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Young athletes see and read news stories about famous athletes, artists and celebrities, who admit to having used performance-enhancing drugs. So it's no surprise that as many as 1 in 20 teenagers reports using steroids to increase muscle mass.

Adolescents use a wide variety of drugs and supplements, including anabolic steroids, to improve their sports performance and physical appearance. Prevalence rates for steroid use generally range between 4% and 12% for male adolescents and between 0.5% and 2% for female adolescents. Steroid use among U.S. teens has been on the rise since the early 1990s, but some groups of teens are using more than others. In 1993, one in 45 high school students admitted to using anabolic steroids.

Two journalists from the Danish paper “Politiken” where investigating the man behind Alpha Pharma Healthcare and the Alpha Pharma Group.

We at JuicedMuscle have more and better information then the two journalists could dig up and we will do another blog-post on Jacob and the Danish roid-scene.

While most bodybuilders are dedicated to training, diet and rest, some choose to engage in less healthy activities during the weekends when it’s time to party. Recreational drug use has been attributed to deaths of a few famous bodybuilders including Paul De Mayo and Eric Fromm. Recreational drugs attributed to bodybuilders includes marijuana, crystal meth, ecstasy, GHB, and special-K, amongst others.

Nubain (nalbuphine hydrochloride) is a synthetic narcotic agonist-antagonist analgesic of the phenanthrene series. It is chemically related to both the widely used narcotic antagonist, naloxone, and the potent narcotic analgesic, oxymorphone. Melvin Anthony talked about his addiction to Nubain in Muscular Development a few years ago. It became very popular with bodybuilders because it allowed them to work past their pain threshold and for some other reasons.

Unfortunately, many people ended up getting addicted to it, and just like other opiates, it is very difficult to come off.... narcotic analgesics tramadol, oxycodone, hydrocodone, OxyContin, morphine, fentanyl.

First let me emphasize that bodybuilders and also professional bodybuilders are just human, abuse of painkillers and anti-anxiety drugs are not unique to bodybuilding. What do you think of painkiller abuse by powerlifters, the NFL and let’s not forget wrestling.

Nubain is no longer available, companies that were producing it discontinued it. At the moment Hospira is the only manufacturer, but according to their website: “Hospira has nalbuphine on shortage due to manufacturing delays and back orders and the company estimates a release date of November 2014”. Because of this the demand for of oxycodone and hydrocodone increased enormously.

Recently there has been a crackdown on physicians and pain clinics. For instance Florida, now has a central prescription database for controlled substances; healthcare providers can log on and see what a patient has been prescribed. This has put an end to the 'doctor shopping', which in turn has decreased the supply available for sale on the street. Cheaper than "doctor shopping" is buying over the internet.

I saw some “to the point posts” in threads on painkillers in the discussion-fora’s:

****”Nubain killed a lot of people indirectly. I've been struggling with opiates on and off for the last year or so ranging from Percocet to sniffing Heroin (the RX opiates are harder to come off than heroin IMO), the withdrawals are far worse than the pain of low carbs and cardio and all that other bullshit. Luckily, I was always able to afford my habit due to good connections and making decent money. I never found myself using them directly for bodybuilding, but they are more bodybuilding-friendly than a lot of other drugs I’ve used with the exception of weed and mild benzo use.”

Rice

I’d like to write a blog-post on rice. Why would you ask. It’s just nutrition. With the difference that bodybuilders eat a lot of rice. White rice and brown rice. We use it to manipulate our body-composition, not only to eat for energy. We manipulate our endogenous insulin with white rice, so we don’t need to inject (exogenous) insulin. The most important difference between brown and white rice is its effect on insulin output. This is called the Glycemic index.  I don’t want to confuse you with all aspects of insulin usage and nutrition. The timing, counting, cycling. That’s why we will use this blog-post to explain the nutritional value of rice.

