THE REAL PROBLEM WITH STEROIDS: an insight by Kaizzad Capadia

For the past 6 months or so an extremely irritating occurrence is happening at an unusually high frequency. It has happened before as well and it used to disgust me as much even then… But the occurrences were not so many & that sort of justified my inaction… Well I deeply regret that inaction with an even deeper sense of guilt for not doing anything about it…

Well this issue is of youngsters getting on to the use of Performance Enhancing Pharmaceutical aids in a bid to achieve their bodybuilding goals… 
It is not just restricted to youngsters with competitive bodybuilding aspirations, but it is even more widespread amongst youngsters wanting to look good enough for the silver screen or for modelling…

If you think I am writing this Blog-Post to warn people about how dangerous these Performance Enhancing Pharmaceutical aids can be, and that you should never take them, then you are DEAD WRONG…

You should know me by now… like any other human being I have many flaws… But being HYPOCRITICAL is NOT one of them… 
I have avoided a direct statement on this issue for a long time & that has been gnawing at my conscience for a long time… So here goes -

“I Kaizzad Farrokh Capadia do partake in the usage of Performance Enhancing Pharmaceutical aids for my Competitive Bodybuilding Pursuits, just like ANY OTHER competitor… And will continue to do so till I hang up my Posing Trunks for ever (A weird phrase that means to retire from competitive body building) and I still have another 10 years to go before I even consider doing that…”

Oh Man… that felt real good… Feel so much better about myself… So much lighter…

So I’ll be damned if I ever try & stop people from using them on moral or ethical grounds when I myself use them… I will not even try & stop them by lying to them about how dangerous they can be... 
Because… AND NOW PAY ATTENTION -
They are drugs & so they do have a cost for any benefit that they provide. 
I don’t know of any drug that does not have side effects… But those side effects are blown all out of proportion by people who claim to know... but KNOW NOTHING…
Anabolic Androgenic Steroids (AAS) when used by males are not even a quarter as dangerous as daily high SUGAR consumption (Which by the way almost the entire nation is unknowingly on)
Anabolic Androgenic Steroids (AAS) when used by males are not even One-Tenth as dangerous as your weekend Alcohol binge or your daily 2 pegs of Scotch…
Anabolic Androgenic Steroids when used by males are not even ONE-HUNDRETH as dangerous as ONE CIGARETTE A DAY…

But to say that they are completely safe would be wrong…
A Whey Protein Powder is completely safe & hence really needs no instruction or supervision to consume it… It’s like we humans do not need any instructions on consuming Chicken or Eggs…
But when AAS are used incorrectly, the mild side effects increase & the benefits decrease… So the Cost to Benefit ratio suffers… You unnecessarily stress the systems in your body without gaining much benefit… You also end up wasting a LOT OF MONEY…

SO!
This issue is not about whether this is ethical or not… Dangerous or not…

The issue is that the youngsters are taking these pharmaceutical aids with absolutely NO CLUE about what they are putting into their bodies…

THE BIGGEST ISSUE IS that youngsters are being CONNED & MISLED & CHEATED by unscrupulous so called Roid Experts who themselves no NOTHING about Performance Enhancing Pharmaceutical aids & randomly sell & administer genuine drugs at a cost that is sometimes 10-50 times the real cost… or worse yet sell & administer spurious, counterfeit or under-dozed drugs made by underground labs & not pharmaceutical companies...

These BASTARDS don’t tell the youngsters the importance of a NATURAL BASE of at least 5 years of a Body-Building Lifestyle (Training & Nutrition) before you even consider AAS usage… The right age for AAS usage to start is around 28 assuming that you have started a scientific bodybuilding lifestyle at least by the age of 20… Thats the age I started using them by the way (Thats 13 years after I first lifted a weight in the gym)

These Sons Of Bitches’s don’t tell the youngsters or educate them about the immense importance of bodybuilding nutrition without which the most powerful Pharmaceutical Anabolic Agents will FAIL TO WORK…
Hell they don’t even tell them the names of the drugs they are administering. They tear off labels, switch bottles so that the newbie being administered these drugs cannot compare prices and will never know that he has been hugely conned…

Now it obviously should come as no surprise to you all, that people often come to me for advise on AAS usage or more specifically they just come to me so that I write out a prescription or a protocol… 
Initially I thought I was doing the responsible thing by simply SHOOING them away…

But then I would probably meet the same youngster that I had shooed away, socially somewhere and he would then proceed to tell me that he got on to a Pharmaceutical Anabolic Cycle regardless of me not sharing any information with him… When I would ask him what he had taken & how much he had spent on it… I would be completely shell shocked at the stupidity of the AAS protocol, what & where he was sourcing stuff from & how much he was paying for it… The guy would be on orals obviously fearing injectables and in the process unnecessarily stressing his liver… I met one guy who suffered a huge abscess due to incorrect injection practices…

This happened once, twice, thrice and many times over, till I started questioning my stand of not entertaining these youngsters & not educating them… I started feeling guilty that I could have saved them this stress only if I had counselled them…

So my stand changed & I started counselling these youngsters who would come to me & my counselling would basically be a completely unbiased stating of facts… Surprisingly more often than not… these facts acted as a deterrent & most of them that I counselled preferred to turn into full-fledged adults with at least 5-8 years of lifting experience & bodybuilding nutrition under their belts before EVEN CONSIDERING AAS use...

