The Nightmare Of Steroids

The trouble for some of us was that we couldn't sleep—that's one of the things steroids did to me—so we drank a lot at night because there wasn't anything better to do. I could drink a dozen beers and maybe eight or nine shots of vodka or bourbon in a few hours, easy. And because of the steroids and the booze, I'd get into fights.

Five nights before our first game of the season, against The Citadel, I was in a bar, and I got into an argument with this guy. I told him if he wanted to fight, to come out into the alley, which he did, and when he pulled his arm from behind his back, he was holding a 12-inch deer knife. He swung at me and I blocked it. Then he swung lower, and I couldn't tell if he got me or not. Just then one of my teammates, Woody Myers, came into the alley, and the guy tried to stab him. Woody and I jumped behind a car, but when I looked over my shoulder, I saw that the whole back of my shirt was soaked with blood. I put my finger in a hole under my right arm. The guy ran away and, before too long, the paramedics came. They were shocked at how high my blood pressure was, particularly after I'd lost so much blood. They asked if I was on steroids, and I said yes. At the hospital I told the doctor to stitch me up tight because I had a game that week.

The coaches were very upset when they found out what had happened, but they told me not to discuss it with anybody. "It's not what we want to talk to the press about," Morrison said. So nobody found out. And I played against The Citadel, my first college game, with a stab wound under my pads.

After a few games our nosetackle got hurt, and I moved from defensive end to nose and played a lot. I did pretty well, but I was still going against guys who weighed 280 or 290 pounds. I ordered some rhesus monkey hormones from back home—two bottles, 20 injections, for $800—and it came Federal Express. It was supposed to be great stuff, able to build muscle without a lot of the water retention steroids cause. But I didn't get any size off it, so I think it was fake.

I was getting steroids for a lot of guys now through my source. He had a close friend who was a doctor, and he could get anything we wanted. I'd sell the stuff, but I didn't make a profit from it. I knew it was wrong, but I rationalized that the guys wanted the steroids and I could get high quality juice instead of the junk some guys were getting from Mexico and other places, stuff with no labels or anything on it.

By my junior year I'd say about 50 guys out of the 100 on the team were using steroids—almost all the offensive linemen and a lot of other players. And I'm convinced that we weren't much different from other major college teams. Believe me, players can tell. I'd say the majority of recent All-America offensive linemen have used steroids. You can tell what steroid users look like—pink and puffy skin, swollen faces and necks, but very tight skin wherever there's muscle. I'd play against these guys and they'd be huffing and puffing, and we'd look at each other and one of us would say, "How's that blood pressure?" And there's eye contact that says, "Yeah, I know. It's rough out here playing on drugs."

Before the North Carolina State game in '84, I tore ligaments in my right big toe in a pileup in practice. We were undefeated at the time, 7-0, and Washburn said he needed me. I couldn't push off on the foot and it hurt tremendously, but I wanted to play. So the day of the game I went into the back room with Dr. Peele, Washburn and Morrison. Morrison told somebody to lock the door because he didn't want the referees walking in on this. Washburn held my hand while Dr. Peele injected my toe joint with Xylocaine. When he was done I couldn't feel my foot at all. It wasn't till the painkiller wore off during the bus ride home that I was in agony.

I played in the next two games, against Florida State and Navy, but missed the Clemson game because of problems with my toe and back. We finished the regular season 10-1 and went to the Gator Bowl, where we lost to Oklahoma State.

It had been a successful season for me, so being the kind of obsessive guy I am, I went even harder into steroids. Real hard. During the spring I was taking two cc's of testosterone every third day and 10 Dianabol tablets daily, a huge amount. Washburn looked at me and said, "Wow, what did you take? Everything but the kitchen sink?"

I liked being on the edge; most athletes do. We're thrill-seekers. Athletics itself is a high. Football players will do wild things because it keeps them on the edge. At South Carolina, when we had time off, some of us would take our guns and go out and shoot—at anything—to keep from getting bored. Taking steroids was just another way of living on the edge. And it became a big social thing. Seven or eight of us heavy users would get in a dorm room together and start shooting each other up. Guys would show up with their bottles, and there'd be a lot of chatter: I shoot you, you shoot me. We all enjoyed it. I had boxes of syringes that I got from certain pharmacies in Columbia for 20 bucks for 100. We'd say it was for B-12 shots, but those needles are shorter and you need an inch or so to do steroids intramuscularly. They would give us the longer needles as long as we signed "B-12" in the book.