into a virtual attack frenzy, concomitantly criminalizing and vilifying a non-narcotic, non-mind altering drug - a hormone naturally occurring in our bodies that can help us be stronger, more muscular, leaner, perform better and add quality to an aging male's life.

It basically boils down to this simple formula: alarmists with an agenda get the attention of the media that misstates facts, exaggerates claims, sensationalizes accounts and assigns blame without cause just to make the story sexy. This vomit lands on the over-coiffed crepe hair of vote-hungry politicians who will stand on their soggy vomit-clogged heads in front of the media and congress to lead another blind crusade against the biggest scam to ever invade politics: "save our children."

As far as steroids go, the most simplified version of what happened is this:

Steroids and other PEDs had been in fairly widespread use in bodybuilding and Olympic lifting during the late 50s and early 60s, especially internationally. While the iron sports kept a pretty low profile, the performance benefits of the drugs started seeping into other, more popular sports such as cycling and track and field. Their use proliferated, particularly in Olympic lifting, cycling, and track as well as other professional sports, particularly football - baseball came way later (at least that's what most people think).

While the NFL and MLB were still decades away from a published drug policy, an uproar was starting to build among top level amateur athletes amid failed drug tests and the marked increase in disqualifications in cycling and Olympic lifting, but nothing made quite enough noise to raise many eyebrows. Then in 1988 at the summer Olympics in Seoul, Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson plucked just 9.76 seconds out of the thin air that spanned the entire Olympic games and made them the most talked about sequence of numbers in recorded history next to 666.

It's not so much that Johnson tested positive for Winstrol after the race and ostensibly cheated his way to the world record. It had more to do with the Canadian beating the American favorite, Carl Lewis, by cheating - by using steroids! - in what's considered the most popular of all summer Olympic sports. Among the Walmart crowd, the only way Canada could beat America was to cheat.

But remember, science does not prove negatives. While Johnson's positive test proved he was taking Winny, Lewis's negative test results for banned drugs does not prove he wasn't taking them. It just means the test didn't detect any. Be that as it may, controversy breeds contempt just as well as it breeds headlines, and now steroids had a face: a revered champion of the most hallowed of Olympic sports. Johnson was surely a role model for millions of kids. The proposed message that sends to our youth, combined with growing alarmist reports that high school football players were using steroids, and the politicians had the hors d'oeuvre they needed to get dinner started.

Between Johnson's disqualification in 1988 and into 1990, Congressional hearings were held to determine whether the Controlled Substances Act should be amended to include anabolic steroids along with more serious drugs like Valium, opiates, and amphetamines. Congress was able to call witnesses whose stories would help support criminalization - from the masculinisation of a female Olympic athlete, to a pro football player suggesting (without any medical evidence) that his heart problems were linked to his past steroid use, to the conditioning coach for the Philadelphia 76er's who insisted "steroids must be considered a controlled substance, no different than cocaine."

However, it was an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine, a guy named Kenneth Kashin, who spoke, verbatim, the words the politicians wanted to hear. The good doctor testified that "steroid use can cause an addiction with similarities to alcohol, opiate, and cocaine addiction." He talked about "dangerous criminal-like behavior while intoxicated on anabolic steroids" and individuals who have "lost control of their behavior," or "became violent." Yes, this puppet show really went on.

When all was said and done, despite the opposition of the DEA, AMA, the Department of Health and Human Services and the recommendations of the most knowledgeable experts, Congress changed the classification of anabolic steroids to a Schedule III controlled substances under Title 21 of the United States Code, which regulates food and drugs.

This is an incredibly significant milestone in the demonization history of steroids, especially where bodybuilding is concerned. It marks a turning point where a series of very interesting questions were being unanimously answered by American athletes, particularly bodybuilders, not to mention federation officials, judges, promoters, magazine publishers, supplement company executives, basically the entire iron industry. The dawn of the 90's ushered in the era of advanced pharmacology in bodybuilding just in time for the government to make most of it a federal felony.

The unanimous decision everyone ultimately made was to ignore the law. To this day, since the law was passed 24 years ago, the entire bodybuilding industry - among the competitors of all the various disciplines to the cottage industry that feeds off their bodies - there isn't the slightest hint there's a federal law that prohibits steroid use, trafficking, importing, buying it over the internet, possessing it, etc. Any top national bodybuilder and most IFBB pros could walk around with a flashing neon sign over their heads that says "steroid user," "drug dealer," "smuggler," or "internet buyer." It's a wonder they don't get caught, all of them, like yesterday, me included.

But such arrests are not as common as you'd think. Given the multitude of obvious, illegal drug-using bodybuilders out there, at least ten a week, and/or their dealers, should be getting popped all over the country. But they aren't. High profile bodybuilders, and most other athletes for that matter, seem almost immune to the law of the land. So, who is getting caught?

Athletes Walk, Recreational Lifters Do Time

What motivated Congress to ignore the advice of the experts and bulldoze this legislation through? Page after page of congressional testimony focused on just two points. First, the unfair advantage the steroid user has over those who don't use them; and second, Congress was able to leverage the nefariousness of cheating with the unsavory message that steroid use in top-level sports sends to our youth. If nothing else it would take the spotlight off of the pro athletes getting arrested for domestic violence charges, coke busts, sex offences and dog fighting. It's none of that, kids, it's steroids that sully the image of sports for you. Remember, cheating is bad. Especially if baseball is involved.

However, after two decades on the books it wasn't the cheating athletes who were getting caught - they just kept on cheating to the degree that college, and probably high school, football players figured out that it's just a matter of time before steroids come their way. It's a given.

For its intent, the law was a flop. What happened was that thousands of otherwise law-abiding Americans - not athletes, but mature adult males - have been arrested, arraigned, prosecuted, convicted, forfeited property, lost their jobs and their licenses, and sentenced to prison for the personal use of anabolic steroids. Virtually none of them have been top pro bodybuilders, Olympic athletes, NFL players and certainly not baseball players. They're not cheating in sports; they're not even playing sports. But they're the ones being dragged through the system by a law that was never meant for them.

