Fred was in his mid-20s when a car accident on a busy Auckland road left him with serious injuries that would require months of rehabilitation.

In the months after the accident, his weight dropped from 82kg to 60kg.

Working out at his local gym in an attempt to get back in shape, he noticed how massive a lot of the people using the weights room seemed to be.

“There’s got to be an easier way,” he thought to himself.

There was. He spoke to a friend, who spoke to a friend, then forked out $350 for an anabolic steroid that was a blend of four types of testosterone. Getting hold of the syringes was even easier. He simply walked into a chemist and said he needed them to inject steroids.

After Googling how to inject the steroid into the muscle in his shoulder, he and a friend – who also paid $350 for an eight-week course – injected each other.

“We freaked out a couple of times,” *Fred told the Herald. “I injected my mate and he starting pissing out blood.”

The whole process was a little scary, but highly effective.

There were side-effects. Initially his sexual appetite and self-confidence went through the roof.

” … It’s really intense. You eat more. I gained 10 kilos. My mates were gym freaks who had been training for four or five years and what they were lifting, I was catching and passing them.”

There were also mood swings, swollen testicles and, once he cycled off the steroid, mild depression.

“I flipped my lid a couple of times, but I knew it was the roids. I knew when to back it off and just let it go.”

Drinking alcohol provoked even more aggression, so he tried to avoid it.

All up, he liked how he felt.

“I was a small guy and when I got bigger people noticed me. They’d say, ‘You are looking really good.’ You feel really good, and when you start to lose that it can be quite depressing.”

So he went back for more, this time taking a nandrolone-based steroid. It wasn’t as effective.

His steroid-taking days are now over, he says.

“I’m with a partner now. I suggested to her that I wouldn’t mind getting back into it and she said, ‘I’d rather you not.’

“But to be honest with you, it felt good. You are just at the top of your game. You’re really confident and when you are confident everything comes your way.”

* Not his real name

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10891205

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer inspecting packages shipped from overseas. Seizures of steroids from China are increasing.

Shipments coming from China may look like an assortment of small colored bottles that looked like bath oil samples.  Until inspectors look more closely and find some labeled “methandrostenolone,” or other names of anabolic steroids used body builders.

Customs busts like this have led them to dealers’ homes where the drugs are prepared for sale to bodybuilders in gyms or over the Internet.  They will typically find them in injectable form, contained in syringe vials.  Others may be stored in large, gallon-sized plastic bags.

The Drug Enforcement Administration said China was turned into a virtual steroids supply house after a high-profile crackdown nearly a decade ago shut down a number of big labs in Mexico — then the major supplier of black market steroids to the United States.

The shift in supply lines became evident in 2007, officials say, when the DEA targeted 56 labs in this country that were manufacturing anabolic steroids and HGH supplements. Investigators found the labs were using raw powders that had originated in China.

For more information on this subject, see a good investigative news piece here:  http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2013/06/black_market_pipeline_for_steroids_and_performance_enhancing_drugs_leads_to_china.html

Kris McKenzie’s family say the loving, lovable 20-year-old became a different person after he began using steroids.

Kris McKenzie loved his puppy, Oden. One day, inexplicably, Kris flew into a rage, grabbed Oden and threw him into a wall.

The brutal act was totally out of character for a 20-year-old described by his family as a “happy-go-lucky kid”. Kris’ rage scared his family, and made them deeply worried.

They had every reason to be. Months later Kris was dead. He took his own life, an act that was later attributed by a coroner to depression caused by withdrawal from an anabolic steroid he had been taking and had quit cold turkey.

Kris Anthony McKenzie’s death in Invercargill in 1999 was the first case of a suicide being linked to steroid use in New Zealand. The coroner’s office could not tell the Herald how many more, if any, there have been since. Such statistics aren’t readily available.

But the link between steroid usage and mental illnesses such as psychosis and depression has been well established. In 2000 a study of 62 Finnish weightlifters who were strongly suspected of taking steroids found the death rate of the group was more than four times above normal.

When former British rugby league hooker Terry Newton took his own life in 2010 he had traces of steroids, cocaine and amphetamines in his system. Toxicology reports showed he had taken the steroid nandrolone within a week of his death.

Newton had been serving a two-year ban after becoming the first athlete to test positive for human growth hormone, and had hoped to work with national officials warning players about the dangers of drugs.

