Steroid Nation: Juiced Home Run Totals, Anti-aging Miracles, and a Hercules in Every High School: The Secret History of America's True Drug Addiction

by Shaun Assael

When science lets us fulfill our greatest desires, where do we stop? Should Barry Bonds’s startling achievements be listed in the record book with an asterisk because he has been accused of using steroids? Did performance-enhancing drugs play a role in Lance Armstrong’s seven Tour de France victories? And what does Arnold Schwarzenegger’s continued success say about the appeal of his steroid-fueled bodybuilding persona?In the tradition of  And the Band Played On , award-winning journalist Shaun Assael looks at America’s complicated love affair with steroids and how it has grown into the country’s—and perhaps the world’s—most insidious drug addiction.

Steroid Nation  presents a chilling portrait of a nation enamored of artificially pumped-up success. Chronicling steroid use far beyond the headlines, it begins with the bodybuilders of Venice Beach in the 1970s and continues through to the NFL’s Raiders of the ’80s and ’90s and the baseball scandals of today. Assael also reveals the dramatic story of the godfather of the steroid Dan Duchaine, who wrote  The Original Underground Steroid Handbook  in 1981.

Part detective story, part medical investigation, and part sociological examination,  Steroid Nation  is a groundbreaking work on the most compelling story in the sports world today.

Genres: Sports, Nonfiction, Science

368 pages, Hardcover

First published October 23, 2007

Reviews

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mixed bag. The best parts of the book are those about Dan Duchaine, the Gold's Gym bodybuilding scene of the 70's and 80's, and the birth of the steroid underworld. Those chapters provide an enjoyable look at an emerging subculture and its manic. risk-taking characters. I also enjoyed the details of Lyle Alzado's later years (RIP) as well as the gossip about Venice Beach muscle-heads committing burglaries and turning tricks to afford their anabolics. The early California steroid scene's fusion of seediness, excess, tragedy and rebellion is thrilling, and deserves expansion into a documentary film or series. Sadly, the book loses all of its momentum and becomes a lackluster chore when it covers BALCO and the so-called doping scandals of the early 2000's. Too much time is spent rehashing the daily schedules of the petty-minded and ineffectual bureaucrats who run the anti-doping agencies. Do you care to read 5 pages about some self-righteous lab nerd testifying before Congress about the risks of trenbolone? I sure didn't! The author is also too impressed with the law enforcement guys who hunted down the various amateur chemists, enterprising meatheads, and Mexican businessmen who once controlled the U.S. steroid trade. These stories provide a depressing lesson in civil liberties abuse; the author treats the overreaching and self-important pretend cops like downtrodden heroes. They are anything but, and deserve public ridicule rather than the sympathy and mild praise given by the author. Borrow this one and read the first third. Skim the rest. If you enjoy learning about the sketchy side of bodybuilding, check out "Muscle: A Writer's Trip Through a Sport with No Boundaries" by Jon Hotten.

[Brendan Crowley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Steroid Nation sets out to tell the story of how steroids and steroid use became a significant part of sporting life in the USA. Assael paints a broad canvas that stretches from the mavericks that started an underground steroid movement to the very highest levels of professional sport. The book follows a chronological timeline from Gold’s gym in LA in the 80’s right up to the BALCO case in 2007.

This is the second of Assael’s books I have read, and like ‘The Murder of Sonny Liston’ it contains a cast of characters that at times seem too unbelievable to be true. The book is at it’s best when it tells the untold story of the likes of Dan Duchaine and the underground bodybuilding scene of the 1970’s and 80’s. At times these chapters reminded me of movies like Blow that focus on the emergence of a drug empire from a largely unexpected source. Assael paints an intoxicating picture of excess, greed, muscles and risk – young men embarking on a journey with a self-righteousness that left them blind to the inevitable tragedies that would befall them.

Some of the other material deserves (and has received) full length books of their own and Assael can understandably only scratch the surface of Ben Johnson, Mark McGwire and BALCO for example. What it does do brilliantly is tie the various streams together and paint the wider cultural issue of steroids- it’s a problem at every level of sport – from gym users, to high school to the major leagues and Olympics. The political background of how supplements/steroids became (badly) regulated in the US is also really interesting. Overall, the book is a brilliant introduction to the world of sports doping and would send a curious reader towards other really good books like The Dirtiest Race in History or League of Denial

Assael also shines a light on the crusading drug enforcement officials – if anything the focus on the likes of Travis Taggart has gotten even brighter since this book was published. The book paints the origins of the USDA’s move to start to ban people on the basis of documentary evidence rather than relying on a failed test – the approach that ultimately led to Lance Armstrong confessing. These parts of the book flow less smoothly or quickly than the rest – I found them very interesting though and it’s clear that Assael has enormous respect for those law enforcement officers who dedicated their careers to this fight. It’s slightly depressing reading about these guys at a time when WADA is being discredited for its favourable treatment of Russia and an apparent lack of objectivity.