Foods are used by strength athletes in the first place as a source of energy, to perform heavy work-outs. The most important source of energy for the strength athletes body are carbohydrates (especially glycogen) and fat. In a heavy work-out the body will first choose to burn carbohydrates. If the depots of glycogen are getting empty, the body switches to the combustion of body-fat and proteins. Body-fat as a combustible needs 10 percent more oxygen to produce the same amount of energy. Proteins are even more unproductive because they can only produce around 50 percent of the maximum energy. These problems can be prevented, by eating a carbohydrates rich meal before a heavy work-out to fill the glycogen depots and if you train very long or perform aerobics after your work-out you can eat during or between work-out sessions.

Proteins.

We know proteins are extremely popular among strength athletes and bodybuilders, this is especially for its ability to  build new muscle tissue, and to repair damaged muscle tissue. Especially at the beginning of a new cycle this is from the utmost interest because the muscle mass can gain very quick (muscle memory) . After some time the building of new mass goes slower due to a diminishing super-compensation. Many bodybuilders and strength athletes think they need extra proteins and carbs and often use it in the form of supplements, protein shakes and weight gainers. A male strength athlete only needs a maximum of 2 gram per kilo bodyweight of protein. If you train not to hard that comes to around 1,5 gram/k. Last month new scientifical research showed these extra proteins (up to 4 gram/k) work only contra-productive and can make you fat also. If you eat normally you will eat with your meals around 90 grams of proteins. A 100 kilogram heavy athlete in his maintenance phase would need 100 × 1,5 g/kg  is 150 gram, in his buildup phase that would be 100 × 2 g/kg is 200 gram. The rest would be proteinrich products like fish, chicken, meat, eggs etc.  But a spoonful of rice also contains 2 gram of protein. If your nutrition sources is composed with a bit of knowledge, the use of additional supplements is not necessary. It may even turn out contra-productive because the body may be inclined to use them as an (unfavorable) source of  energy. If there too much energy available it is converted into fat, which means an increase in adipose tissue.

Enough carbohydrates.

As is said before a strength athlete should better concentrate on eating enough carbohydrates. This nutritional source provides a quick and effective source of energy. Around 60 percent of your nutrition should be in the form of carbohydrates.

For many bodybuilders, the inability to eat enough food is probably their biggest obstacle to becoming massive. Many pro bodybuilders have a genetic advantage that allows them to eat and process food at a faster rate than the average person.  For the rest of us, perhaps artificially increasing appetite is the key. Like the bodybuilding saying goes: “Eat Big To Get Big”

All people are different. We are born as specific somatotype (a human physical type). Its  known that by example a pure ectomorph with a very lean body only very difficult builds either muscle or fat. This is simplification since we are born with a genotype (genetics) a phenotype  (development of a genotype in a given environment) and on the bodybuilders boards we mostly refer to somatotypes.  Let’s say you are a “ hard gainer”. A term often used in bodybuilders circles. If so you have to eat large amounts of food to get enough building-blocks to build new muscle-mass and some fat. But mostly when you are a hard-gainer you also have a small appetite too. This is also something we are born with and what we learned. Some are born with a big appetite, others will slowly have to learn to eat bigger amounts. Appetite and how soon you feel “full” is also hormonal steered.

Bodybuilding is divided into two distinct phases, mass gaining (bulking)  and fat reduction (cutting).  Traditionally, mass gaining (also known as bulking) is usually undertaken during the winter months.   It has been well established that food is your most anabolic agent.   The problem that most bodybuilders face when trying to get insanely large is food intake is that they simply cannot consume enough calories to truly promote an anabolic state in the body.

This leads to one of the biggest problems aspiring monsters face; where is their extreme hunger to go with this extreme eating that is required of them?  One of the most commonly asked questions is what can an athlete do to increase their appetite?  For this group of people the ” pharmaceutical box of Pandorra”  contains suited drugs. And of course there are also supplemental methods to increase your appetite. 

Still, it is hard to believe that a society so crippled with obesity would actually research appetite stimulants.  However, the threat of the HIV virus has changed this.  A great deal of research has been done on ways to boost the appetite of patients afflicted with HIV induced wasting.  Appetite stimulants are also used to help patients recover from or combat cancer.  Subsequently, much of the documented research comes from the arena of these terminal diseases. The subjects in the test are not healthy athletes.  Therefore, we must use discrimination in adopting these recommendations.