Hundreds of pages of congressional transcript focused on promoting the even playing field in sports. Not a single word was ever paid to the probability that a healthy adult male, running a light cycle of test and deca to enhance the effects of his training, would be arrested and prosecuted. He's no one's role model and he's not cheating any other athletes. He's not bothering anybody. Yet I know for sure that the nation's top steroid law firms' files would support the claim that it is he, not the cheating athlete, being snared.

In light of the number of big-named athletes not appearing in the press on steroid charges, there were, nevertheless, widespread reports of steroid use among athletes using them to cheat. There was not yet any real danger associated with them. Of course there were reports of side effects and overdrawn reports of rage, but nothing to really irk the public in terms of the dangers steroids represent, especially to our precious youth.

Eventually, by direction of the media, the public discourse shifted to become less about cheating role models and more about health. Surely, if Junior is injecting a drug in the same class as heroin, he's going to become a strung-out juicehead and end up hanging himself in his bedroom or die another gruesome death from a degenerative disease such as cancer, or completely go crazy and shoot up his high school.

It was pretty much accepted that athletes are prone to cheating and probably using steroids to do so, but at what cost? Simply passing a law to target the athlete wasn't enough (never mind the fact that it wasn't even working). America needed a stronger message to send our darling children. Cheating isn't just immoral, cheating had to be dangerous because steroids are bad drugs. But, how bad?

Steroids: They'll Kill You Until You're Dead! 

A year after the legislation was passed, the most feared man in the NFL, Lyle Alzado, was diagnosed with brain cancer he said was brought on by steroid use. A year after he was diagnosed, he died from it: a frail, weak, quivering shadow of the man he used to be. Now, according to the media, steroids had openly claimed their first victim, a high ranking NFL star who died from steroids. The only problem? It wasn't true.

Of course the truth didn't matter. The health dangers of steroids now officially had a face, and it wasn't pretty. But it was selling like hotcakes on the multi-media machine. Kids looked up to Lyle, then he took steroids and he lied and then he died because he lied and took steroids. Oh, the travesty to our precious youth! Imagine the money the therapists will be making down the road when this trauma surfaces, manifesting mild schizophrenia and issues with trust and intimacy.

This set the stage for what was about to come. Steroid hysteria was in full swing. Any aberrant violent behavior, murder or suicide involving any athlete and Geraldo Rivera would immediately "smell steroids" with that enormous schnozz of his. News reports would abound about how - without any proof - steroids caused or contributed to such shocking behavior while completely ignoring much more relevant factors such as being on mismanaged psychotropic drugs, narcotic pain killers, alcohol or a combination thereof with or without underlying psychosis.

It got to a point in the mid-90s where virtually any unusual aberrant behavior reported in the press had some mention of "steroids." Defense attorneys even invented a "steroid defense" that relied on a convincing argument that "the steroids made their client do it." It worked a few times, but then the judges got wise.

Dirty Cheaters Save Major League Baseball 

The ensuing years brought us another pivotal point in the demonization history of steroids: the infamous baseball strike. More to the point, the subsequent resurrection of the game that had all but died during the strike.

The players going back to work wasn't enough to refill the stadiums. Nope, the strike-weary fans still weren't very happy. What baseball needed was some excitement. It needed a homerun race and the Bash Brothers and Roger Maris getting bumped out of the way. They needed McGwire and Sosa and Barry Bonds cracking them out of the park in a seemingly endless volley, racking up homeruns like nobody's business. The fans came screaming back.

MLB had its best year in history: a ten-digit payday at the very height of the steroid scandal, while the players who made it happen - who were told to do "whatever it takes" to make it happen - were getting thrown under the bus. The game was juiced and even Jose Canseco said so. In 2004, during his state of the Union Address, President Bush (former managing partner of the team for which Canseco played and earned the nickname "The Godfather of Steroids") demanded a crackdown on the drugs "because they are dangerous and send a bad message to our youth."

Weeks later, then Attorney General John Ashcroft read the indictment of Victor Conte and three others involved in the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (later to become infamous as "BALCO") on national TV - the scandal that later metastasized and drew Barry Bonds into the fold. All the while Congress convened and reconvened and held hearing after hearing on steroids in baseball to the preposterous degree that it spent more time talking about steroids than it did the economy, the war in Iraq or why the levies broke during hurricane Katrina, combined.

The Taylor Hooton Tragedy

 

During one of those hearings, testimony was given by a guy named Don Hooton who blamed steroids for his son Taylor's suicide, as well as baseball itself, i.e. Bud Selig, for sending this lethal message to our youth. Hooton's convincing testimony chastising the idols of the great American pastime caught the attention of international news media and within minutes cemented Taylor Hooton's face among Alzado's and Johnson's when he gave teen steroid death a name that became a household word.

A handsome, white, 17 year-old high school baseball player from Texas named Taylor, cut down in the prime of his youth by the evil Schedule III drug that pro ball players use to cheat at America's great pastime... You might as well dress up as Hitler and set fire to the flag on your front lawn on Veteran's Day.

To us, Don Hooton's campaign is a laughing stock replete with sophomoric scare tactics and loads of erroneous suppositions, misinformation and outright lies. To the millions of bodybuilding forum members, Don Hooton is a tool. While that's a sad thing considering he buried his son, the truth is that for over a decade neither he, nor his Taylor Hooton Foundation, have proffered a singe truth when it comes to anabolic steroids. In no other single instance in the history of the steroid debate has the alarmist with the agenda made out as well for himself as Don Hooton, and mislead more people - including congress - doing it.