The counselling entails the following:

1. Commitment to 5-8 years of training & correct nutrition without AAS is a must. This base is what you build on with AAS. Also this base is what tells you whether or not you can take up competitive bodybuilding or not… If you cannot look like a competitive body-builder without roids… I can lay my last penny on the line that you won’t look like one on AAS… I ain’t saying that competitive bodybuilding should be the only reason one should use AAS but if that is the reason then this initial roid free period can give you an idea of whether competitive bodybuilding is something that you will excel in or not… and if not, then it saves you the trouble of finding that out after wasting many AAS cycles…  

2. If you don’t know about bodybuilding nutrition DON’T stress your body & your pocket out unnecessarily with AAS usage… as in the absence of correct nutrition AAS can’t do JACK SHIT… Why do you think your Pro Body builder heroes like Jay Cutler & Kai Greene who are on every conceivable anabolic agent, torture themselves with unappetizing meals 7-8 times a day… 

3. There are no low dose cycles. These youngsters think that instead of 500mg of Testosterone, they will only take 100mg per week to be safe. They feel comfortable at that dose. Well taking a very low dose simply shuts down your hypothalamic -pituitary-testicular axis without any substantial amount coming in exogenously to cause any anabolism. So low doses simply act as a male contraceptive. Your sperm count will drop & you will be shooting blanks… and no more muscle to show for it...  

4. There is no such thing as a mini cycle of only 4 weeks. An effective cycle is a minimum of 8 weeks & ideally to seal in your gains you need 12 weeks. 

5. There is no such thing as doing just one cycle. People have completely unrealistic expectations from their first AAS cycles & if they are going to do it only once for 8-12 weeks, they might as well NOT start… as after the cycle is over, everything will return to base line levels and you will look the same as what you did before the cycle. Sometimes if a Post Cycle therapy is not put into place immediately, you may screw up your sex hormone balance & end up SOFTER than before with depressed Testosterone levels & spiked up Estrogen levels. The softness will not just end there but will also affect your erections… Now that's a side effect that will bother your girl even more... and you will have a screwed up body & also endanger screwing up your relationship... To all you people giggling on this comment... Nothing about what I have said is funny... 

6. Do not even think of getting on to an AAS cycle if you are not completely comfortable with frequent deep intra-muscular injections. IM Injections are far healthier on the system than orals which are c-17 Alpha Alkylated so as to be resistant to first-pass through the liver. The correct PCT protocol requires daily injections of Human Chorionic Gonadotropin for 3 weeks and you cannot miss a single one…  

7. You have to take the trouble of finding someone who can administer IM injections for you. Self-administering is possible to a certain extent but beyond a certain point because of the bolus of oil accumulating in sites will force you to find new sites all over the body. Self-administering in certain sites is impossible & in others is possible but the shaky hand makes the needle move a bit too much at the site thus causing scar tissue to build up over time and making that site tough to penetrate & painful… You have to get used to unusual sites where you have never seen a doctor inject, like Lats & Quads… Quads is the only site one can self-administer with a steady hand… You have to have the knowledge of the right sites in every body part… If you tell a friend to inject & he injects you in the wrong place on your glutes… he just might hit the sciatic nerve running through the center of your butt cheek & that my friend will most probably exceed the pain threshold of a seasoned US Marine as well & you probably will hit the roof… 

8. Leaving halfway is NOT an option. Once you start a cycle you have to complete it with the entire 6-week Post Cycle Therapy. Leaving it halfway because it turned out to be way more difficult than you imagined will simply throw your hormones out of whack & ruin your body composition instead of improving it…

Now for most who consult me, suddenly, after hearing all of the above... it doesn't seem like the easy way out Anymore. 

For most these facts make it clear that this is not something that one can just do for a lark. As I mentioned before, this non-hypocritical, non-biased, factual approach that I take in my counselling’s simply discourages people WAY more effectively than my shooing away did. 

Now after such a counselling the youngster can make an informed choice.

What I learnt was that immature youngsters have nowhere else to go but to charlatans & conman when responsible & mature people like me decide to just zip it…

Friends… committing to an AAS protocol is a task that one has to do with extreme responsibility, focus, discipline and seriousness to get the most benefit out of it with minimum risk. Not many have that discipline & drive to keep at it…

But in finishing… 
The occurrences that I referred to in the first Para that have increased in frequency & thus increased my ANGER are the number of people who have started coming to me for advise AFTER they have been properly conned & duped by some national level bodybuilder or some fake roid guru… 
They would come to me for FREE advise on whether what they were doing was correct or not after paying a Lakh or more to these bastards and that too for the wrong stuff...

