Drug Addict Pays

I was in my early twenties. I had a fairly bland life. I worked, I played hockey, and went out for the occasional drink. When I wasn't playing hockey, I liked to keep my strength up by lifting weights in the gym. At the time, I lived in a house with a roommate who had been working for a major pharmaceutical company since college.

The mess got started after I came home from the gym one night and my roommate asked me if wanted to participate in a study of a new performance-enhancing drug his company was working on. Normally I would have declined as I had some bad experiences with the few over-the-counter supplements I had tried out. I also still had vivid memories of the last trial drug that he had conned me into taking. That one was an allergy pill with side effects far worse then any allergy symptoms. But my roommate kept going, saying how promising this stuff looked in the animal tests. Besides, the lab would pick up the cost of my gym membership for the duration of the trial as well as pay me time and mileage on my car. If things turned out bad, I could just quit. So I caved in, and told him that I would do it.

So on a Saturday morning, I rode over to the lab building of the drug company with my roommate. He took me to the top floor of the building into a nice office where he introduced me to head of the study, John. John was a man who appeared to be in 40's, but obviously worked hard on keeping in shape. His office was decorated with photographs of a guy who looked to be about my age at the time. After talking with John for a few minutes, I learned that these pictures were of him when he won Teenage Mr. Universe and a couple of other body building championships. I took this to be an encouraging sign as it seemed that John's motive for working on this drug was something besides pure profit, it appeared that he genuinely wanted to share his passion for body building. After a brief chat with John, he officially welcomed me to the study and asked Sean to take me down to the medical wing to get started.

The medical wing seemed pretty much like a normal doctor's office. There were about a dozen people in the waiting area milling around for one reason or another. Sean got me checked in, and a few minutes later a medical tech came for me and showed to a room in the back. The tech took an exhaustive medical history, and proceeded to give me a full physical, complete with turn your head and cough. He then took what I thought was an unusually large amount of blood, made me piss in the bottle (right in front of him I might add) and then left me a cup for a sperm sample. This was somewhat annoying, not to say difficult as I was in a cold room, on an exam table, with no reading material other then Good Housekeeping. After about 15 minutes (for me an eternity!) I was able to give the sample. I was then told I could put on my underwear and shorts and was shown to the test lab.

The test lab turned out to be a basic, but reasonably well-equipped, gym. The appropriate equipment was in there to allow one to work every body part. It also had a couple of rolling cabinets filled with medical recording instruments. I learned that these were special recording devices that were made small enough so they wheeled from place to place to record all of body functions while exercised. The tech, and now his co-workers, proceeded to plaster my body with a multitude of sensors. I then began working out. They worked me up to my max lift in bench press, squat, and about half a dozen other exercises. At this point, I felt like I had just been through a very satisfying workout and normally would have gone home. But in this case, it was now time for the wonder drug. Administering the drug was easy. The tech had me flex my right bicep and he simply jabbed the short needle into it. As the liquid in the syringe was pushed in, I felt a little burning go through my veins. I sat there for a few minutes while the techs watched the monitors. Satisfied with the readings, I was guided through another workout. I noticed right away that I did not seem to feel tired. I was not only able to repeat all of the previous lifts, I was able to add about 10% to my max lift in every case. This made me feel very good. They finished up by taking some more blood for comparison. The lab guys then thanked me and asked me to come back Tuesday for my next session. They gave me a towel to dry off and called Sean to take me home. They also told me to try and write down how I felt every couple of hours.

Sean drove us home. It was then that I noticed the one bad side effect of the drug. When your body came down off of the adrenaline from lifting, you went from feeling ok to passing out. There was no in between. I woke up on our couch about three hours later ferociously hungry and more sore then I have every been in my life. I ate, stayed up and watched a couple of movies with Sean, then went to bed, too sore to even jack off as is my normal pre-bedtime custom.

I went back to the lab on Tuesday as I was asked. Before lifting, they took blood and wanted urine and seaman again. Once more I was caught unprepared and so had to "donate" in about as boring a room as one can be in. The workout went well, I was able to add even more weight to my max lifts. We set up a schedule where I would come into the lab every third day. On subsequent visits, I remembered the reading material though. After two weeks of this, I was told that I could resume lifting in my normal gym. They gave me a supply of the drug and showed me how to take it on my own. The only asked that I keep a training log of results.

So I kept working out, and playing hockey, enjoying the fact that I was now on top the heap in my gym when it came to who could lift the most. I was also taking great pleasure in the fact that no one was kicking me around in the hockey rink any more as well. I was eating like a horse, but not really gaining that much weight overall. Mostly, I noticed that I was becoming extremely shredded. I liked this. I was having the best time of life. At the six week point, the lab asked me to come in so they could get their tests. The after I had been over to the lab, I got the call the would bring my whole crashing down. The lab told me that they had noticed some bad problems with my liver and kidney function, and that I would need to stop taking the drug.

In a way, I was thought I was prepared for this. All good things must come to an end. Besides I rationalized, it is much easier to retain muscle mass then to build it in the first place. I figured if I just kept on working hard, things would not change much. Little did I know, the drug I was taking had a hidden side effect, it was chemically addictive. After a week without the drug, I was having cravings for it. I was getting the shakes and fevers. The lab had told me in that original phone call that they normally asked study participants coming off a drug to stay at the lab. They made an exception in my case since my roommate worked in the business and new what signs to look for and what to do if anything bad happened. I was about to turn this into my advantage.

One night, while Sean was sleeping I got up, got his car keys, and drove his car to the lab. Apparently it was not unusual for workers in this company to work odd hours. Sean's badge was able to get me into the back parking lot, into the building, and then his office. I was able to open the storage cabinet in the prep lab adjoining his office and steal a vial of the drug for myself. Of course, all of this was completely foolish as Sean figured out what had happened the next morning when he was told some of the drug was missing. They were able to get me back to the lab on the pretense that needed to run some tests on me to be sure I would not have any permanent medical problems. When they got me back, they confronted me with the theft and told me that while they would not press criminal charges, they would insist that I stay in the lab until the withdrawal symptoms had passed.

Hearing this, something in my brain snapped. I became enraged and fought to get out of the room. Anticipating this, the drug team had called over to the psychiatric ward and brought over four large orderlies. they grabbed me and took me over to one of the holding cells they use for cases when mental illness drugs go bad. They threw me in the cell and slammed the door closed. I was still wanting to put up a fight. Because of the strength that I had picked up during the study, I was able to punch out the glass window of the cell and had succeeded in badly denting the door from my kicking despite the padding. The orderlies returned, and dragged me off to another cell. I was later told that this one was used for out of control male animals. The cell was a bare metal cell with some hay in the corner and one chain. I was stripped of my clothing, and a cord attached to the end of my chain was fastened around my scrotum. I tried yanking the chain out of its bracket in the floor. It would not yield. I tried kicking the wall, but I was able to do nothing but make a lot of noise. I then that I discovered something else that had happened to me in the six weeks that I had been on the drug. my body was so used to being sore from the workouts, that it had accommodated to the pain. That was how I was able to crush my own testicles in the process of ripping of the chain. I simply yanked on the end of the chain, felt a sharp jolt, and saw blood running out of scrotum. I woke up in a recovery room the next day, now ball-less.

I have now joined the ranks of those soppy speakers who go around to schools and preach drug avoidance. I used to think these guys were a bunch of losers and never paid attention to them. Of course, my specialty is addressing student-athletes and telling them to avoid supplements. I like to think my story is a little more compelling then most...