Steroid Nation Newsbeat Documentaries

The way people chase the dream

of their perfect body is changing.

The pressure men are now facing

is similar to what women have had

to deal with the decades.

Diets, workouts, days spent

in the gym, and for many,

young men especially,

anabolic steroids are

being increasingly used

to help achieve that dream.

In this film, I'm going to find out

from one user why he takes them,

and put him through a series

of tests to see what damage, if any,

they've done to his body.

I'll hear from the experts,

look at the law surrounding

steroid use in the UK,

and speak to a dealer

about why he does it.

Gareth Jenkins, who is 29 and lives

just outside of Cardiff,

is one of the estimated hundreds

of thousands of people

who regularly take anabolic

steroids to build muscle.

Been using steroids

for about four, five years.

When you train naturally,

which I have done for a number

of years before using steroids,

you tire quicker, you ache more,

and obviously when you use

the performance enhancing drug,

which is the steroid,

you don't have the muscle soreness

anywhere near as much.

I feel more awake, I feel better

in myself, I feel more manly,

I've got a higher sex drive.

There are some serious potential

risks you're running,

from a medical perspective,

about using steroids,

things like increased

risk of heart attacks,

increased risk of strokes,

mood swings, infertility.

Do those things not worry you?

The way that I look at it is, yes,

they do bother me, obviously,

but like everything...

So you're aware of the risks?

I'm fully aware, yeah,

I've done my research to see

what harm they would have on me,

or potential harm they would have

But the fact of the matter is,

in terms of the risks,

everything that we do in life now

carries a risk of heart attack,

cancer, whatever it is,

so whatever it is, I'm going to get

those risks anyway, so I choose not

to do certain things, and I choose

this as my lifestyle instead.

So as I don't go out drinking

and smoking, I take steroids.

Steroids can cause health problems

because they create an imbalance

of hormones in the body which can

damage many organs,

but especially the heart.

Gareth says he tries

to minimise any risks

by taking his steroids in cycles,

like 16 weeks on and

then eight weeks off.

There's two types of steroids,

one that comes in liquid form,

which is an intramuscular injection,

that's this type.

So you inject it into yourself?

I would inject this directly

into a muscle two times a week.

Then the other type

is a tablet form.

When I'm using this type of steroid,

I would use five a day for seven

days, so basically five

a day every day.

So over the course of a period

of around six months,

when you're on steroids for that

long, roughly how much do

you think you spend on them?

A rough guesstimate,

probably with the cycle itself

and the post-course treatment,

round about £500.

That's a lot of money.

It is, it's probably a lot less

in six months than somebody

who spends on drinking

on the weekend.

Worth it, do you think?

For me, personally, yeah.

When it comes to the law

on anabolic steroids,

it is legal to use them and legal

to possess them right across the UK.

What is illegal, though,

is supplying them,

unless you're a doctor,

and that means selling them or just

passing them on for free.

If caught, you could face up

to 14 years in prison.

Because Gareth's only

using steroids, not supplying them,

he's not in any trouble

with the law.

It could be a different story

with his health, though,

so later this week he's agreed to go

to London for a series of tests that

will find out what damage, if any,

he's done to his heart.

We need to be quite quiet,

because I need to keep...

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

..keep your throat still.

I basically started working out

because I was bullied

when I was younger for being small

and basically just the feral

child at the school.

So I just ended up locking

myself away in a gym,

training and getting bigger

and getting stronger,

and getting inked.

It all sort of fell into one big

procedure that I seem to be doing,

and a lifestyle that

I lead, pretty much.

In the middle here is not nice.

The rest isn't too bad.

So, going down to London to have

all those tests done,

which I'm excited about,

to be honest with you,

yet slightly nervous

because obviously it could come back

and say there's something

significantly wrong and if I don't

change my lifestyle then...

Obviously I could

have health issues.

My prediction is that I think I'd be

pretty stupid or naive to think

that my heart wouldn't have changed.

You know, four, five years of use

of any performance-enhancing drug

that's anabolic is going to have

that effect, so I think if it hasn't

then what I've been taking is fake

and I've done it naturally.

So...!

And obviously if it is significant,

then there would be absolutely no

doubt in my mind that

I would change my

lifestyle overnight.

Whether people use or abuse anabolic

steroids is a matter of opinion.

For some in the medical world,

if steroids aren't prescribed

by a doctor, then it is simple -

taking them is abuse.

Many people who research dosages

and try to minimise the risks,

though, would say they don't abuse

them, but instead use them.

One thing that is widely agreed on,

though, is that the issue is now

affecting more people

than ever before.

We don't know the exact number

of anabolic steroid users

there are, but it certainly measures

in the hundreds of thousands.

We're seeing now a different

population of users.

While we still have people

who are using for the purpose

of body-building, we are seeing

a new population of predominantly

young males but also quite older

males as well who are using purely

for cosmetic purposes.

There's a number of pressures

on young men and most of these

pressures weren't around

a generation ago.

These are things like social media,

mainstream advertising.

If ever you see a male

with their shirt off, the chances

are they will have quite

a well-defined physique.