I really enjoyed Steroid Nation. I’m conscious that I’ve just read this book 10 years after it first came out. It feels like a sequel (or a revised and updated edition) would be a similarly fascinating read with Lance Armstrong now exposed, the Russian doping scandal and plenty of additional material available. If anything, I would suspect that the term Steroid Nation remains as apt and relevant to describe sporting culture as it did a decade ago.

You can read all of my sports book reviews at https://allsportsbooks.reviews

[Dylan Gilmer]

Very good read for people who want to learn how steroids became a big thing in the sports and fitness world.

[Stephan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The history of steroids told by those who helped spread it's lethal impact across sports history. Great read.

Fun fact: Human growth hormone (HGH) is extracted from cadavers.

[Shawn Stone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gold’s Gym - Venice California. circa 1980s. Steroid dealer Michael Zumpano holds sway over the small assembled crowd of gym rats in an impromptu seminar for anyone wanting to learn the secrets of the chemically assisted. Among that audience was misfit genius, Dan Duchaine who hung on every word. Together they would go on to collaborate and co-author the now infamous “Underground Steroid Handbook”. From these inauspicious beginnings, few would have predicted that the trickle of interest sparked by this union would lead to the torrent of events outlined in Shaun Assael’s, Steroid Nation.

Whereas many of the books on this list focus on a single sport, this ambitious work traces the evolution and eventual explosion in PED use from the early 80s-2000’s. Among the bodybuilding subculture, the names of the various pioneers and luminaries are instantly recognisable. - Duchaine, Bill Phillips, Bruce Kneller, Patrick Arnold, Scott Connelly, Victor Conte are all pivotal pieces in this multi-layered chess game between dealers, smugglers, manufacturers and law enforcement.

The accumulating media scandals featuring celebrities and high profile sports stars only served to further pour fuel on a growing fire leading to the misunderstood demonisation and criminalisation of these potent, but otherwise mostly benign substances.

But the Pandora’s box had been opened and the steroid genie was out of the bottle. America’s love addiction with PEDs had been sealed and the law enforcers would always be running at a handicap in an unwinnable race of prohibition.

I can’t recommend this book highly enough for someone wanting an entertaining, well written and researched, wide-angle lens perspective of the steroid scene over the last 30-40 years. For those that enjoyed Chris Bell’s documentary, “Bigger, Faster, Stronger”, this book makes the perfect companion piece for those wanting to delve deeper into the backstory on the rise of the Steroid Nation.

Favourite Quotes

"To Duchaine, Gold’s was a supermarket of dysfunctional young women who looked up to him and considered him the stable one. And in the world that he had helped to create — that world of make believe where people never got married or held day jobs and worked out slavishly so they could carry an ideal of perfection through an imperfect world — perhaps he was."

"When Rozelle was named commissioner in 1969, Dianabol was as common as salt tablets. In the San Diego Chargers locker room, bowls of the pink tablets used to be laid out on a table for anyone to take"

"At the meeting attended by a half-dozen subcommittee members, de Mérode announced that he had serious reservations about the machine that was responsible for the five positives that Catlin had disclosed, a high-resolution mass spectrometer. It was too new to be trusted, he said. Catlin bit his tongue. The Prince had been the one who approved the machines in the first place. What he was saying now was plainly just an excuse. It also showed the way things worked. He was dealing with it by burying the whole episode. The Prince had once again decided that guilty athletes didn’t need to be punished in his Olympic realm."

"Bill Romanowski opened up the tackle box he had brought with him to Qualcomm Stadium and proudly showed it off to the reporters gathered around him. Divided into neat sections were 500 pills that amounted to a tasting menu from the kitchen of the NFL’s most lunatic linebacker. If there was an heir to Lyle Alzado, it was Romo."

"In a conversation with a reporter for the Spanish daily El Mundo, Samaranch confided that he had two issues with doping. The first, he said, is that it is “harmful to an athlete’s health,” The second is that “it artificially augments his performance.” Had he stopped there, he would have been fine. But the aging Samaranch went on to draw a distinction only a businessman could love: “If it’s just the second case,” he added, then “for me that’s not doping.” Reading the remark in his lab in Los Angeles, Don Catlin buried his head in his hands. The cycling scandal involving Willy Voet proved what he had been saying all along: that things were getting worse, not better. EPO? Asaflow? They made Ben Johnson’s stanozonol look quaint by comparison. Yet the best the leader of the Olympic movement could do was to say he didn’t think any of it was wrong"

"When Weider decided to sell the stable, he found a suitor in American Media, an upstart company that had recently acquired a trifecta of supermarket tabloids — National Enquirer, Globe, and Star. Its CEO was a veteran magazine executive named David Pecker. During a private dinner with Weider, Pecker had brought up Schwarzenegger. According to Weider, Pecker believed the actor’s links to the company were still vital to the magazines’ interests. “Joe, we’ve done enough on Arnold,” Pecker confided, referring to the Enquirer’s coverage. “We’re going to lay off of him. We’re not going to pull up any dirt on him,”"

[Gene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gift given to me by a friend in the bodybuilding and fitness industry - on my workstation here to read...

