Depression and other Psychiatric effects after Anabolic steroid usage
Depression and other Psychiatric effects after Anabolic steroid usage
The widespread public and media attention towards the long-term health effects of anabolic-androgenic steroid (AAS) usage is mostly directed on pro-bodybuilders and pro-athletes. Most AAS users, however, are not elite athletes, like those portrayed in the media, and many are not even competitive athletes at all. This larger but less visible population of ordinary AAS users began to emerge in about 1980. The senior members of this population are now entering middle age; they represent the leading wave of a new type of aging former substance abusers, with specific medical and psychiatric risks.
Will every user of roids suffer from mental problems? No of course not, that would be the same as the question, will everyone become bold, suffer from gyno or shrunken testicals? First of all if you are predisposed to it, you will have an increased chance of suffering those side-effects.
So someone that is already not mentally stable when he or she starts using AAS, will have an increased chance of suffering from depressive complaints. And it is kinda of common knowledge, that many recreative users of recreational drugs, and AAS is one of those, if you are not competing, are often insecure about themselves.
Other determing factors are the length of your cycle, the doses and the kind of steroids (by example Nandrolone Decanoate (Deca). If you used a lot of different PED’s in high doses you should taper the amount and doses of the those PED’s down. In this case I am not only talking about steroids but also the GH – IGF- insulin etc etc.
Depression is a condition that reportedly affects 1 in 10 Americans at one point or another. AND the number of patients diagnosed with depression increases by approximately 20% per year. Mostly this depression is caused by unemployment and divorce.
In the media there is always much (negative) attention to the side-effects of AAS. And not only in the media but there are also many scientific studies and surveys conducted on the effects of AAS use. Now bodybuilders, fitness athletes and other cosmetic users, are in first place just normal people. And just like all these other ordinary people, suffer from an increasingly negative environment. And that is reflected in depressions. Many used recreational drugs intensify precisely these negative feelings. If, therefore, the objective statistical data of AAS users would be compared with those of other users and non-regular users of the statistic figures would have been quite different. Because let's face it, statistically you are more likely to encounter in nightlife an aggressive guy under the influence of alcohol, than someone who is full of roids. But alcohol is not forbidden and our government earned a hefty amount of dough with it.
That's not to say roids do not influence or affect our brains. We as users should well be honest about that, but you should see it in the right perspective.
We know that certain hard drugs like amphetamines changes the user and the same is accepted from long-term marihuana and XTC users. Again I’m not talking about careful recreative users. Fact is that anabolic steroids are a gliding scale. Once you are big for the normal human being.
You still think you are small comparing yourself with some of the huge guys in the gym. And before you know it, you are dedicated, or addicted as others would call it, to building a bigger leaner aesthetic body. You get the envy and respect from most males and the erotic attention of females, and some males.
Many bodybuilders between cycles and after stopping roid usage completely, find it hard to deal with all unwanted questions and answers. The shrinking size and attention can cause depressive feelings. And a good number starts to cycle again. It’s hard to face the fact that we “Gods of Iron” will return to become just mortals like the rest, once we stop to do what we do to become huge.
Comments that made me think or laugh on the discussionbords: “your coming off of some serious test levels than your dick is in the dirt basicly takes months to get back that's why you depressed loss of strength and size how to fix it get back on the juice lol” and “Losing size strength result of being depressed. Didn’t happen on first cycle of test and dbol. But since i finished pct on last cycle of deca- drol and test I have felt like total shit. Im about to start taking daa powder see if that helps.” And “If there are no determinable factors to your depression, it is likely caused by a hormonal imbalance, because depression is basically a dopamine-estrogen disbalance.” ..and this last one , a real philosopher: “I really suffer from post-competition depression. Remember that there is so much more to you then your body. At the end of the day, who you are as a person is SO MUCH more important than how you look. When you die, what do you want people to say at your funeral? "He had big arms" or "He was a great person, great role model etc." [1]
What does science reveal?
Leslie Henderson is concerned about steroid abuse, not necessarily by sports luminaries like Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire, but rather by adolescents. 
On the picture: Postdoctoral Research Associate Joseph Oberlander and Professor Leslie Henderson.