Again, males may not be geared up

to dealing with this.

This is something that

women have had to deal

with for generations,

but this is quite

a new thing for men.

For Gareth, he's about to undergo

a series of tests that

will check what damage, if any,

he's done to his heart.

The person in charge is cardiology

doctor Anil Malhotra.

We're going to do three tests today,

the first is to look

at the electrical activity

of the heart.

The second is to look

at the heart muscle itself,

and the third to actually

exercise your heart and we'll

see how you perform.

Right, okey-dokey.

Is that all right?

Not a problem.

NHS guidelines say that

by taking anabolic steroids,

Gareth's risking side effects

like infidelity, mood swings,

and even heart attacks and strokes.

This is the sound of

the blood flowing across

the valves of your heart.

We're just assessing how quickly

the blood flows through that valve,

and we're able to see

whether there's any

narrowing of the valve

or any leakages as well.

I suspect that they will show

some form of thickness

or abnormality to the heart.

It's bound to have changed

in some way after four

or five years of taking

a performance-enhancing drug.

The British Cardiovascular ociety

says tens of thousands of people

could be putting themselves

at increased risk of the most

serious side-effects

by taking anabolic steroids.

I'm cycling towards a cheesecake.

And I'll get there, I'll get there!

Billionaire's cheesecake

on the horizon!

Let's get there.

After pushing himself to the limit,

Gareth will be able to find out

how his heart performs

and what affect his

steroid use has had.

With hundreds of thousands of people

now thought to be taking steroids

every year right across the UK,

clearly they are getting

them from somewhere.

But Government figures show that,

for the whole of 2015 and 2016

right across England and Wales,

there were just 25 convictions

related to the legal supply

of steroids, and just seven of those

ended with a prison sentence.

So, for this man, who spoke

on condition of anonymity,

the law hasn't come close

to stopping him from dealing.

We know you supply steroids,

we know you are a steroid dealer,

obviously it is illegal,

you are breaking the law.

A lot of people would say

you are putting people's

lives, their health,

certainly, at risk.

What do you say for that?

To start off with the health risks,

I think steroids are readily

available to anyone who wants

to access them at the moment.

I like to see myself more as someone

who provides information,

to ensure people can do it safely.

People are going to use them

regardless of whether they buy them

from me or from an unknown source

online, but if they can

talk to me about it,

how to inject themselves safely

or look at doses, or if I can help

them, even if not to take steroids

if I don't think it's appropriate

for them, then I will.

That's the reason

I'm involved in it.

Who are the types of people getting

them from you, who's coming

to you for the steroids?

There's a very broad spectrum

of people who use steroids.

Ranging from young guys

at 18 years old, 19,

20, just starting out,

training, looking to bulk up

for maybe a summer holiday

or just to look good for...

For a summer holiday?

For a summer holiday, or they just

want to attract the girls,

they want to go out on a night out

and attract the girls.

These are the guys that are less

aware, so these are the guys that

you have to be more informative

when you talk to them about it,

make them more aware

of the risks and the dangers.

What about the health

of the people who you are

supplying these drugs to?

They can say things

like infertility, they can face mood

swings, they can face getting

strokes decades earlier

than the average, heart attacks.

It's illegal for a reason.

Yeah.

But I don't agree with it

being illegal, because I'll tell

you that doctors prescribe

testosterone to people,

so if there's a reason...

You're not a doctor.

No, no, I'm saying that doctors

prescribe it, so steroids,

or testosterone in this example,

if it was killing people

left, right and centre,

they wouldn't prescribe it.

And I think the media

sensationalises it.

And I'm going to tell you now,

there's people that abuse steroids,

and they do damage their health,

but that's their choice.

One man who is all too aware

of the risks of taking steroids he's

got on the black market is Gareth.

And, after using them

for nearly five years,

he's about to find out the effect

they've had on his heart.

Do take a seat.

We can go over your results.

I've got your ECG tracing,

your Echo report and other reports

from the exercise test as well.

What it shows is that your heart

is working well, and that's,

and you've come through your

exercise test well as well.

Yeah.

But we do think that

you are at the upper limit of normal

in terms of the wall thickness

of your heart, so that is most

likely due to your weightlifting

and your steroid use.

You are still young and you've not

been using steroids for that long,

but if one does continue to do

so then you are putting yourself

at increased risk of heart attacks

and potentially strokes as well.

Yeah.

Steroid usage does have a variety

of bad effects on the heart.

I class myself as quite a sensible

person, taking my own health

into account that it would just be

sensible, being the keyword, to not

push that boundary to the point

where something isn't reversible.

So not keep using steroids?

Not keep using steroids, yeah.

All for the better.

Cheaper, too.

HE LAUGHS.

It looks like Gareth's steroid

days might be numbered,

but he's just one of hundreds

of thousands of users.

Dealers are unlikely to get caught,

the number of convictions for supply

is low, and doctors want change,

worried about potential long-term

health problems for users.

So, is change on the way?

Well, we do know that the group that

advises the Government on drugs

misuse is in the middle of a big

review into steroids.

We don't know yet

what it's going to say.