The ruckus Hooton has made over his son's suicide made Taylor's death a trending topic online for many years and certainly marks another milestone in the demonization of steroids. However, the Hooton case has also festered in the scientific community for over a decade now, calling into play some of the most respected and informed experts in the field. Among them, the widely accepted consensus is that steroids didn't kill Taylor Hooton.

The scene in Bigger Stronger Faster with Dr. Norm Foss pretty much epitomizes the opinion of unbiased experts. If there's a chemical to blame for inciting the ideation to hang himself, Taylor's death is, from a clinical standpoint, far more likely to have been motivated by the prescription anti-depressant drug he was taking: Lexapro, a popular selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI). The data is just not there to put the blame on anything else.

And therein lies the rub. The Taylor Hooton suicide has been dissected numerous times over the last decade by numerous clinicians, scientists and healthcare professionals amassing quite a bit of peer reviewed and published data. Here's a brief synopsis of the published material by Dr. Jack Darkes:

"Taylor Hooton reportedly colored his hair and looked twice when he passed a mirror and was always concerned about his looks. In combination with a reported desire to be bigger suggests potential body dissatisfaction which is associated with both AAS use and suicide as a form of 'socially-prescribed perfectionism.' He had low self-esteem, a family history of depression (mother), a suicide attempt (sister) and was taking anti-depressant mediation (Lexapro). His AAS use was allegedly motivated by wanting to excel at baseball, although some sources have suggested it had more to do with personal appearance and status."

To date, there is no published data in the medical literature that suggests steroid use, or cessation of steroid use, by itself, incites suicidal ideation. However, the journals are rife to demonstrate suicidal ideation in adolescent patients treated with SSRIs. So, with so much statistical data against him, why has Hooton been blaming steroids and not SSRIs? Why is he picking on steroids, scientifically the least likely of culprits? Why is he campaigning so hard to demonize them?

Because, with such a vocal steroid attack in the wake of your son's suicide you not only get to testify before Congress during the baseball hearings, but also twice more. You get to start a non-profit foundation in your son's name and guilt guys such as Bud Selig into donating a million dollars on behalf of MLB. Then you name yourself president and decide to pay yourself up to 32% of the millions you take in to run the foundation. You get to go all over the country sounding like an expert and getting your picture in the paper and being named Texas Sports Personality of the Year by the Dallas Morning News. You don't get that going after SSRIs. Steroids made Don Hooton a celebrity. Steroids made Hooton a lot of money. Suing the makers of Lexapro would have gotten him nothing.

Either way, he's not getting his son back. Alzado's son isn't getting his dad back and history isn't taking back Johnson's nine-seven-six. So, rather than rile suburban soccer parents with sensationalistic lies that have the sky falling on our children, why not just tell the truth?

Forget the reality of their widespread use in professional sports, good science has demonstrated a real time and place for steroids among healthy adult males, especially as they age. The absolute garbage being proffered by guys such as Don Hooton is only eclipsed by the money they're making doing it. Proof, I'll reckon, is the fact that since Taylor Hooton's suicide over a decade ago, the scientific community has still not assigned "anabolic steroids" as the cause of one single teen suicide. Yet Hooton is still out there raking in millions preaching that it could still happen because - despite mountains of evidence to the contrary - Don says he knows that his son died from them. I'm sure Hooton is claiming this statistic as his victory. The only thing more revolting than Hooton's mission is the abject moron who supports him. Unfortunately, there are more than a few.

BALCO and Barry Bonds 

 

Shortly after the plea deal was reached with Victor Conte and the name "BALCO" became as much a household word as "Kleenex", the US Sentencing Commission reconvened to raise sentences for steroid cases. The 4 months Conte spent at Club Fed following a 55 million dollar investigation by the federal government was just not enough. The result of those Sentencing Commission hearings were those penalties I described at the beginning of this article.

While the circle seems complete, the story continued on. The federal agent who headed the BALCO investigation, Jeff Novitzky, became sort of a cult anti-hero, carrying the torch onward in his self-appointed fight against steroids. While there was never a formal order ever given to go after BALCO, Novitzky did, and to this day continues to do his best to lock up as many athletes as he can. Novitzky's tactics usually push the limits of legality and ethics, cheating just as much as the athletes he's chasing. The only difference is that he really doesn't ever truly win.

The BALCO case didn't yield much in the form of prison time for any of those snared in his investigation - at least not for steroids anyway - although several promising athletic careers were smashed and Olympic medals were taken back. Gold medal sprinters Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery actually did jail time, but for perjury and writing bad checks, not juice. Nevertheless, when the dust settled, Novitzky still had his claws in homerun king Barry Bonds, at that moment the most famous athlete on earth.

Novitzky's entire impetus for going after BALCO was to get Barry Bonds. Now he had him where he wanted him. Novitzky knew Bonds had taken steroids. He knew that Bonds's trainer, Gregg Anderson, gave/administered them to Bonds. All he had to do was prove it by getting Anderson to testify against Bonds, his childhood friend. Novitzky, the master of getting athletes to roll on each other, couldn't get Anderson to talk no matter how many months he spent locked away on contempt charges for refusing to testify. Ultimately, Anderson got out of jail. Finally, after an appeals court upheld his sentence in 2013, Bonds started serving his whopping two months of house arrest... for obstruction of justice. 

Lance Armstrong

Ten full years and tens of millions spent since the BALCO raid that started it all and Novitzky still doesn't have a drug conviction of an athlete. So, what does he do in light of what could only be construed as a black eye for the government? Novitzky spends millions more going after America's favorite son, Lance Armstrong. Seven Tour victories? He must have been on something.

First, Novitzky went after disgraced Tour de France winner Floyd Landis and promised him immunity if he rolled on former teammate, Armstrong. Naturally, Landis agreed and then suddenly the most tested athlete in the world - who never failed a drug test - was being brought down by an "administrative positive." Landis, and an assortment of others, ratted out Lance. Luckily for Lance, the government is easing off on steroid prosecutions and opted not to prosecute him. Novitzky got to the altar a little late.