Those dangers, as Kris McKenzie’s family can attest, don’t just apply to athletes. “We, like so many others, naively believed that anabolic steroid usage was only practised within the elite athletic world, not in our local gyms by our own healthy Kiwi kids,” says Kris’ mother, Shari.

His death completely blindsided the family. No one saw it coming.

“That pain of losing your child to suicide is indescribable,” says Shari.

“It was a shock. I’m not proud of saying I was quite smug that my children were really well adjusted and we were living a really happy home life. It was like ‘this kind of thing doesn’t happen to us’. Then suddenly this terrible, terrible thing was happening to us.

“The pain was unbearable. The grief of losing a child is so enormous that the pain is indescribable. I honestly didn’t know how I was going to survive it. I couldn’t imagine how to carry on with my life. I felt that I’d failed him as a mother. It was my job to keep him safe. I was feeling this terrible, terrible guilt at not being able to keep him safe.”

A good-looking kid, Kris was body conscious, and discovered body building at 17. Shari was warned by a friend to be careful when he switched gyms, but she didn’t realise what the warning was about. The family were completely unaware of the threat posed by steroids.

“We had no idea he was on steroids,” says older sister Johanna.

“But even if we had known he was on steroids we would never have connected that they could contribute to his aggression and all those mental side effects.”

The anger at what happened to Kris hasn’t faded. Before his death, Kris’ arms often displayed bruising consistent with needle marks. After his death a vial of the prescription-only steroid propionate salt of testosterone was found in his wardrobe.

A police investigation uncovered the likely identity of the suppliers, but no prosecution was ever brought.

“To me it was criminal activity, supplying illegal drugs to vulnerable young men,” says Shari. “They had no consideration of the consequences. They encouraged these men who were young and impressionable, at an age when body image was important to them. The easy option was the good option and they encouraged that. They were trainers, people who were working in the fitness industry, who were role models for our youth.”

Shari’s concern at the time was that penalties for steroid-related crimes were so light they were barely a deterrent. Not much has changed. A Herald investigation into performance-enhancing peptides published in April found that prosecutions for performance and image enhancing drugs (Pied) importation and distribution are rare, and usually result in a fine or community-based sentence.

Kris wasn’t the only Invercargill teenager taking steroids in 1999. “There were some big issues down there,” says Johanna. “Kris was just one of dozens of young guys getting mixed up in that scene.”

If that was the case in Invercargill, she says, then what is the extent of the problem in bigger centres? And how much more stark is the threat now that importing is at record levels, and the internet has opened up a host of new markets to would-be buyers?

Former Commonwealth swimming champion and outspoken campaigner against steroid abuse Dave Gerrard gave evidence at Kris McKenzie’s inquest. The raw emotion in the court when Kris’ friend testified about him kicking his beloved dog was palpable, recalls Gerrard.

“I’m constantly being asked questions like ‘why don’t you just flag it and let anybody take anything?’

“Well, bugger it. There is a lot to be lost. If you lose those fundamental principles then what sort of sport will my kids and grandkids play?”

Gerrard will always wonder what he might have achieved in his swimming career had he not come up against the drug-fuelled Eastern Europeans that dominated the 1960s. But bigger issues were at play than who won what-coloured medal.

“There were some horrific health implications,” he says. “We tend not to highlight the health, but think of the moral issues of cheating.”

Steroids robbed the McKenzies of much more than a shot at glory.

“It was like Kris became someone we didn’t know,” says Shari. “[Attacking Oden] was so foreign to his behaviour. He was happy, so loved by everybody, just a lovely, happy-go-lucky kid enjoying life. He was kind and generous, loved his friends, and really, really loved Oden.”

Never ending heartbreak over loss of brother

Johanna ChamberlainIt’s been 13 years since my younger brother Kris took his life. He had just turned 20. I am now 35, have married and have two beautiful children.

Kris’ photo hangs on my wall – his young face frozen in time. “Who’s that?” my 2-year-old asked the other day. “That’s your Uncle Kris,” I replied. “Where is Uncle Kris?” “He’s in heaven.” “Why? … I like Uncle Kris …”

My children would have loved their Uncle Kris and it breaks my heart they will never meet him.

They will never have cousins. I’ll never be an aunty.

Grief is lonely and never-ending. Often I find myself swallowing a lump in my throat or wiping away tears – forcing myself to hold my head up and get on with life. I still have my life to live.

Nonetheless, a surge of anger emerges when I hear of sportsmen and women taking steroids to enhance their performance, and I feel sick to my stomach when I see bodybuilders flexing their inflated muscles with pride on television and in magazines.

