Over the last few months, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about drugs.
 
Giggle giggle, chuckle chuckle… I know that’s an odd statement to start off an article, but I’m serious about it. Let me tell you what I mean. At the time I’m writing this, it’s August 2018. About six months ago, I had an idea to write a book about drugs in Olympic weightlifting. I thought it would be a timely topic since our sport is currently under probation with the International Olympic Committee for all the doping scandals we’ve produced in recent years. I just finished the book a few days ago, which obviously means I’ve been pretty consumed with thoughts and ideas about performance-enhancing drugs for quite a while now. It’s a hell of a book, I don’t mind telling you. It should be available for you to read sometime soon.
 
When we talk about drugs in Olympic weightlifting, everybody knows we’re mainly talking about anabolic steroids and human growth hormone. These are the Big Two. People occasionally get popped for ephedrine or some other kind of stimulant, but the vast majority of the drug bans in our sport come from steroids and HGH. These are banned substances, and you get suspended from competition if you get caught taking them. Common knowledge, right?
 
Sure, but that’s where my mind starts to drift towards another conversation about performance-enhancing drugs (which we’ll call PEDs for the remainder of this article). Let me tell you a little story to illustrate what I’m talking about.
 
Several years ago, I spent some time training with a guy who was one of the top MMA fighters in the world (at that time). He was a beast, obviously. Good guy, too. After we had known each other for a while, I asked him about drugs in his sport. I’m not really on the inside with fighting sports, so I was curious to know if PEDs were as prevalent in MMA as they are in weightlifting. Here’s what he told me:
“Well, obviously steroids are huge. A lot of the top guys are using them. But the thing that’s really the biggest problem is painkillers. It’s hard to function without them, and I’m not talking about Advil or ibuprofen. I’m talking high-grade opiates. The heavy stuff.”
 
He went on to tell me that he was basically addicted to painkillers, as were a lot of the guys he knew in the fight game. (Keep in mind, this was in the early years of MMA before the sport was drug tested. I don’t know if it’s still the same now.)
 
So…I want to talk about PEDs in this article, but in a different way from the normal conversations we usually have about them. We’re going to take a look at various kinds of performance-enhancing drugs, and the reasons why some of them become banned substances while others don’t. As I already said, whenever we mention PEDs, people automatically think about steroids and other banned substances like EPO that gets used by cyclists. However, it’s important to understand that there’s a much wider range of drugs that get used to enhance performance, and some of them are completely legal despite being just as effective and potentially dangerous as anabolic steroids.
 
If you’re an athlete, you’re going to hear about these things at some point in your career, and you might be tempted to take them. If you’re a coach, you’d better believe your athletes are being exposed to this stuff. Everybody needs as much awareness and education about this subject as possible, so let’s take a deeper look at it.
 
Painkillers
 
I want to give you some of my personal background in painkillers, because I think it’s a good way to build a general understanding of them. Throughout my first few years in the sport, I basically took no supplements or medications of any kind. Not even aspirin. I was beat up and sore all the time, just like every other weightlifter in the world, but not bad enough to think I needed any outside help to deal with it.
 
However, as I progressed up through the national ranks and my lifts got bigger and bigger, the daily training pain got worse. When I was doing 105 kg snatches and 135 kg C&Js every day, I was able to hang with the program and make all my lifts with tolerable pain. But once I reached the point where I was doing 130 kg snatches and 165 kg C&Js every day, it all changed. The pain and inflammation in my joints and muscles went to a whole new level, and I started having situations where I came to the gym and I could barely train. The club I lifted for had a brutal program that pushed us all to maximum levels of performance, but there was a heavy physical price that had to be paid every day. I honestly think we were training harder than most of the lifters in the US. I believed that then, and I still believe it now. But the workload was stretching the limits of what I could withstand.
 
Keep in mind, I have a high pain tolerance. I grew up playing violent sports like football and wrestling, where savage pain is something you just learn to live with. You also learn not to whine or complain about it. Sucking it up and getting your job done regardless of how badly you’re beat up was always just a basic expectation in those sports, and I took that mentality with me to weightlifting.
 
Still, there’s a limit to how tough we can be before pain brings us to our knees. That’s basically what was happening to me, and that’s when I found out about anti-inflammatories. Somebody in our gym had a connection at a hospital that could supply us with medical-grade NSAIDs (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs), and this turned out to be a complete game changer for me. I started taking an NSAID called Voltaren, which was the trade name of a drug called Diclofenac. Voltaren was an extremely powerful anti-inflammatory that drastically reduced the pain I was dealing with. Its potency put Advil to shame, and it became a mandatory staple of my weightlifting life throughout my career at the national level. I’ll openly admit that I don’t think I could have made it through those years without it.
 
You see, NSAIDs aren’t banned substances in weightlifting. They’re legal and allowed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). I got drug tested regularly during my best years, and I never had any problems despite the fact that I was taking Voltaren the whole time.
 
Are there any health risks or adverse effects associated with Voltaren (and NSAIDs in general)? Yes, there are. NSAIDs can increase the risk of ulcers and gastrointestinal bleeds, heart problems, and kidney disease. As with all drugs, these problems are largely connected to the size of the dosage. Did I have any health problems during my Voltaren years? No, I didn’t. But I also didn’t let the dosage get out of hand. I took NSAIDs for a long time, but I didn’t take large amounts.
 