The Obama administration has openly said that enough time has been spent on steroids; those resources can be used for better things. Lance did have to step down from his philanthropic foundation and give back all his Tour victories as well as the silver medal he won in the Olympics. I'm sure we all sleep better at night now.

Novitzky's star seems to be fading. There's no one really left after Lance. Although he could start going after rappers. LL Cool J looks pretty jacked.

So Where Does This Leave Us?

A closer analysis of current events might look like we've come full circle. While the laws and penalties for steroids are quite unfavorable right now, you have to work a little harder at getting caught. My old friend Dr. Gary Wadler, a former leader of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said, "I don't think this administration has the same vigor as the previous administrations on the [PED] issue. That was clear from the beginning when Barack Obama was running for election [in 2008]."

So, where does that leave us? Well, you can still get 30 years for testosterone, if you get caught. That's a big if. It does however seem to be a bit smaller of an if as it was a few years ago. The hysteria seems to have ebbed. The alarmists have lost much credibility from parent groups calling creatine a steroid and Don Hooton proclaiming that veteran actor Tom Hanks opened a show on Broadway "high on steroids" for having had a cortisone shot in his injured hand. Don sounds a bit desperate.

Steroids are perhaps a bit less vilified today and have in fact been inducted into the modern American lexicon. "On steroids" is a phrase openly accepted even in advertising to depict the deluxe version of just about anything from pick-up trucks to non-stick cookware. Baseball is boring again. And any time any athlete ever does anything noteworthy it will automatically be assumed that he's "on steroids."

Chances are he is and no government willing to enforce laws against it is ever going to stop him. Part of the reason for that is the high degree of chemical engineering going on today that was extremely rare just a few years ago. Designer labs are certainly the new frontier. And the feds know it.

There's a big difference between hunting down high-profile elite athletes and cracking down on the new forms of steroids designed to sneak around the law. While the government might not be chasing big named athletes around with the wild geese, lawmakers are still reaping mileage out of the steroid issue. At the time of this writing, Reps. Joe Pitts (R-Penn.) and Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) have introduced legislation in the House designed to crack down on anabolic steroids masquerading as dietary supplements.

These "designer steroids" come in the wake of what was leaned from the BALCO case. The products are made by reverse engineering illegal steroids and slightly changing their chemical composition. Such reengineering avoids placement on the DEA's list of controlled substances, creating a nice fat loophole for athletes to pee into. Urine tests can only detect known substances. If you're taking something unknown, then you can't fail a drug test.

The House bill is the next step toward full passage of a law that will further empower the DEA with new tools to identify and quickly respond when new designer anabolic steroids are introduced and falsely marketed as dietary supplements. How much of a bearing will this have on us? Very little. The point is just to show that while the steroid issue may have lost its luster in the mainstream, there are lawmakers who still think the platform can buy them some votes.

Just remember, the public stigma against steroids may have relaxed a little and the government may have decided they've had enough congressional hearings on steroids, but that doesn't mean that getting popped for them isn't still a reality, nor that the effect that bust will have on you and your family will be anything less than profound, and it will get worse when your local paper runs the story.

Apparently, this is what's known as "evolution."

 
John Romano

John Romano is a longtime industry insider and held the position of Senior Editor at Muscular Development magazine for 18 years. He has authored several books in the bodybuilding and fitness field and has appeared as a performance enhancement advocate in programs on HBO, ESPN, ABC's 20/20, and numerous radio talk shows, as well as consulted on, and appeared in, the acclaimed documentary Bigger Stronger Faster. Romano resides in Guadalajara, Mexico with his wife and son where they own and operate one of three Gold’s Gyms in the city.

What's Really in Your Pre-Workout Supplement? It Might Be Methamphetamine . . .

Over the past 15 to 25 years, the sports supplement market has exploded. When I was a wee lad, there was a limited selection of supplements, mainly dessicated liver tablets, Joe Weider Mega Mass 4000 (and other similar buckets of sugar), some amino acids, and a faith in drinking glasses of raw eggs.

Now there are supplements for everything - pre-workout, poist-workout, A.M, P.M., fat loss, energy, focus, better pumps, test boosters, anti-estrogens, and an assortment of proteins, creatine mixtures, and other crap.

One of the areas that has exploded in recent years is the pre-workout segment of the market. Back 15 years, it was common to take 20 mg ephedra, 200 mg caffeine, and 200 mg of aspirin (the ECA stack), but when the FDA banned ephedra because a handful of idiots took 3 or 4 times the recommended dosage and did not eat, then had heart attacks or fainted, the market blew up with companies trying to concoct an equally effective supplement.

During this same period, several companies promoting testosterone boosting supplements got nailed when athletes using the products failed drug tests for anabolic steroids. No wonder they worked!

The practice among the shady companies was to come out with a new product making extraordinary claims - claims any close look at the ingredients listed on the label could not support. Yet users would post rave reviews on message boards about gaining 10 lbs of muscle in just two weeks or losing 4% bodyfat in a week, or whatever. And they did - because the supplement contained banned substances. Once the hype had built around the product, the manufacturer could remove the illegal substances before the FDA caught on and still sell tons of the product to undiscerning people who believed the hype. [T-Nation did an excellent story on this back in the day.]

Turns out the practice is still occurring, with a slight tweak. Now they avoid the actually illegal substances but instead they include analogs, substances that are chemically similar but are not listed as illegal yet (this is especially true in the pro-hormone market, where many products can be found online that are actual steroids, but are not on the controlled substances lists).

A new study found that the popular pre-workout supplement Craze contains an analog of methamphetamine, you now, crystal meth. The FDA has cracked down on them, and they have removed the product from the market - Gaspari Nutrition, a company generally thought reputable, also had a product with this substance, and they have also removed it from the shelves.

 

Here is the summary of the research study from Medical News Today, followed by an article from USA Today about this whole mess.

