Steroid+Nation+Wiki+Project

=﻿Chapter Analysis:=

CHAPTER 1:
At the end of 1985 Dennis Degan had a job for the FDA that involved hanging around workout gyms in search of any types of illegal drugs. Steriods to be exact. The FDA believed that doctors were freely selling steroids to anyone who wanted to lift more and get huge bulk. They were right. around that same time Tony Fitton had been caught trying to get back into the United States with about 2 thousand boxes of Dianabol. Dianabol was an extremly common steriod at that time. Sports players, bodybuilders and anyone who really wanted to be considered an athlete had easy access to it. At that time many professional athletes were getting busted for even more common drugs like cocain or marajuana, or drinking alcohol. There didn't seem to be any problem with steriods that anyone could see. During this era of steriods there was one man named Dan Duchaine who was easily the biggest illegal seller of steroids ever. Steriods are a perscription drug that aren't considered illegal until there abilities are used inappropriatly. Steriods provide nessesary hormones that ones body needs to survive. When someone who is perfectly healthy takes more steriods that when the extra bulid up of muscle begins. That extra bulid up are what the body buliders and wrestlers are looking for. Dan was known as "the guru" of steriods becuase he was so involved. Although he was not known so much for his own body buliding he was on the same if not more drugs than the rest of them. anything new that he wanted to try or just wanted more of, he had the power and the money to get whenever he wanted. I predict that Dan will probably get himself into a lot of trouble with the government and spend a lot of time in jail.

CHAPTER 2:
Before the 1984 Sumer Olympic Games started the International Olympic Committee decided that they needed someone to check the athletes for drugs/ steroids. They picked Don Catlin for the job. Although America kept finding out about more and more famous athletes who were juiced Don knew exactly what was going to happen. Becuase the athletes didn't get in any trouble for getting caught for being on performance enhancng drugs that they would just lower there doses until they could slip under the radar. At the end of the 1984 olympics Catlin finally had all the results for the drug tests. The results were codes with each person who was tested was given a number. So the had the results but they had to match up the numbers with the correct person to figure out who tested out positive. Catlin gave the code sheet to Prince Alexandre de Merode of Belgium who was the leader of the IOC's medical feild. There were 21 total athletes who were busted, but the next day Catlin was told that somebody had broken into de Merode's safe and stole the codes. now there was no way to tell who the juiced players were. Every test that Catlin and his crew had run was gone and now meagingless. Catlin wanted to close up his lab and quit but the USOC insisted that he stay with them. He ended up becoming "America's cheif Olympic steroid hunter" (page 27) One man named John Ziegler was a local doc in Maryland. He prescibed steriods to the elderly people who needed them to stay physically intact.What he didn't realize was that athletes that he was giving the pills were getting so addicted that some were taking up to 20 times as much as he was telling them to take. The winner of the 1988 100-meter dash got his gold medal taken away becuase he tested positive twice for having stanozolol. I predict that the IOC will develop better testing ways to catch more people trying to cheat, as steroids were becoming more popular.

CHAPTER 3:
In chapter 3 we learn the reason behind Dan Duchaine's choices of going on many different steriods. The main reason was that he wanted to be accepted by the people around him. He was an adopted child and his adoptive parents died. Even though Dan was a "player" in the relationships he had with women, they never really seemed to love him back. The steriods made him bigger but even then it didn't seem to make his problems go away. One of the specific drugs he was on was Nubain and it seemed to be making his childhood problems 10 times worse. Twice in May Duchaine was arrested for being caught selling steriods. Both times he looked to Mike Zumpano for help. Mike was one of Dan's bestfriends who helped him write the //Underground Steroid Handbook// 6 years prior. Mike bailed him out the first time for 25 grand. The second time Mike refused to pay 2.5 million dollars and said that Duchaine wouldn't learn anything if he bailed him again. At the time senator Joe Biden (our current vice-president) was giving his strong veiw on steroids by saying how just a few years ago the didn't aknowlege the affects that cocain and crack had on people. He didn't want the same sort of thing to happen with steriods so he made a bill that gave anyone who was dealing steroids a mimimum of 3 years in prison. Becuase of the bill steroids would now be put on the controlled substances list. This is the first time that anyone had done anything to restrict the amount that people were selling. From now on getting and dealing steroids would be a risky but extremly profitable business. I predict that the government will pass all kinds of bills to prevent every league in the country from crying about someone using performance enhancing drugs.