While professional sportspeople abusing steroids get condemned publicly, an underbelly of seedy steroid abuse is happening under our noses. People need to wake up. It isn’t just the Lance Armstrongs, Nadzeya Ostapchuks and rugby heroes taking these body and mind-altering drugs. Ordinary young New Zealand men and women are getting lured into a drug scene that seems to be thriving.

Kris was an impressionable 19-year-old when got sucked into the steroid scene in Invercargill. My family, unaware Kris was on steroids, watched him self-destruct from a hopeless distance.

He put up a wall and wouldn’t let us in. When Kris decided he didn’t like the person he had become and came off the steroids “cold turkey” the damaging psychological side-effects continued – ultimately leading him to take his life on December 17, 1999.

When Kris died, his “gym buddies” were nowhere to be seen. Conveniently, some we believed to be key players in the drug scene disappeared from Invercargill while police investigated allegations that steroids were prevalent within certain gyms.

While steroids and drug paraphernalia were found in Kris’ bedroom, the police investigation fizzled to nothing. Whoever supplied my little brother with those damaging drugs was never caught, and has been free to ruin the lives of other innocent people.

If steroid use can thrive in a little city at the bottom of the South Island, I shudder to think how widespread the scene is across the rest of New Zealand. The worst part: I feel helpless to stop it.

- Johanna Chamberlain

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10890944

What is “hypogonadism”?

Hypogonadism is a medical term which describes a diminished functional activity of the gonads – the testes and ovaries in males and females, respectively – that may result in diminished sex hormone biosynthesis and impaired gamete production and/or regulation. In layman’s terms, it is sometimes called “interrupted stage 1 puberty”. Low androgen (e.g., testosterone) levels are referred to as hypoandrogenism and low estrogen (e.g., estradiol) as hypoestrogenism, and may occur as symptoms of hypogonadism in both sexes, but are generally only diagnosed in males and females respectively.  Spermatogenesis and ovulation in males and females, respectively, may be impaired by hypogonadism, which, depending on the degree of severity, may result in partial or complete infertility.

For the medical community, these findings suggest that they need to refocus their approach to the diagnosis and treatment of this malady in hypogonadal young men.

A summary of the latest study which was published in the Journal of Urology can be found here:  http://www.jurology.com/article/S0022-5347%2813%2904580-1/abstract

THF worked with the Atlanta Falcons this past week educating over 225 Georgia high school coaches.  This was the first time THF was invited to join the Falcons in this program which is 6 years old.

Following a two hour on-field program, the coaches were educated on concussion awareness and were provided steroid education.  THF were invited to be the subject matter experts who spoke to the coaches about the prevalence of steroid use and the dangers of these drugs to our young people.

More information can be found on this story at:  http://m.gwinnettdailypost.com/news/2013/jun/14/atlanta-falcons-tutor-high-school-coaches/?templates=mobile

The City of Arlington, TX will soon randomly test all of their police officers for anabolic steroids.  The testing program will be among the most stringent programs in Texas.  Few law enforcement agencies test their officers for the presence of these drugs. enforcement.

The plan will bring Arlington closer to the policy followed by Dallas where they randomly tests officers for narcotics, including steroids, up to three times per year.

The new policy on testing follows a federal investigation involving three Arlington officers related to buying and distributing the drugs. One officer involved, David Vo, committed suicide this week. Another, Thomas Kantzos, is facing charges related to using his police computer to tip off a supplier.

As we’ve traveled the country, we hear that police and firemen are two groups who are reputed to be steroid users.  As a result, kids tell us that they are not afraid to be arrested for using steroids. For example, one young man told us, “Heck, why would I worry about being caught?  When I work out at the gym, the guy on my left is a cop and the guy on my right is a fireman.  They are both using roids.  No one is going to arrest me.”

Reference article:  http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2013/06/14/i-team-steroid-testing-planned-for-arlington-police/

Thomas Kantzos

Here we go again!  Another police officer accused of using steroids and supplying his fellow officers with these illegal drugs!

Parents, how can we expect law enforcement officers to keep these drugs away from our kids if they’re the ones that are using and distributing them?

Don

A veteran Arlington police officer is facing federal accusations of buying steroids for himself and other officers in his department.

Thomas S. Kantzos, 45, of Fort Worth, was arrested Tuesday night and charged with unlawfully providing law enforcement-sensitive information by exceeding authorized access to a protected computer.