Muscles and meth: Drug analog identified in 'Craze' workout supplement

An international team of scientists have identified potentially dangerous amounts of methamphetamine analog in the workout supplement Craze, a product widely sold across the U.S. and online. The study, published in Drug Testing and Analysis, was prompted by a spate of failed athletic drug tests. The results reveal the presence of methamphetamine analog N,α- DEPEA, which has not been safely tested for human consumption, in three samples.

"In recent years banned and untested drugs have been found in hundreds of dietary supplements. We began our study of Craze after several athletes failed urine drug tests because of a new methamphetamine analog," said lead author Dr. Pieter Cohen, of Harvard Medical School, U.S.A.

A workout supplement marketed as a 'performance fuel', Craze is manufactured by Driven Sports, Inc., and is sold in stores across the United States and internationally via body supplement websites.

The supplement is labeled as containing the compound N,N-diethyl-phenylethylamine (N,N-DEPEA), claiming it is derived from endangered dendrobium orchids. However, while there is no proof that this compound is found within orchids, it is also structurally similar to the methamphetamine analog N,α-diethylphenylethylamine (N,α-DEPEA), a banned substance.

The team analyzed three samples of Craze for traces of N,α-DEPEA. The first sample was brought from a mainstream retailer in the U.S., while the second and third samples were ordered from online retailers in the U.S. and Holland.

The team used ultra-high performance liquid chromatography to detect the presence of N,α-DEPEA. The first two samples were analyzed by NSF International, while the third was tested at the Netherland's National Institute for Public Health. The findings were independently corroborated by the Korean Forensic Service, which confirmed the presence of N,α-DEPEA in two further samples of Craze in a parallel investigation.

"We identified a potentially dangerous designer drug in three separate samples of this widely available dietary supplement," said Cohen. "The tests revealed quantities of N,α-DEPEA of over 20mg per serving, which strongly suggests that this is not an accidental contamination from the manufacturing process."

As a structural analog of methamphetamine, N,α-DEPEA , may have stimulant and addictive qualities; however, it has never been studied in humans and its adverse effects remain unknown.

The product labeling claims that Craze contains several organic compounds, known as phenylethylamines. However, phenylethylamines are a very broad category of chemicals which range from harmless compounds found in chocolate to synthetically produced illegal drugs.

"The phenylethylamine we identified in Craze, N,α-DEPEA, is not listed on the labeling and it has not been previously identified as a derivative of dendrobium orchids," said Cohen.

"If these findings are confirmed by regulatory authorities, the FDA (The U.S. Food and Drug Administration) must take action to warn consumers and to remove supplements containing N,α-DEPEA from sale," concluded Cohen. "Our fear is that the federal shutdown may delay this, resulting in potentially dangerous supplements remaining widely available."

Full Citation:
Pieter A. Cohen, John C. Travis, Bastiaan J. Venhuis. (2013, Oct 14), A methamphetamine analog (N,α-diethyl-phenylethylamine) identified in a mainstream dietary supplement. Drug Testing and Analysis: Article first published online: 14 OCT 2013 - DOI: 10.1002/dta.1578

Here is the USA Today article:

Maker of Craze suspends production of sports supplement

Alison Young, USA TODAY, October 15, 2013

Driven Sports, maker of the pre-workout supplement Craze, announced Tuesday that it has suspended all production and sales of the product in the wake of tests finding amphetamine-like ingredients.

(Photo: Alison Young, USA TODAY)

Story Highlights

• Driven Sports says it stopped production of Craze "several months" ago after media reports
• A USA TODAY investigation in July reported that tests had found amphetamine-like compounds in Craze
• Two scientific journal articles have recently identified a methamphetamine-like compound in Craze
• FDA and DEA officials could not be reached for comment because of the government shutdown

The maker of the popular sports supplement Craze, which scientists say contains a methamphetamine-like compound, revealed Tuesday that it has suspended all production and sales of the product.

Driven Sports, which has declined USA TODAY's repeated interview requests, posted a statement on its website disclosing that the New York-based company suspended production "several months ago while it investigated the reports in the media regarding the safety of Craze."

In July, a USA TODAY investigation revealed that a top Driven Sports official, Matt Cahill, is a convicted felon who has a history of putting risky products on the market and that tests of Craze by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and a lab in Sweden had found amphetamine-like compounds in the pre-workout powder.

On Monday, a team of scientists from the U.S. and the Netherlands published an article in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Drug Testing and Analysis saying they had identified an analog — or chemical cousin — of methamphetamine in samples of Craze. They warned that the chemical has never been studied in humans, that the health risks are unknown and that it is not disclosed on Craze's label.

Driven Sports says that its own studies continue to show Craze is safe "when used responsibly" and that tests it has commissioned "have consistently indicated that Craze does not contain amphetamines or controlled substances." It added "the confidence of our retailers to sell the product and our consumers to buy the product is our primary concern so we will continue the suspension of the production and sale of Craze for the foreseeable future until these issues are resolved."

Walmart.com, Bodybuilding.com and some other online retailers stopped selling Craze earlier this summer in the wake of the USA TODAY investigation, but tubs of the pre-workout powder continued to be available for purchase elsewhere online and in GNC stores. Recently, the product was no longer available on GNC.com and Driven Sports' own website listed Craze as out of stock.

GNC officials have declined to be interviewed. In a statement the retailer said: "With third party products, GNC is simply the retailer and, like all retailers, relies upon the representations and contractual warranties made by the vendor that the products are safe and compliant with all applicable laws and regulations."

In a related development this week, NSF International announced that in separate testing they found the same meth-like compound in the weight-loss supplement Detonate, which is marketed by Gaspari Nutrition. NSF International is a Michigan-based testing organization; one of its scientists co-authored Monday's journal article about Craze.