Just finished this and it's a pretty good read - here's what I wrote on my blog:
Well, a good friend of mine who I originally met through the bodybuilding and fitness scene sent me this book after he had read it. I hadn’t heard of Steroid Nation before, but of course the subject matter is quite familiar having worked in the industry so long. The first thing I was struck by was the whole back story on Dan Duchaine. I had met Dan through a friend and former Ms. Olympia , Andrulla Blanchette, and we would see each other at shows.

In one of my earlier reports he let me use some of his commentary (1996 NPC Nationals). It was also Dan who first exposed me to GHB and I didn’t realize how much he was responsible for that drugs popularity. I knew he was the ‘guru’ but he never treated me in a way that made me feel like he was someone important and he did impart one piece of advice I later used.

Having been in prison, he said: “You find out who your real friends are when you go to prison.” I later recalled that advice when Dave Palumbo had to serve time. I sent a few photos and reports on contests happening to Dave and got some letters back. It’s kind of neat to get mail from prison I guess?

Anyhow the book overall is a good recap of what affect steroids have had in our society and when you are close to so much of it, it’s even more interesting. The book might go into more detail than someone outside the industry would care for, but when you are inside, it’s nice to see how others perceive things. It’s a quick read too although it looks like it’s longer since the last 40 or so pages are source notes and such.

[Manny Furious · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a pretty quick and entertaining read about how steroids and other like-substances grew from a handful of niche "communities" in the very early 80s to being taken by high schoolers, middle schoolers and regular Joe's throughout the entire country. If you're interested in learning about steroids in either the chemical or biological sense (what they are, exactly and/or what they do to your body), this probably isn't the book for you.

The book is impressive in its combination of scope and conciseness. There are literally a couple of dozen of primary figures that are covered in a book of about 300 pages. Nearly 30 years are covered and the settings cover at least a half-dozen countries, and, yet, I didn't get the feeling that I was missing out on much. If anything, I thought the book could've been 25 pages shorter. The slowest parts, to me, were the parts that covered steroid use in baseball. Although it had to be covered, I think most people will be familiar with the general story that reading about McGuire and Bonds will be redundant. Every time you start itching to learn something new about people like Patrick Arnold, Dan Duchaine or Don Catlin, you have to spend a couple of pages reading about Jose Canseco--whom I'm already pretty familiar with. Still, he's part of this large story and leaving out that aspect of the story would be a thematic failure, so it's just a minor quibble on my part.

Overall, the book does have an anti-steroid perspective, as just about nobody in the narrative who gets involved with either the manufacture, distribution or ingestion/injection of these substances comes out unscathed, but the book is far from preachy or didactic about the issue.

[Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought Steroid Nation would be more about the people who do steroids and why they do them, but instead, it was more about the history of the drug and the prosecution of the people who traffic it. It wasn't particularly good and I wouldn't recommend it unless you're especially interested in steroids.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably one of the best books I've read all year. It read like fiction with loads of detail and intertwined lives. The author did a great job with background research for all the people in this book. The book examines the lives of users, dealers, manufacturers and those trying to shut them down. Also goes into the big name stories like Canseco, Marion Jones, etc.

[Oliver Bateman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eh, you know. A readable account that takes you from Dan Duchaine to the late 2000s. A primer on the steroid era. But couldn't more have been done here? That's easy enough to say when you're procrastinating on literally every writing project you've started, I suppose. But you know: basic bland mass-produced okay "overview" of a given topic. Nuff said.

[Luis Perez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Juiced home run stories, anti-aging miracles and a Hercules in every high school: The secret history of America’s true drug addiction.

Really good, if a bit sensational at times. Overall, a very balanced take on an often murky topic that the general public is mostly clueless about.

[Craig Cecil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scarier than even I thought it would be. Assael's fact-filled story of America's drug-induced decline opens up a rabbit hole much deeper than I thought. The biggest disappointment? How far back the cheating started at the Olympics.

[Mo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting cautionary tale about steroids and doping. It's more about the sports side of things as opposed to the bodybuilding side of things, so I was kinda bummed.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book. One of the biggest problems with it was that there was actually a lot more that I wanted to know about a number of subjects the authored covered.

[Vaden Earle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book exposing the reality of performance enhancing drugs. Not the spin that you would think!

[Chantel · Rating 3 out of 5]

In an effort to read books outside of what I would usually read, I read this book. It was actually pretty interesting.