Another Arlington police officer, David Vo, 35, killed himself after also being arrested as part of the state and federal steroids investigation. He was found in a wooded area in the 2400 block of Park Run Drive, near his home.

Vo, who has been an Arlington police officer for three years, was arrested last week and released pending charges.

A third officer from the department, Craig Hermans, 34, has been questioned in connection with the investigation.

The investigation led to the Arlington police officers after a man was arrested in January for selling anabolic steroids, according to an FBI complaint. The man cooperated with investigators, telling them he used and sold steroids and human growth hormones (HGH) for the last 13 years.

He also admitted providing steroids and HGH to Kantzos during the last five or six years, the complaint said. The suspect also told investigators he gave 20 HGH kits to Kantzos while he was on duty and driving a marked Arlington Police car, according to the complaint.

Kantzos is scheduled to make his first appearance in federal court this afternoon.

“On multiple occasions, Kantzos solicited anabolic steroids from this witness for himself and for others, including friends and colleagues” in the Arlington Police Department, federal authorities said.

Most of the steroids and HGH he got were given to other Arlington police officers, authorities said.

“Kantzos allegedly put this witness in contact with two other APD officers so that they could obtain anabolic steroids directly,” according to federal authorities.

Kantzos also is accused of looking up names or license plates on a law enforcement database at the request of his drug supplier, who was concerned that he was being watched by police.

“On several occasions, Kantzos did this, or had someone else do it for him, and then provided the obtained sensitive information to the witness,” authorities said.

In December 2011, Kantzos gave his supplier the name of a law enforcement officer, which led to the supplier finding a tracking device on his vehicle, authorities said.

The supplier then began “laying low” for several weeks and talked with Kantzos about the tracking device and the police surveillance of him, the complaint said.

Kantzos is charged with exceeding authorized access to a protected computer.

If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The FBI and the Texas Rangers are investigating the case.

http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/2013/06/arlington-cop-arrested-by-feds-for-buying-steroids-for-himself-and-other-officers.html/

William Blair Downing, 43, was placed on probation for five years and ordered to perform 400 hours of community service as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors. He also must undergo a mental health evaluation and will have all of his medications monitored while on probation.

Downing, who now lives in Florida, pleaded guilty to warning an illegal distributor of anabolic steroids about a federal investigation, as well as possessing steroids himself. He quit the North Bend Police Department in June 2011 on the day a search warrant was served at his home and he was interviewed by federal agents.

U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken said Downing violated a public trust by using steroids while he was a police officer. She said that put the public at risk had Downing experienced some of the emotional side effects of steroid use while on duty, a scenario she said people live in fear of encountering.

“At some point we have to hold people accountable,” she said.

With the felony conviction, Downing will be barred from working in law enforcement. He apologized, saying he was “very, very, very remorseful for what I’ve done.”

The investigation that led to Downing being charged was an offshoot of a larger federal investigation into alleged fraud by a defense contractor in the Coos Bay area. It began when agents from several agencies served a series of search warrants at the businesses and homes of Ray Bettencourt II and several members of his family.

Downing was familiar with two of Bettencourt’s sons, Harold Ray “Bo” Bettencourt III and Peter Tracy Bettencourt. Downing worked out with them at a local gym and also was buying steroids from the same source as the Bettencourts, according to a sentencing document prepared by Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean Hoar.

Soon after the search warrants in the fraud investigation were served, Downing called and sent messages to the steroid distributor warning him not to contact him or the Bettencourt sons. He told the man, who lived in Bend, that the Bettencourts were under investigation and federal agents might be monitoring their phone calls and other communications.

Agents at first suspected Downing of tipping off the Bettencourts to the investigation before the search warrants were served, an act that would have exposed Downing to more serious penalties. But Hoar said that even though Downing did poorly on a polygraph test, investigators felt they did not have sufficient evidence to charge him with obstruction of justice or similar crimes.

Both Downing and his attorney, Bryan Lessley, adamantly denied any tip-off before the search warrants being served in September 2010. They said no one in the North Bend Police Department other than the chief knew about the investigation before the day the searches took place.

“I never tipped anyone off about any search warrants,” Downing told the judge. “I did not tip off the Bettencourts.”

During the searches, police found steroids in Peter Bettencourt’s home, Hoar said. They eventually traced them back to the man in Bend, who admitted buying them over the Internet from China and selling them to Downing and Pete Bettencourt.

