Jill and Jordan

Steroids' long-term effects still aren't known: They may include heart disease, cancer, or infertility.

They can get anxious and depressed when they quit (some even miss the look steroids give them), which is why many start up again. (Pssst: These anabolic steroids are different from corticosteroids--like the ones in some asthma inhalers--that your doctor might prescribe.)

Who takes anabolic steroids and why? It is not only the football player or weightlifter or sprinter who may be using anabolic steroids. Nor is it only men. White- and blue-collar workers, females and, most alarmingly, adolescents take steroids -- all linked by the desire to hopefully look, perform and feel better, regardless of the dangers. Anabolic steroids are designed to mimic the bodybuilding traits of testosterone. Most healthy males produce less than 10 milligrams of testosterone a day. Females also produce testosterone but in minute amounts. Some athletes however, may use up to hundreds of milligrams a day, far exceeding the normally prescribed daily dose for legitimate medical purposes. Anabolic steroids do not improve agility, skill or cardiovascular capacity.

Reports indicate that use of anabolic steroids produces increases in lean muscle mass, strength, and ability to train longer and harder. Many health hazards of short-term effects are reversible. The major effects of anabolic steroid use include liver tumors, jaundice, fluid retention, and high blood pressure. Additional side effects include the following: for men shrinking of the testicles, reduced sperm count, infertility, baldness, development of breasts; for women growth of facial hair, changes in or cessation of the menstrual cycle, deepened voice; for adolescents growth halted prematurely through premature skeletal maturation and accelerated puberty changes. Researchers report that users may suffer from paranoid jealousy, extreme irritability, delusions, and impaired judgment stemming from feelings of invincibility.

Long-term, high-dose effects of steroid use are largely unknown

a bobsledder who suffers from testicular cancer and was undergoing testosterone replacement therapy.

Athletes have always been contemptuous of sport's attempts to regulate drug use, but they tended to keep their mouths shut. Most resented the whip hand that testing gave management, but they were too afraid of being caught, punished, embarrassed to speak up unless they were squeaky clean, retired or busted.

If drugs like Prozac and Viagra can be taken without apology by everyday people who want to enhance their performance in a competitive world, why shouldn't athletes, prized as models of "human capacity," be allowed, nay, encouraged, to try out drugs for the rest of us?

World Anti-Doping Agency has banned their use

Furthermore, WADA has banned the use of other substances, even if they are not drugs, are not harmful to the body, and are not artificial. The list of prohibited substances changes constantly without notice and differs from sport to sport, and even between the sexes. As such, the rules governing performance-enhancing drugs make no sense.