Great title, huh?

I have a warped sense of humor, so I’ve always thought it would be funny to write articles with offensive titles, like “How To Be An Effective Leader When You Hate Almost Everybody,” or “Having Children: The Destruction of Your Dreams.” But none of these connect to weightlifting. Plus, I weep little unicorn tears into my pillow at night if I know I’ve offended anybody.

Since this is going to be about drugs, I thought it would be cool to give it a ludicrous title and then sit back and giggle while people do what they often do anyway…make comments about my articles without actually reading them. So I’ll give this one a new title (for real this time). Here it is:

The Drug Issue: More Questions than Answers
By Matt Foreman

Everybody knows that drugs are a big part of strength sports, especially at the top levels. If you don’t already know this, I guess I’m the bearer of bad tidings. In Olympic weightlifting, drugs are against the rules. It’s a tested sport. And lots of people who compete in it are juiced to the gills. Sometimes they get caught. Sometimes they don’t. In other words, drugged athletes are competing against clean athletes. It’s not a level playing field.

Drug testing in the United States is very strict and serious (in Olympic lifting). Because of this, most of our top athletes are clean. There’s some juicing going on at the national level, but it’s not a pandemic. I was a regular on the national scene for fifteen years along with my teammates, who were virtually all ranked in the top echelon of the US. We got drug tested all the time, and I mean ALL the time. Testing officers would knock on our doors at practically all hours of the day and night, demanding a urine specimen. I have no idea how you would be able to take drugs and still function in our national system. The strictness of the testing program basically just eliminated any possibility of cheating and getting away with it. It’s still this way now.

Overseas? Well, that’s a horse of a different color. In most of the top international countries in the world, drugs are simply part of the program. Their lifters are loaded up, but they usually pass tests because their drug plans are carefully monitored and controlled, allowing them to stay under the radar and avoid getting popped. They’ve got it down to a science. And in non-Olympic sports like strongman, powerlifting, bodybuilding, and CrossFit, drug testing is somewhere between weak and non-existent. This obviously allows competitors to hit the dope pretty hard.

What I want to do in this article is simply examine the drug issue, and your personal status in the area. You’re involved in strength sports, in some way. That means you’re at least somewhat connected to the drug thing, whether you like it or not. It might be far removed from your daily life spectrum, but it’s still something you have to deal with on some level. Where do you stand? What’s your philosophy? How do you relate to others in the sport who have opposite perspectives from yours? Tricky questions, to be sure. So let’s see if we can find some answers.

The Lay of the Land…

If you’re a clean athlete and you’re competing at a high level, you get pretty pissed about drugs. When you’ve committed your life to being a weightlifter, following the rules, and trying to work your way to the top, you take it a lot more personally when your competitors are dirty. Your career is being held back because you’re being cheated. I think this is why some of our top US Olylifters get prickly when they talk about this, and it’s understandable. It’s tough to stay calm when you’re in this position. People who are looking at things from the outside, so to speak, can have a more casual attitude towards juicing because they’re not the ones getting drilled in the old wazzoo.

Interestingly, I was right in the prime years of my weightlifting career when the internet rose to prominence, so I was in the first wave of lifters who got on message boards and forums to talk online about weightlifting. An old forum called GoHeavy.com was the hotbed of internet weightlifting gossip and feuding, and I have to admit I was right in the thick of the fray most of the time…especially when it came to the drug issue. I was young, headstrong, and ready to pound my shoe on the table and rant about the evil scumbag drug users of our sport. I was a lifetime drug-free athlete, and getting cheated didn’t sit well with me.

Did any of this commotion accomplish anything? Not really. Is there any way to really “accomplish anything” in the fight against doping and cheating? Are strength sports ever going to be completely clean…free from the contamination of drugs? I suppose it’s possible. It’ll probably happen right around the same time all the terrorists in Pakistan decide to join hands with Mormon missionaries and sing Toby Keith songs about how great America is.

