In Southern California, Lyle Alzado, once an intimidating football player, receives chemotherapy for a rare form of inoperable brain cancer, which he blames on prolonged use of steroids and human growth hormone.
Steve Courson, too, once made a living in the trenches of professional football. Today, in Pittsburgh, he awaits a heart transplant. Courson says steroid abuse did not cause his heart to degenerate but probably contributed to the deadly condition.
And in Baltimore, there's Joe. You've never heard of him; he's in his 50s and works in construction. He also has used steroids.
Athletics were always an important part of Joe's life; he played football in his younger days and has continued to lift weights for recreation. The stories of Alzado and Courson scare him, because he has lived through his own drug-induced ordeal.
At first, he felt like a superman. Eventually, though, the steroids attacked his masculinity.
Alzado, 42, and Courson, 35, say they played biochemical roulette with their bodies because steroids made them bigger and stronger, better at their job.
The compounds also trigger aggression, Courson points out. "If you are a naturally violent person, or you have problems with your temper, don't take these drugs. You'll wind up in jail."
For Alzado and Courson, using steroids was an occupational hazard. For Joe, who asked that his last name be withheld, that was not the case. "It's a macho thing, that's what it's all about," he says.
Big-time football players, body-builders and weight-lifters aren't the only ones abusing steroids, doctors say. Some teen-age boys and men do it in hopes of getting bigger and looking better.
"I said I would never take them because I had never taken any [illegal] drug," says Joe. But one day at the gym, he looked over at the man next to him and saw how big and strong steroids had made him. "Then I said, 'Hey, what the hell,' and I tried them. I stayed on them for 2 1/2 years. That's the way it happens."
Joe gave himself the first steroid injection in 1982 and adopted a six-weeks-on, six-weeks-off schedule for using the drugs. A six-week supply cost $34 and could be purchased from peddlers who frequented the gyms where Joe lifted weights.
"When I started taking steroids, the first three weeks, I thought nothing was happening," he says. "Then, the third week, I was in the gym and I put 315 pounds on the bench. I was just warming up, and I thought I had put on the wrong weight. Then I thought, 'uh-oh, it's working.' I got back on the bench and I couldn't lift enough weight."
