Melanie Conway(FGCU)-Steroid Use In Sports

I strongly believe that anyone who plays sports, no matter what sport it is that you should not take any kind of steroids or drug for that matter. It doesn’t matter if your in high school, college, or professional leagues, its not right and not fair to others. Taking steroids makes you have that upper hand on your opponents and doesn’t give the other players a fair advantage. When using steroids and competing in a sport, is like competing on a whole different level then the other players your against. And now a days were are finding out more and more professional athletes that used steroids. The ones that were caught were some of the ones that were in the hall of fame. Now this doesn’t seem right. Its pretty much giving them a pat on the back and saying good job for this. This is in no way setting a good example for those who look up to them. Although using steroids makes you a better athlete, it doesn’t do it in a good or healthy way. Being a user of steroids comes with medical problems, its down right cheating, and its mostly caused by peer pressure.
There is not just one thing of medical problem you will suffer from being a user of steroids, there comes a very long list. And when starting at such a younger age then usually, you are more capable of getting not just one but many different things of medical problems. Nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, diarrhea, trouble sleeping, acne, yellowing of the skin, or mood changes. For males who are using before puberty may experience increases in penis size, frequency of erections, and hair growth. After puberty, males may experience loss of scalp hair, breast tenderness or swelling, painful erections, trouble urinating, changes in sex drive. For women they might experience deepening of the voice, hoarseness, an increase in body hair, changes in sex drive,  and menstrual changes. Now with children who are steroid users and are under eighteen years of age will have an effect of stunt growth or stop in growth all together. There is a lot of different types of medical problems that come with using steroids and not one of them sounds like a good one to have for life. So why do athletes use them if knowing the side affects? Is the only answer they have for this is to be stronger, bigger, and better than anyone else. Well if this is the case then these athletes really need to get their priorities straight and look forward into the future to see how bad its going to turn out, if they continue using.
Not only is there medical problems with using steroids in sports, but its also cheating. No matter if you use a little bit or are a regular user, it doesn’t matter how you look at it it’s cheating. Taking a form of a drug to better ones game, should make people realize that this is wrong and is becoming more of a bigger problem. We need to stop this before its to late and before you know it we will see the use of steroids in athletes who are in high school or even middle school. There is no right reason to take them and we should not turn our head when we know of an athlete who is using or even one who has them in their possession. If every time we turn our head on a matter like this, are we really showing and teaching these young athletes that this is wrong and that its cheating. No were showing them that its fine and that they can keep using until someone  really wants to take this action. This is definitely true with the professional athletes, cause the way they handle and portray being an athlete user is that its fine and that athletes should be users. Because these professional athletes are not going out and telling young athletes that taking steroids are bad and that they shouldn’t take them. No, the only thing they are doing is defending themselves when they get caught. Now does this seem like the right thing to do?
Peer pressure plays a major part in the use of steroids in athletes. Why most athletes are users is, because of other athletes using and pressuring them to do it as well. They think that if they use as well then they’ll be accepted by others and be just as good as them. But really its just displaying a false image and giving them something not worth relying on. Being an athlete steroid user is something against our norms and something our society doesn’t accept. But this is something most athlete user don’t care about. They only care about becoming a better athlete and I think this is what pays a heavy toll and pressures them to becoming users.
So it just comes down to it that using steroids in sports is bad and really wrong. There is no if, ands, or buts about it, its just wrong end of story. There is nothing good that comes from it and its cheating. So that’s why we really need to crack down on this matter and stick to playing sports the right way. If we do this then the younger athletes will follow in the footsteps of the older athletes. And by doing this we wont have to worry about seeing steroids use in younger athletes. So it pretty much boils down to that we shouldn’t take steroids no matter how peer pressured you are or how much you think its cool. Because I bet you that whatever others are telling you about it is only lying to you. So just say “no” and you won’t have to worry about the medical problems or getting caught.

This entry was posted on 26. April 2010 at 08:00 and is filed under Introduction to Sociology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.