There is even a fake Doctor who holds seminars on Steroid use… now this was a real shocker to me… He actually held paid seminars where Trainers & body-building enthusiasts would go & listen to him lecture on AAS usage…
Well I sent one of my boys to check out what the hell was spoken in such a seminar… I knew it would be shit… but despite that premonition I was not ready for the incredible level of SHIT (Misinformation) that was given in that seminar… 

Basically this QUACK Doctor sites the side effects of AAS usage for about 30 mins… non-committally answers queries for about 15 mins where he keeps on telling the attendees that for the answer to that query they will have to take his professional consultation… My boy who attended told me that he advised the crowd to stop taking calcium supplements when using AAS… I mean this level of Bull shitting is criminal…
When asked by an attendee whether he is against the usage of AAS (Since he has only sited the side effects)… he cleverly hands out his Visiting cards to all & says that if you want to know how to take them without side effects, then to contact him & take up his professional consultancy… And by the way the attendees have paid for this seminar as well but learn NOTHING except the Doctors Contact number...

As if this was not sick enough...
Senior seasoned bodybuilders are prescribing & administering AAS to junior bodybuilders simply to cheat them & make enough money to pay for their bodybuilding nutrition, supplementation & AAS gear… 
To me nothing could be more UNETHICAL & IMMORAL than to CHEAT YOUR OWN KIND… All these bodybuilders who run these side businesses of selling & administering AAS to young upcoming bodybuilders know FIRST-HAND how difficult it is in competitive bodybuilding to get the right head-start with the right advise… They have been through those formative years & instead of using their experience to help youngsters… THEY PURPOSEFULLY INTENTIONALLY SCREW THEM… 
They are all aware how expensive competitive bodybuilding is… and to meet their own ends they CHEAT upcoming youngsters by giving them spurious fakes, under dozed underground lab AAS even when Pharma grade is available in every pharmacy in India or they buy genuine pharma grade stuff from the local pharmacies for Rs.150/- per ampule, rip off the labels & sell it to these newbies for Rs.1500/- per ampule minimum…

How these Sons of Bitches turn the volume off on their conscience & sleep peacefully every night is beyond me…

And here is the final climax of my RANT… I have decided:
MUJHE UN HARAAM KE PILLON KI DUKAAN BAND KARWANI HAI…

And I will achieve that with a HUGE SEMINAR. It will be a paid seminar (I have had it with free seminars. They are just not valued)

The Seminar will be: 
KFC’s Uncensored, Uncut, Candid Talk on AAS. 

I will as usual stay on stage till every question in the hall is answered. I will answer specifics & you can be open about what you have used in the past or what you plan to do & I will WITH REASONS & scientific facts tell you whether or not you are on the wrong track.

Very Importantly:
I WON’T BE PRESCRIBING CYCLES & PROTOCOLS… So if you are expecting that… DO NOT COME…

I will give you enough Information to set your head straight when it comes to AAS usage. By the end of the day, you will know what is right & what’s wrong & I will empower you with enough knowledge to PROTECT YOU FROM THE SCAMSTERS OUT THERE… 

I DO NOT KNOW EVERYTHING. Hell… far from it… To say that I know only about 25% of what is to be known about AAS usage for performance enhancement would be ambitious… 
But judging from the filth of misinformation going around, I do know a 1000 times more than your local so called Roid Guru… And whatever I do know is FACTUAL & TRUE to say the least…

My usual duration is 3 hours but this one could be well over that. Hell it could be an entire day. My K11-NEULIFE Seminar on Supplementation in Sports Nutrition was held at a state of the art Auditorium in Dadar a few years back. We had a turnout of close to 400 people. It started at 10am & went on till 10pm with a 2 hour lunch break. So that was a total of 10 hours of talk-time solely from me with as much info as I could give on Supplements. I envision the same happening with this Seminar if not more…

I still have to work out the logistics & sponsors for the event… But before I do that… Would like to know: 
a) if you all would appreciate such an event? 
b) If you all would like me to conduct it?
c) whether you all would actually come & sit to learn without looking at the clock? 

V. IMP HENCE REPEATING:
Remember this is NOT going to be a how to take AAS seminar. This is an awareness seminar with a lot of facts to learn. 

V.IMP
Due to the political incorrectness of such an event, I would like to emphasize here that this will NOT be a K11 Event. This will be a Kaizzad F Capadia initiative… 
ARE YOU GUYS WITH ME ON THIS?

As written by Kaizzad Capadia.
Pro Bodybuilder and Founder-Director of K11 Fitness Academy
Article Curated by Pushkaraj Shirke