Getting Physical-and Chemical

I can't believe how big steroids are. And the kids! I can't believe the people who use steroids. They just want to be bigger; they aren't doing it for sport—or business.

I look at lifting weights as building a set of my own protective armor, because what we wear out there isn't enough. You take such a pounding out there, even going against people your own size and quickness. You've got to spend the offseason refitting your own armor. It's like refitting tanks during World War II.

In order to compete at this business, you absolutely have to know the pluses and minuses that come along with using steroids. Maybe kidney and liver disease when you're older.

But you do what you have to do, otherwise you don't have your job. I don't want to leave this game broken and crippled. And I know that, with steroids, I have less chance of being broken and crippled because I will be stronger. Of course, anyone who uses steroids wants more research done. We want to know what we'll be facing 50, 60—even 20—years from now. Then it will be easier to make a concrete choice about using steroids. Right now, there's an X factor. You don't know what the X factor is, but you do know you're reaping benefits. In mini-camp [last month] I had Tampa Bay test my liver. I want to know what the steroids are doing to me. I don't have the results yet.

Everyone's cycle is different. It's a chemical thing in your body. When I use steroids, I don't want my weight to go up. I want to increase my strength only. I started on a cycle beginning last January. I weighed 272. I waited until after the season, when I had no bumps and bruises. I needed the time for my body to heal. At the end of the season, your strength is depleted. You try to maintain the strength you reach in the off-season, but it's impossible.

So I came to Boulder [ Colo.] to train and got started in the middle of January. I was working six days a week, twice a day. In the mornings, I worked on bench presses, inclines, dead lifts and squats. In the evenings, I worked on assistance muscles, doing leg extensions, triceps, weighted dips. I worked on specific muscle groups, isolated them.

On my first eight-week cycle I did anabolics in doses of descending order. I took Winstrol, that's an oral. I took Anavar, another oral. I took Deca-Durabolin, an injectable. I took the orals every day. I injected once or twice a week. For instance, I injected 300 milligrams of Deca-Durabolin in both weeks 1 and 2 along with 50 milligrams a day of Winstrol and 50 a day of Anavar. [According to a standard textbook, The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, the recommended dosage for medical purposes is 50 to 100 milligrams every three to four weeks for Deca-Durabolin, six milligrams a day for Winstrol and five to 10 milligrams a day for Anavar.]

When you're in the middle of the juice, on a cycle, you feel like you could bench-press every day. I haven't, but I feel like I could. When you're in the middle of a cycle, you don't know what can happen in your lifts. You have increases that surprise you. Once when I was on the juice, near the middle of a cycle, I benched six to eight reps at 450 pounds, then three days later did six to eight reps at 475. That's 25 pounds in three days!

The heaviest cycle I've ever been on was before the last NFL weightlifting contest [a made-for-TV event not sanctioned by the league] in 1982. I took oral Dianabol, Anadrol-50, Anavar and Winstrol. In the last weeks of that cycle, man, I was real irritable. I had bad abdominal cramps. I went home to help my father in the yard, and I was bending over, and I had the worst cramps. I was doing three Anadrol-50s a day, and I cut them out. There were times when I was standing in the kitchen with my friend who's a powerlifter and who injects me, and we said to ourselves, "What are we? Crazy?!" And then I tell myself that I'm doing this just so I can be better at my job.

The only negative side effects I've experienced are that I break out a little on the skin, and I get irritable and very aggressive. You have a shorter temper, so you avoid situations that will aggravate you. Another side effect is sexual. It's real bad, although it depends on the individual. I feel more impulsive.