Gaspari Nutrition officials did not respond to interview requests and as of Tuesday night had removed Detonate from its website's list of products. Detonate was still listed on Gaspari's website as of Oct. 10, according to a version of the page archived by Google that day. Detonate remains available for sale online and in some stores. USA TODAY was able to purchase a bottle of Detonate on Tuesday at a Vitamin Shoppe store in Sterling, Va., but found several GNC and Vitamin Shoppe stores in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. did not have it in stock.

Driven Sports says it believes that the independent labs and scientists who have found amphetamine-like and methamphetamine-like compounds in Craze may have made a mistake in their tests. Craze's label says it contains dendrobium orchid extract, which the company says has naturally occurring phenylethylamine compounds. The statement says that these other scientists' tests may be mistaking the natural compound for amphetamine-like substances.

Driven Sports says its labs' tests indicate the presence of "n-beta DEPEA" in Craze" and that this compound is "a related but very different substance" from the n,alpha DEPEA identified in Monday's journal article. The company said it is "very difficult to distinguish these two substances unless you know precisely what you are looking for and are using the proper test methodology."

In an e-mailed statement, the journal article's authors said that "their argument holds no merit" and that Driven Sports is "just throwing out new chemical names to try to confuse." The authors said that n-beta DEPEA is "a completely different molecule" and that the differences in the molecule would have made them act differently on two of the three tests they ran.

"We stand 100% behind our results," said the research team: Pieter Cohen of Harvard Medical School; John Travis, a scientist at NSF International; and Bastiaan Venhuis of the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands.

Another team of scientists based in South Korea found the same methamphetamine-like substance when they tested other samples of Craze. Their findings were published in a forensic toxicology journal in August.

Neither the Food and Drug Administration nor the Drug Enforcement Administration could be reached for comment because of the federal government shutdown.

Amy Eichner, a special advisor on supplements at the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, noted that both Craze and Detonate have been listed on the nonprofit organization's "high risk" supplement list. "There needs to be a serious examination of the current regulations of supplements," she said, "and changes must be made in order for the FDA to have the necessary tools to effectively regulate the supplement industry."

Although dietary supplements -- such as vitamins, minerals and herbal pills -- are often marketed as health remedies, the FDA does not have the authority to require pre-market testing for safety or effectiveness as it does with medications. Supplement industry officials have said that greater enforcement, not new regulations, are what is needed to address problem products and makers.

Driven Sports and Gaspari Nutrition, the companies marketing Craze and Detonate, are both members of the American Herbal Products Association. The association did not respond to questions or an interview request from USA TODAY about the findings of meth-like compounds in the companies' products.

Documentary - Cycling’s Greatest Fraud (Lance Armstrong)

Blood transfusions. Steroids. EPO. Injections. Deceptions. National Geographic Channel goes inside the science and scheming of Lance Armstrong’s legendary fall from grace.

Armstrong's rise and fall provides a lesson in how greed, hubris, and self-righteousness - not to mention self-deception - can destroy even the most talented of people. Armstrong was (and is) a rare genetic specimen whose body seems designed for endurance sports like cycling or running. Even as a teen, he was destined to be a great athlete.

But greatness was not enough - he had to be the best whoever rode a bike (although no one will ever surpass Eddie Merckx). So he began the most organized and successful doping program ever seen in professional sports (outside of bodybuilding). The best and most honest account of this I have seen so far is Tyler Hamilton's The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France (winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year).

Cycling’s Greatest Fraud

This one-hour special dissects the story of the science and scheming behind what’s been called “the most sophisticated and successful doping scheme in all of sports”.

Piece together eyewitness testimonies and delve into the illicit science to discover how the USADA says the doping plot began and then mushroomed in its complexity.

With new interviews from key members of his inner circle, see how Armstrong went to great lengths to protect his secret and his legacy, by using all the powers at his command to silence and attack critics, while assuring the public that his blood was as clean as his public image.

But, in the end, his empire collapsed, as the scheming unravelled and the science finally caught up with Armstrong.

Tyler Hamilton and "The Secret Race"

Tyler Hamilton's The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs blew the doors off of Lance Armstrong's decade of denial, and it provides excellent insight into the life of a professional cyclist rising from the amateur ranks to a top tier Grand Tour contender.

I'm about halfway through this book, and I find it almost addictive - granted, I am a serious cycling fan and have always been a fan of Hamilton (more than Armstrong). The book is ostensibly about Hamilton and his career, but it's also about doping in cycling and about Armstrong's involvement in and orchestration of doping for U.S. Postal and Discovery teams.

As much as I am loving this book, I find the "aw shucks," humble beginnings, under-sized-athlete version of Hamilton's life a little off-putting. Hamilton is genetically gifted to be a great climber on the bike, granted not with all of Armstrong's gifts (drugs or no, Lance is a freak of nature), and he was a rising star in the U.S. before getting hired by U.S. Postal's continental team in 1996.

Still, I appreciate his honesty about the doping and the lengths he went to not to get caught - not to mention the incredible hunger to win that made doping an option that was acceptable.

More to the point, however, I am blown away by how tough the sport is at the top levels, how much willpower and strength it takes to dig deep and beyond all limits to finish a climb or a time trial.

Lance Armstrong’s Teammate Tells All: ‘The Secret Race’ By Tyler Hamilton

Sept 8, 2012

Updated  

Jan 15, 2013—Lance Armstrong has admitted to doping during an interview with Oprah Winfrey. Read Buzz Bissinger's mea culpa for defending Armstrong, and our speed read of Armstrong's longtime teammate Tyler Hamilton's book, containing many startling allegations against the former champion.

There were more drugs in cycling than in a game of Dr. Mario, Lance Armstrong’s longtime lieutenant Tyler Hamilton claims in a damning new account. We speed read The Secret Race for the biggest revelations.

1980s: Doping Before EPO

According to Andy Hampsten, a cyclist who raced in the 1980s and ’90s, riders were only using amphetamines and anabolics, and both had drawbacks. “Amphetamines made riders stupid … Anabolics made people bloated.” “EPO changed everything,” he said. It boosted a rider’s red-blood cells so they could carry more oxygen, leading to greater endurance.

