Taking extra testosterone can be acutely rewarding and stimulating. It has moderate addiction potential.
It also creates physical dependence by suppressing your body’s production, resulting in testicular atrophy. Some people who experiment with testosterone discover that it can take months or years to rebound, if they can at all.
All steroids have a very high risk of misuse, it's incredibly easy to get your body addicted one way or another and it's one of those things that's very hard to fix after the fact.
Steroid abuse indicates body dysmorphia. There isn’t an addictive property like other abused drugs, unless you’re considering it addictive via its effects on dopamine production.
Your body doesn’t become addicted, though. The potential for harm is real if you are not taking it under medical supervision or without proper knowledge of usage, like any other drugs.
> There isn’t an addictive property like other abused drugs,
This is incorrect. Testosterone can be acutely rewarding and reinforcing, especially at high doses used by people seeking these effects.
Seeking testosterone does not indicate body dysmorphia. People want it (or think they want it) for numerous reasons, from getting stronger to feeling “alpha” to thinking it will give them an edge.
It’s also very dependence inducing because it shuts down physical production, so the person needs to continue taking it just to get back to baseline after using it for a while. At my very first job one of my coworkers got ahold of some testosterone gel and used it for several months until he ran out and couldn’t get any more. I clearly remember how bad he felt while going through withdrawals and rebound for months. I left before he fully recovered.
This is really not true. When speaking of high dose testosterone you mean steroids, so that is the term I will use. And steroids mess people up badly. Severe anxiety, poor sleep, mental fog, and then countless effects on your organs and other factors. And as there tend to be drugs taken to reduce the side effects of other drugs you end up taking an obscene amount of drugs, and still suffering side effects.
There's a reason pro body builders generally do not ever recommend them unless somebody is going to compete, where it's a practical necessity. Obviously people can get psychologically addicted to the effects - high energy, easy physique gains, and so on. And when one gets off steroids not only will these generally greatly diminish, but there's a very high probability of one becoming simply fat if they don't dramatically shift their lifestyle. And so that can make it very difficult for people to quit, but they do - because steroids aren't what most people think.
I live in a country where you can legally buy steroids OTC for really cheap - less than $20/month for genuine pharmaceutical steroids. And you can see at the gym a lot of guys have tried this out, and quit, because you wear it for life. They'll be 'huge' but very soft/flabby after quitting the steroids.
> When speaking of high dose testosterone you mean steroids, so that is the term I will use.
No I do not. I am referring to exogenous testosterone. Even dosed within typical replacement ranges it will temporarily stack on top of your already present testosterone and provide a sense of reward and falsely improved well being.
You are trying to redirect the conversation to literal anabolic steroids. Those are also habit-forming, but it’s not what I’m talking about.
Testosterone is a controlled substance because the abuse potential is studied and known.
Testosterone levels are sharply declining in the US for reasons that are not well understood. And testosterone for is an absolutely critical hormone for men. If somebody starts at the low end, which at this point is going to be many, if not most, Americans, then testosterone supplementation is going to significantly and genuinely improve their wellbeing. There are numerous side effects, which are dealt with with other drugs (which is why steroids/testosterone often turn one into a walking pharmacy), but addiction is most certainly not one of those side effects.
There's no "falsely improved wellbeing". It's absolutely genuinely improved wellbeing, in the same way that if somebody was significantly deficient of some vitamin or nutrient, then supplementing it would similarly "genuinely" improve their wellbeing. This is why plummeting testosterone levels are a very serious thing. Because a certain minimum level is necessary for reasonable quality of life, and supplementation or increasing it naturally is very non-trivial.
This is incorrect. Even steroid creams you use externally for exzema and such are addictive to the point where there's a whole ramp on and ramp off procedure when you get prescribed. Your body will permanently down regulate producing the compound if you're not careful. Steroids are a much wider group of compounds than just testosterone, and your body uses them for a whole host of things.
The addictive component makes sense, does that mean men who are injured and produce less go through withdrawal? Or like men as they age? That sounds miserable.
This is absolutely false. There's thousands of gym bros who've done absolutely stupid cycles with absolutely no post cycle therapy who've recovered and are producing testosterone again.
I personally know of several early 20s guys who were between light and heavy cycles all under the supervision of doctors (or at least getting blood tested periodically).
All of them have renal issues, kidney issues, adrenal system issues, thyroid issues. Some have heart problems. Not one of them is unscathed.
It's a steroid, so body builders would use it constantly. It's a sex hormone, so people would use it to masculinize themselves and amp up their sex drive, and it's part of the pubertal cycle so children exposed to it pre-puberty can have masculinizing pubertal side effects before their actual puberty starts.
I'm not saying to sell it over the counter but surely just bring a prescription would be sufficient. I see medspa clinics advertising it to men for its masculinizing effects so it can't be that hard to acquire.
It's not hard to acquire. Doesn't mean that it's not a controlled substance.
And in fact it is sold over the counter in other countries like Mexico. You get a "prescription" from the "on-site pharmacist" who is actually just some person who works the register.
Is that how that works?! I've always wondered what legal trickery they used since Mexico isn't listed on the WHO's list of countries who don't require Rx for antibiotics.
Pretty much. I went on vacation and went into a pharmacy out of curiosity, and they had a laminated card of steroids and other drugs you could get with pre-determined prices and no medical examination required.
Yes, but the DEA is unrelentingly cranky and likes to tell physicians how to practice medicine despite swearing up and down that they would never, ever do that.
California used to have a medical marijuana program where access was supposed to be controlled by requiring licensed physicians to prescribe it. Turns out there's enough disgraced doctors to rubber stamp huge volumes of prescriptions, rendering the control a joke.
If the DEA isn't cranky, we go back to pill mills.
If you want to limit the availability of a substance, you can't rely on Responsible Professionals acting as gatekeepers- too many will take the money and run.
When people in the (US at least) healthcare industry use the word "control" they are specifically referring to the well-defined "controlled substances".
In the context of the legally defined controlled substances or "scheduled drugs", no, needing a prescription does not automatically mean it is a controlled drug.
Is a prescription inherently a type of 'control' against who can access certain drugs? Sure, but I don't think anyone was arguing that.