Five members of the Bettencourt family, two longtime employees and their company, Kustom Products Inc., are named in a federal indictment in connection with selling the military defective knockoff parts for a variety of equipment, including a crucial helicopter part.

Their trial is set for Feb. 14.

http://www.registerguard.com/rg/news/local/30008120-75/downing-investigation-federal-bettencourt-bend.html.csp

Bulagrian sprinter Tezdzhan Naimova tested positive for steroids following the European indoor championships and faces a potential life ban.

Bulgarian sprinter Tezdzhan Naimova tested positive for drostanolone, a banned anabolic steroid, according to the Associated Press. Dobri Karamarinov, Bulgaria’s athletics federation chairman, confirmed the news.

The 26-year-old runner won the women’s 60-meter race at the European indoor championships in Goteborg, Sweden back in March. Naimova was also banned for two years for manipulating a doping sample back in 2009. Because this is her second doping offense, she faces a life ban. She can defend herself within two weeks.

Naimova specializes in the 60, 100 and 200 meters. She was Bulgaria’s national champion in the 100 meters in 2005.

http://tracking.si.com/2013/06/11/european-indoor-champion-tezdzhan-naimova-tests-positive-for-steroids/

You have to wonder, though: Are these bodies natural – or do the guys use a little something to help boost their muscle growth?

While the contestants have to undergo a rigorous screening process, which includes drug testing and STD testing, the casting directors may not be testing the guys to see if they are using steroids.

“I know that a lot of guys do steroids before they’ll go on the show,” Jesse Csincsak, who won DeAnna Pappas’ season of The Bachelorette, tells RadarOnline.com exclusively. “They don’t tell you to. They just don’t test for it.” (RadarOnline.com is not suggesting Waddell uses anything beyond hard work in the gym to get that physique!)

But the contestants are tested for other types of drugs.

“They’ll drug test you, but they’re drug testing you for illegal drugs like cocaine and stuff like that,” Jesse says. “They take a urine sample. They take a blood sample. They even told me to stop smoking weed, and I don’t smoke weed.”

And according to medical reasoning, it’s possible that the contestants aren’t being tested for steroids.

“Most commonly, for anabolic steroids, there are [only] a handful that people check,” Dr. Sean Nordt, MD, Pharm.D and Director of Toxicology in the Emergency Medicine Department at the University of Southern California, tells RadarOnline.com. “And you can’t find it if you don’t look for it.”

Dr. Nordt explains that a simple urine screening is used for steroid testing, but “if you test for the wrong ones, you won’t find it.”

He adds that if the test is “not done in an appropriate time frame, you also won’t find it.”

Plus, people have ways of hiding the steroids.

“The way that a lot of people use steroids, they’ll use injectables or long lasting, so they will stop and use short acting ones [prior to a test being done],” Dr. Nordt says. “Or they’ll try to mask it by drinking lots of fluids.”

Another source close to production says that the people handling the contestant auditions don’t inform the contestants if they are being tested for steroids.

“I can assure you that they don’t,” the source says. “I mean, why would they be concerned about someone taking steroids?”

But the show does place a lot of emphasis on good looks and physical attractiveness.

“When they have you come into the room, they’re definitely looking for that sort of thing,” Jesse says. “They’ll even have you take your shirt off in casting.”

Ben Flajnik, who first was the runner-up on Ashley Hebert’s season on The Bachelorette and then went on to star as The Bachelor for season 16, felt the pressure to fit a certain mold.

“Of course you want to be in shape,” he tells RadarOnline.com.

He also reveals that as the star of his own season, he had a say in what type of contestants were cast for him to meet.

“As the lead there, you do have input into what you’re sort of looking for in a spouse,” he says. “Honestly, certain physical attributes and mental ones too, and careers and things like that. It may differ from season to season, but I know I was asked all those questions so they could [pull] a nice group of women that I would be interested in.”

So if steroids help a man achieve that physical attractiveness that the show is known for, it’s seems possible that steroid use is being overlooked.

“Obviously the human body is drawn to physical attraction first,” Jesse says. “So, if a guy has big muscles, that weighs heavily.”

Plus, if the male contestants do use roids, roids may help fuel some of the anger that leads to physical fights seen on the show.

“Roids make you angry,” Jesse says. “That makes for good TV. So steroids are probably the producers’ drug of choice for dudes because they can get them angry, boozed up, and ready to fight.”

http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2013/06/ex-bachelor-winner-makes-shocking-claim-desperate-contestants-use-steroids-before-going-on-show/