Between 1980 and 1990, the average speed of a Tour de France rider was 37.5 kilometers per hour. From 1995 to 2005, it was 41.6kph.

1996: U.S. Postal Service Team

In 1994, Tyler Hamilton graduated from college and was racing as an amateur when he met Lance Armstrong, who had already won a world championship one-day race. The next year he turned pro, and in 1996 the U.S. Postal Service became the sponsor of his team. There was a new team doctor, Pedro Celaya, who explained what a hematocrit was: the percentage of blood that contains red-blood cells. If it exceeds 50 percent, you’d have to sit out 15 days, according to a new International Cycling Union (UCI) rule. There was no test for EPO yet.

According to the book, one day in the fall, when Armstrong was still recovering from cancer, his friend and teammate Frankie Andreu and his wife Betsy visited him in hospital. Two doctors entered the room and asked Armstrong if he’d ever used performance-enhancing drugs. Hamilton writes that, in front of the Andreuses, Armstrong said yes, matter-of-factly. “He’d used EPO, cortisone, testosterone, human-growth hormone, and steroids … This is a classic Lance moment, being cavalier about doping … He wants to minimize doping, show it’s no big deal, show that he’s bigger than any syringe or pill.” Betsy Andreu has talked about this encounter many times, including testifying under oath. Armstrong also denied it under oath and has attacked Andreu repeatedly.

1997: Tyler’s First Time

In 1997, just before a race, Hamilton says Celaya gave him his first “red egg” or “vitamin”—testosterone capsules. “I didn’t win the race, but I did pretty well.” One day he and others were at teammate/leader George Hincapie’s apartment in Girona, Spain, and they opened the refrigerator to find a foil packet with syringes and EPO. They called it “Edgar,” for Edgar Allan Poe. By the spring, because he wanted to make the Tour de France team, Hamilton took his first EPO shot. “Just a tiny amount, a clear liquid, a few drops.”

He took red eggs, Edgar, and stayed quiet. He rode the 1997 Tour and survived, while the French Festina team dominated the stages by using a synthetic blood called perfluorocarbons.

1998: Armstrong Joins U.S. Postal

Armstrong joined Hamilton’s team in 1998 after coming back from cancer. The two roomed together in training camp, and quickly became close friends. Hamilton was in Armstrong’s inner circle, and the two almost always trained together. He became Armstrong’s second in command, his lieutenant on the team.

Because he wasn’t as fit and ready as he wanted to be, Armstrong wisely and luckily sat out that year’s Tour. The race was marked by the Festina Affair, when a team car was stopped by French police, and 234 doses of EPO and other drugs were found in the trunk. Other teams, including U.S. Postal, flushed thousands of dollars’ worth of drugs down the toilets, says Hamilton.

PATRICK HERTZOG

“We all wanted to win. But Lanceneeded to win.”

1999 - Motoman

Armstrong’s most trusted adviser was Dr. Michele Ferrari, who was nicknamed Dr. Evil because he could figure out how to beat any doping test, writes Hamilton. Hamilton says Ferrari singlehandedly changed the sport. In the spring of 1999, Armstrong assembled his inner circle at his French villa in Nice to map out the plan for the Tour. When Hamilton arrived, he badly needed some EPO, and he asked Armstrong for some. “Lance pointed casually to the fridge. I opened it and there, on the door, next to a carton of milk, was a carton of EPO… I was surprised that Lance would be so cavalier.”

Because of the Festina Affair, team staffers were often searched and couldn’t carry EPO any more. During training, Hamilton says he got his from Celaya’s replacement, Dr. Luis Garcia del Moral, an ironic name if ever there was one. But what would happen during the Tour? Standing in the kitchen, Hamilton writes that Armstrong sketched out the plan: he would pay his gardener and handyman Phillipe, a.k.a. Motoman, to follow the Tour on his motocycle, carrying a thermos full of EPO for Armstrong, Hamilton, and a third teammate, Kevin Livingston. The riders would call him on a secret prepaid cellphone, and he would make a dropoff. They dropped used syringes in an empty soda can: the Radioactive Coke Can.

Armstrong won the “Tour de Fucking France,” a feat hailed as a miracle for the cancer survivor. President Bill Clinton phoned him. But he had tested positive for cortisone after the prologue stage. Hamilton writes that U.S. Postal made up a cover story and said Armstrong had a saddle sore, and backdated a prescription for a cortisone skin cream. UCI was not serious about testing or getting Armstrong, so the issue went away. When they had extra EPO, Armstrong suggested giving it to other teammates who were not in on the Motoman drop.

There were elaborate errands, chores, and routines to securing drugs and disposing of paraphernalia. Hamilton would soak the cardboard packaging of the EPO until the label was unreadable. He’d crush the empty vials by wrapping them in paper towels and pounding them with a hammer, then flush them down the toilet. He got to the point where he could estimate his hematocrit level by the color of his blood.

2000: Blood Bags

Hamilton and his wife moved to Nice at Armstrong’s invitation. The riders almost always trained together. One day during a training ride, Hamilton and Armstrong were cut off by a small car. Hamilton writes that Armstrong chased down the car, pulled the man out, and began pummeling him.

Just before the Tour, team director Johan Brunyeel flew Armstrong, Hamilton, and Livingston to Spain to have their blood drawn by del Moral and his assistant, Pepe Marti. “It would be like taking EPO, except better … You're watching a big clear plastic bag slowly fill up with your warm dark red blood. You never forget it." This blood transfusion was called BBs, or blood bags, and had to be done in the days leading up to the race since red-blood cells can only live for about 28 days, and giving blood is also very draining. Before the crucial stage 12 on Mont Ventoux, where Armstrong’s nemesis Marco Pantani would attack, the riders entered their hotel room to find their blood bags taped to a wall above their beds, ready for transfusion. Two days later, Armstrong blew by Pantani on the summit, then famously let him take the stage victory—he had already won the Tour, ended the battle, “Lance by TKO.” Pantani had used up all his energy chasing Armstrong, and dropped out of the race after stage 16.