What about the Olylifters from the drug countries? They’re breaking the rules, so are they villains? Well… I understand the predicament they’re in. First of all, many of them come from poor backgrounds. When their country selects them to be in a national weightlifting program, it’s an opportunity to make a good living. If they become world champions, it can be the gateway to a better life. At some point in their early careers, their coaches say, “Here, take these medications.” It’s not even presented as a choice. It’s simply something you do if you want to become a champion, just like everybody else. There’s not a big moral conundrum attached to it like there is in this country. They look at steroids much the same way we look at ibuprofen. They’re in a completely different situation and culture, so they just take the stuff. Personally, I think most of us would do the same thing if we were in the same position. So…how are we supposed to feel about this?

Some people say, “If you glorify the lifters from the drug countries, you’re glorifying the drugs. You can’t admire juiced lifters if you’re anti-drug.” I understand this idea. It’s legit. But my personal opinion is a little different. I’m an opponent of the doping situation in weightlifting, but I still admire the amazing lifts we see at the worlds and Olympics from lifters who are obviously doping. Does this make any sense?

This is why I don’t like writing about the drug subject. My opinions about it are confusing. I’ll openly admit there are contradictions and fallacies in my logic. You don’t need to point them out. I already know. It’s a messy issue, and it leads to some messy analysis.

So let’s talk about you for a second…

I’m writing about this because it’s pretty important to know where you stand on the drug question if you’re involved in any level of strength sports. I also think your opinion should be based on an understanding of all the factors that contribute to this swamp.

Obviously, you have to make your own decision about it as an athlete…to juice or not to juice. What have you personally decided? What were your reasons? Can you explain them to others? If you stay clean and you compete against juicers, you’ll have to accept the fact that many of them are going to move ahead of you. Trust me…that fact will taste like battery acid when you try to swallow it. It’ll cause you to resent people who juice. If you have a feisty personality, it could very likely drive you to outbursts and crusades.

If you juice and you only compete against other juicers (non-tested sports or federations), then it’s all different because you’re not breaking any rules. Steroids are against the law in the United States, but it’s not a heavily policed situation. The chances of you getting busted by the police and sent to jail are very low, unless you decide to start supplementing your roids with cocaine (which actually happens a lot, believe it or not). But as far as the cheating issue goes, you’re not a cheater if you don’t break any rules. If drugs aren’t against the rules of your sport (or federation), you’re basically in the clear.

If you compete in tested sports and you decide to juice, you’re running some risks with your public reputation if you get busted. Our society likes to crucify people who get caught with performance-enhancing drugs. Olylifting is way down on the public awareness ladder, so the risk of destroying your good name isn’t as dire as it would be if you were an Olympic gold medalist or professional baseball player. Still, drug positives are public information. If you get popped, you’ll have some explaining to do.

If you get popped and you’re in a position of leadership (parent or coach), it could affect how you’re viewed by the people you lead. This is especially true if we’re talking about kids. So, are there any other risks? We haven’t even talked about the physical/psychological aspect of this, which is a whole other can of worms that’s not to be taken lightly.

Those are the considerations for an athlete, but you also have to make a decision about it as a coach. If you coach weightlifting (or any strength sport) long enough, you’ll brush up against this issue. After 25 years in this sport, I can safely say it’s unavoidable. There’s a very good chance you’ll coach a lifter who takes drugs at some point. What are you going to do about it? Throw them out? Look the other way? There might be some temptation to let it slide when you start to see those huge weights getting lifted. Coaches want to be successful, and steroids make athletes stronger. Those two factors can combine for a slippery slope.

I’ve known several coaches who personally provide drugs to their athletes. If you do this, are you responsible for any disasters that befall them? Is it your fault if they wind up in the hospital, or jail? If they get busted and publicly ostracized, do you share the blame?

I think the answers to these questions are fairly self-explanatory. Dealing with this issue is about as much fun as getting kicked in the crotch, but it’s not going anywhere. So do yourself a favor and figure out where you stand, right in the beginning. Weightlifting is a sport that’s based on personal decisions that will impact your life, not just your platform performance. In case you didn’t notice, there are a lot of question marks in this article. I left it that way intentionally. This magazine isn’t a religious publication, so nobody is telling you how you should live your life. We will, however, provide you with input about how to manage the weightlifting portion of your life. The direction you decide to go with the drug issue is your own business, but I implore you to do some serious thinking before you pick that direction. And look at every piece of the puzzle, please. You don’t want to confront this issue and argue with people about it if you stand on shaky arguments.

Sounds serious, right? Yeah, it is. It certainly is, brothers and sisters.