There is this disconnect among young people that somehow your emotions, your thought processes -- things that have to do with your brain -- are separate and different from what steroids may be doing to your body -- your muscles, your heart, or your liver, or anything like that," Henderson reports that websites targeting steroid users often acknowledge that steroids can affect your body -- that's why they are taken -- or they can make you aggressive. However, they do not say anything about changing the way your brain works. "Teenagers need to recognize that these drugs actually do things to your brain, and your behavior comes from your brain,"
Studies have shown there are "critical periods" -- periods of time during adolescence when exposure to steroids can impose permanent changes in both brain organization and function, leading to physiological and psychiatric effects that may still be prevalent even in middle age. The age at which you take them also affects their persistence. From studies using rodents as an animal model, other investigators have also found that, "if you take steroids as an adolescent, those effects are much longer lasting in terms of their negative effects on behavior, especially aggression, than if you take them as an adult,"
In her laboratory work, Henderson has looked at three major behavioral systems typically associated with steroid abuse -- reproduction, aggression in males, and anxiety in both sexes.
"We did a lot of work looking at the neural control of reproduction and regions of the brain that were affected by chronic steroid abuse, as well as the transfer centers in the brain that were affected acutely by exposure to these steroids," says Henderson. "More recently, we've also looked at the effects of these steroids on anxiety, elucidating a biochemical pathway that is integral to this."
What more science tells us?
Testosterone and anabolic steroids have been found to affect the central nervous system in laboratory animals and humans. Their locations of affect in the brain are closely linked to centres that regulate mood, sexuality and aggression.
People who use steroids in excessive doses often experience, during the using period or after it, mood disorders that meet the criteria of psychiatric disease categories such as depression, anxiety, psychotic reactions and cognitive deterioration
It has been studied that steroids affect the brain serotonin and dopamine neurotransmitter systems. Dopamine is a multi-function neurotransmitter participating in the regulation of mobility, learning, emotions, appetite and positive reinforcing effects. It is an important neurotransmitter for operating the reward system, so dopamine is essential for addiction development. Serotonin, in turn, regulates sleep patterns, movement, appetite, sexuality and emotions. According to some studies, it is also related to memory operations and sustainable concentration.
Are all steroids equal?
I bet you know the answer..naah. Scientists found effects on the brain from testosterone but more damage due to nandrolone decanoate, but my gues is that if they would compare Deca with even more powerfull roids that we know do alter us, like Halotestin or mibolerone or even maybe trenbolone … would interest me..
Large doses have been demonstrated to induce programmed cell death in many cell types, including neuronal cells. This may result in irreversible changes in the nervous system. Anabolic steroid abuse has also been associated with psychiatric disorders and increased use of intoxicants.
Scientists have sought to identify effects on the brain dopaminergic and serotonergic nervous system of an anabolic steroid, nandrolone decanoate, at doses that cause peripheral changes commonly sought-after by users, such as increased red blood cell synthesis.
They have been interested in seeing whether nandrolone alters the direct nerve chemical and behavioural effects of cocaine in laboratory animals. We have also sought to find out whether there are sustainable changes to nerve pathways in the brain caused by administering nandrolone, and after how long the changes will disappear.
Their results definitely show that nandrolone has long-lasting effects on the brain dopaminergic and serotonergic nervous system. Although nandrolone levels apparently decreased and eventually disappeared completely in rat blood, nandrolone-induced changes were still detectable.
It took about five times the administration duration period for the dopamine system to return to its initial level before administration. Serotonin system recovery lasted, in turn, six times the duration of the administration period. Anabolic steroid induced changes in the central nervous system’s dopamine and serotonin systems therefore seem to recover, but it takes a considerably long time compared to the duration of the administration period.
In summary, the use of anabolic steroids can cause considerably long-lasting changes in the user’s brain neurotransmitter pathways. The serotonin neurotransmitter system often reacts the strongest to nandrolone administration. This supports the previously observed side effects, such as aggressiveness and mood changes, because decreased serotonin levels in the brain relate to the aggressive and uncontrolled behaviour of both humans and animals.
This study results suggest that the breaks generally observed by users in between the administration periods are not long enough to recover the studied neurotransmitter pathways activity to their basic level. When a new administration period begins before the neurotransmitter pathways activity has been recovered, the new changes can be greater and the effects can last even longer than before.