2001: Microdosing

During training, Hamilton’s numbers improved significantly and his hematocrit was at 49.7. From then on, Armstrong saw Hamilton as a threat and that was the beginning of the end of their friendship.

To prepare for the 2001 Tour, Armstrong rode in the Tour of Switzerland. Ferrari advised Armstrong to sleep in an altitude tent and to drip EPO into his vein all night, so that it goes straight into the bloodstream and then goes away. “In this, as in other things, Lance was blessed: he had veins like water mains.” Hamilton says it took the authorities years and millions of dollars to develop a test for EPO, and “it took Ferrari five minutes to figure out how to evade it.” “The tests are easy to beat. We’re way, way ahead of the tests. They’ve got their doctors and we’ve got ours, and ours are better. Better paid, for sure.”

But Armstrong tested positive for EPO during that Tour of Switzerland. “I know because he told me,” Hamilton writes. “No worries, dude,” he says Armstrong told him. “We’re gonna have a meeting with them. It’s all taken care of.” According to sources within the FBI, a UCI official had intervened in the test and stopped it. Armstrong later made two donations totaling $125,000 to the UCI. Hamilton says he remembers Armstrong phoning the head of the UCI from the team bus soon after the incident and talking in a friendly, casual tone. The UCI has denied Hamilton's claim.

The team also began using testosterone patches instead of red eggs.

During that Tour, Hamilton largely did not use EPO, and his performance suffered. On a particularly dreadful day of riding, Armstrong grabbed Hamilton’s jersey by the neck and yelled, “What the f--k are you doing, Tyler?” That night Hamilton decided to leave U.S. Postal.

2002: More BBs

Hamilton joined CSC, a different team, and tried to stake his claim as Armstrong’s rival. He and Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes, whom Hamilton called “Ufe,” transfused multiple blood bags during the Tour—one per week, writes Hamilton. The scheduling of taking blood out and putting it back in was complicated. They used code for where to meet, and chose middle-of-the-road hotels.

But Armstrong won the Tour handily again. Hamilton doesn’t know what methods Armstrong used, but “there was always the sense that there was one more circle we weren’t seeing.” He said riders have always considered Armstrong two years ahead of the peloton when it came to doping.

2003: Broken Collarbone

Hamilton again raced against Armstrong in the 2003 Tour, and relied on BBs when he beat Armstrong for the first time ever. But then, near the end of the first stage, he was involved in a crash and he broke his collarbone. Against doctors’ advice, he continued on the Tour, which made him rather famous. But this also brought on guilt and depression.

2004: Siberia and Athens Olympics

Hamilton left CSC and joined Phonak, and Ufe began freezing BBs, a method he called Siberia. This meant Hamilton could give blood at any time and use more bags per race. But when he performed incredibly well during a practice climb on Mont Ventoux that included Armstrong, he was summoned to the UCI headquarters and said he was being put on a close watch.

During the Tour, Armstrong’s new teammate, Floyd Landis—in many ways Hamilton’s replacement as inner-circle friend—told Hamilton that Armstrong had called the UCI to rein him in. Hamilton confronted Armstrong during a stage, and Armstrong denied the claim. Armstrong won again, and would get his final Tour victory in 2005 for a record-shattering seven straight titles.

That summer, Hamilton won the gold medal in the time trial at the Athens Olympics. But 29 days after the Olympics, the UCI claimed that Hamilton had tested positive for transfusion of another person’s blood. BBs are full of a rider’s own blood, so Hamilton was perplexed and fought the charges, although it was possible that Ufe had mixed up the blood bags. A former teammate, Jonathan Vaughters, said, “The deadly mistake that Tyler, Floyd … and the rest of them made when they left Postal was to assume that they’d find other doctors who were as professional. But when they got out there, they found—whoops!—there weren’t any others.” Last month, the IOC stripped Hamilton of his gold medal. After a two year ban, Hamilton tried to make a comeback, but tested positive again in 2009. He retired.

2010: Grand Jury

Floyd Landis, who had won the Tour for Phonak in 2006, the year after Armstrong retired, was stripped of his victory after failing a drug test. In 2010 he blew the whistle and confessed to doping, and provided many details about Armstrong. Within days, Hamilton was called to testify in front of a grand jury investigating Armstrong. Hamilton also confessed, and made many of these accusations against Armstrong during the hearing.

2011: 60 Minutes

In March, 60 Minutes contacted Hamilton and asked for an interview; he agreed. He repeated many of his confessions and accusations against Armstrong. Thesegment aired in May. In June, the owner of Armstrong’s favorite restaurant in Aspen, his new home, called him to tell him that Hamilton was having dinner there; Armstrong rushed over. “I’m going to make your life a living … fucking … hell.”

2012: Legacy

On June 12, the United States Anti-Doping Agency charged Armstrong, Pedro Celaya, Johan Bruyneel, Luis del Moral, Pepe Marti, and Michele Ferrari with conducting a conspiracy to dope. In August, the USADA officially stripped Armstrong of his seven Tour wins after he announced he would not be fighting the charges.

Since his retirement from pro cycling, Hamilton has been a private trainer to riders. “I’m happy to see my sport cleaning itself up over the past few years … The winning time up Alpe d’Huez in the 2011 Tour was 41:21; back in 2001, a rider with that time would have finished 40th.”

“We all wanted to win. But Lance needed to win. He had to make 100 percent sure that he won, every time, and that made him do some things that went way over the line, in my opinion … I think people have the right to know the truth.”

~ Editor's note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly noted Tyler Hamilton's gold medal in the Olympics.