And do you want to hear something funny? Throughout all those years, I took pride in calling myself a drug-free lifter. I didn’t take any steroids or banned substances, so I considered myself “clean.” I know, I know… You’re all thinking the same thing, and you’re right. That takes us to the next part of our analysis.
 
Apparently, some drugs are okay!
 
Make no mistake about it…I took drugs throughout my competitive career. There’s no way around this. I called myself a drug-free lifter, but that was a misnomer. I took Voltaren, which is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory DRUG!! Holy crap! I was a druggie, and I didn’t even know it!!
 
Maybe what I should have been saying all those years was that I didn’t take any performance-enhancing drugs. That might have been a more correct term, right? Steroids are the real performance enhancers in weightlifting. Everybody knows that. I didn’t take steroids, so I wasn’t taking any PEDs. That sounds better. Whew! For a second there, I thought I might have had to admit that I wasn’t truly a “clean” lifter.
 
Uuuhhh… Hang on a second. Voltaren absolutely, positively enhanced my performance. There’s not a doubt in my mind. It reduced my pain to a tolerable level, making it possible for me to train harder, which led me to bigger weights and more success. NSAIDs are drugs that enhance performance. That makes them…PEDs.
 
I guess what I can say is that I didn’t take any banned substances. That’s true for sure. I can honestly say I played by the rules. But this conversation makes us ask ourselves a question: do the rules make any SENSE?
 
Anabolic steroids have potential health risks, just like NSAIDs. Anabolic steroids make you physically capable of performing at a higher level, just like NSAIDs. So, why are steroids banned, while NSAIDs are legal?
 
I answered this question in detail in my book, which I expect all of you to read. But for the purposes of this article, I think there are three main reasons why steroids are banned and NSAIDs aren’t. 1) They’re both performance enhancers, but I think it’s extremely obvious and reasonable to state that steroids are much LARGER performance enhancers. NSAIDs take away your pain, but steroids can jack your strength level through the roof. They’re an entirely different level of assistance. 2) They both have potential health risks and side effects that are mainly dependent on how much you take. However, all the research I’ve ever read, along with the mountains of anecdotal evidence I’ve seen over the years, leads me to believe the physical hazards of steroids are worse than NSAIDs. 3) Steroids have been demonized in the media as being evil tools of cheaters, and NSAIDs haven’t received the same treatment. I’m not saying this is right or wrong, but it’s definitely one of the main reasons for the criminalization of steroids. Society considers them unethical, and painkillers just aren’t looked at the same way.
 
The bottom line is this: the system says some PEDs are okay, and others aren’t. You might not be taking banned substances, but that doesn’t mean you’re a drug-free lifter. So, where does that leave all of you? Does any of this have any relevance in your personal career?
 
Warnings and Acknowledgements
 
I want to make something very clear at this point. A lot of steroid users I’ve met in my life try to use this same conversation to justify their drug use. They rant and rave about the exact points I’ve just made, how there are plenty of legal drugs out there that enhance your performance, and they try to use the hypocrisy of the anti-doping system to clear themselves of being cheaters.
 
I don’t want anybody to think I’m trying to make that argument. It’s true there’s an obvious double-standard when it comes to which PEDs are banned and which ones are legal, but that’s an entirely separate conversation from violating the rules of a sport. Even if you don’t agree with the rules, you’re still cheating if you break them. The inconsistency of PED treatment by the IOC and WADA doesn’t excuse athletes who knowingly take banned substances. Apples and oranges.
 
Also, I know it’s entirely possible that some of you might be Google searching Voltaren right now, trying to figure out a way to get your hands on some because I wrote about how much it helped me. PLEASE don’t think I’m recommending or condoning the use of NSAIDs. Yes, it’s true that I took them for years and didn’t suffer any health problems. But that doesn’t mean YOU won’t suffer health problems if you take them. I’m not going to mention any names, but I knew an elite lifter from my era who had to spend some serious time in the hospital because his liver was swelled up to the size of a football from his NSAID use. People are different, physical reactions to drugs are different, and you’re rolling the dice if you decide to take ANY drug.
 
If you’re a lifter or a coach, it’s important to be as educated as possible on these issues because the inconsistency in PED treatment by drug testing organizations can lead to bad messages for the athletes. Athletes sometimes think just because a drug isn’t on the banned substance list, it’s not really a “drug.” That leads them to thinking it’s safe, and they think they have a green light to take as much as they want. I didn’t go crazy with Voltaren, but I’ve known plenty of others who went totally off the deep end with some of this stuff, like my football-liver friend I just mentioned. That’s one of the main points I want to make in this article. A drug’s legal status sometimes affects people’s perspective of its safety, and that can be dangerous territory. Caution has to be exercised with any pharmaceutical, whether it’s banned in sport or not.
 
Coaches, make sure you understand your athletes are living in an era when drugs are advertised on television every five minutes, and getting your hands on them is just a mouse click away. Keep your radar sharp about what’s going on with your athletes. And for Pete’s sake, teach them properly. We’ve had plenty of coaches in this country who have paid the price for not keeping close tabs on what their lifters are doing, and plenty of athletes who got flattened in one way or another for rolling the dice. We know there’s hypocrisy and inconsistency in the treatment of drugs, but that doesn’t excuse you from making smart decisions with your own career. Be informed, be aware, be responsible, and be smart.