CHAPTER 4:
Lyle Alzado was an amazing football player. Easily one of the best defensive players the NFL had ever seen.He retired in 1985 after playing for 14 years and being on the Los Angles Radiers, Cleveland Browns and where his best years were and where most people remembered him the was in Denver playing for the Broncos. He was thinking about rejoining the league but, how would he be able to keep up with the new younger players? People were guessing that three fourths of all line men were using steroids and they weren't even his age. When Alzado started college he was a tiny 190 pound kid. He didn't want to be that little scrawney kid anymore. he started off by taking yeast pills so that he could eat more and began lifting all the time slowly but surely getting bigger and bigger. By the time he got to Los Angles he was pumped up on so many drugs that Los Angles was nothing near what he was hoping for. The NFL had a very tough drug testing system but to them steroids and drugs were 2 different things. Anyone who wanted steroids could take their pick but drugs like cocaine or marajuana would get you suspended. By 1988 the commisioner of the NFL decided to have players tested for steroids but it wasn't a very good plan becuase they were only tested once so all they had to do was stay away for a couple monthes then once the season started go right back to it. Eventually in 1989 steroids were in the same catagory as cocaine and pot. Steroids were no longer in the hands of the FDA, now they were strictly the business of the DEA or Drug Enforcement Administration. Later when Alzado decided to get back in the NFL for the Raiders,he was more juiced than ever,and he was put in in the third quarter of the second to last preseason game. 4 days after that game he was cut. Football was now out of the question for Alzado. He became more depressed than ever and the steroids were deffinatly not helping. One day when he was feeling terrible he called up his second wife and son, and they went to get smooties, when all the sudden Lyle got up and started coughing outside horribly. When his ex-wife came put Alzado was passed out on the ground while his nose was bleeding. That is when it started to become clear to others that there was a serious problem. At the same time Dan Duchaine had just been released from prison and proceded to pick up right where he left off in his steroid empire with clearly no intension of quiting any time soon. I predict that Lyle Alzado will die very soon because it is clear that the steroids are effecting him more and more everyday.

CHAPTER 5:
In 1990 Dan Duchaine met the women of his dreams named Shelley Harvey, who was a woman bodybulider from London. She specfically came the to United States to find Duchaine and learn how she could contine to bodybuild and win compititions. The two imidiatly seemed to have fallen in love. One thing that Harvey didn't realize was that now that she was dating the famous guru she was going to have to try all the drugs and steroids that he boyfriend was. The one that came out to be the easily the most addictive was GHB. GHB was similar to amino acid that our bodies already produces on a regualar basis. Excepting that when taken it can really hit the human brain hard by producing hallucigoens which can overwhelm our brains causing us to fall inyo a very deep sleep. Mark Thierman and Larry Wood were 2 guys that learned about GHB from a Japanese study. The more they learned about it the more they realized that they could sell it and make huge amounts of money off of it. During the deep sleep that it put the user in it rapidly increased the amount of hormone production in their body. In later studies of Wood the drug was said to have some ability in the business of "life extension" (Page 68) Later Lyle Alzado also met his wife. When he and Kathy Davis went on their honeymoon Alzado started to have some strange scary problems so they flew back to LA. Lyle went to the doctor and Kathy went home to look for any type of medicines he may have been on, becuase at this time his extreme steroid use was still unknown to her. When looking through his drawers she was astonished when she found "five types of oral anabolic steroids and 16 types of injectable ones" (Page 71) Some of those many steroids were even vetrinary medicines. Back to the story of GHB, Wood and Duchaine were constantly finding better things about it giving them even more reasons that it was so good making it even easier for them to sell. One thing that found that appelaed to women was that it filled you up and contained a very small amount of calories. Another good thing about it was that people who drank could get around the cops becuase the drug was capable of passing a breathalyzer test to avoid people from being caught for drunk driving. After the effects of GHB had been discovered by the authorities the police was after Wood who eventually got caught but the inly things they could find were labels and a lot of cash which not enough evidence to bust him so he only ended up spending a night in jail. When Alzado was relaesed from the hospital the doctors had told him that he most likely had less than a year to live due to a type of cancer in his brain. He began radiation therapy and was extremly weak. He started having more and more seizures too. Things were not looking good at all for Alzado. But in all the bad things that were beginning to happen he soon realized that he was just going back to how it all started as that 190 pound kid in college before all the drugs. I predict, again that Alzado's life clock is running out and his body will shut down totally, very soon.

CHAPTER 6:
Lyle Alzado was beginning to grow weaker and weaker and his chances of being able to overcome his cancer were becoming slimer and slimer. Now it was just a matter of time until the cancer go the better of him. It was in June of 1991 that Lyle had //Sports Illustrated,// Shelly Smith come over. He looked terrible. In the few hours that she was over interveiwing him he seemed to spill all of his guts and confess every single part of the steroids that he had used. This would be an extreme surprise to all of his fans. Although there has been some evidence that steroids could do some harm, the idea of taking them to get more muscular was becoming more and more popular. One man named Terry Bollea, more commonly known as the Hulk Hogan was became very popular in the professional wresting world. Every person involved in the prefessional wrestling world seemed to be on steroids. The whole thing was a joke. Every fight and every match was completly scripted. It was just a TV show with extremly buff people. The whole league worked together and spent over $25,000 on steroids. Just because two of the wrestlers were enemies in the ring didn't nessecarily mean the didn't like each other in real life because the whole thing was just a huge skit for buff people to get on TV and make a ton of money. One day Dan Duchaine decided to get away for a while to possibly postpone his next arrest for a few days, when all of the sudden a woke up from a nap with a strange feeling. neither he or Shelley could figure out what was happening. So Shelley drove him to the nearest hospital where they found out he had had a mild stroke. It was caused due to a mixture of steroids and stress from all the police and federal things that were going on. When he was released form the hospital he decided that he and Shelley should take a break from the work outs and he should slow down the underground business for at least a day. They decided to go to a nearby car show on a nice day. They took the scooter out and while they were up near 50 mph when the back tire blew out. Shelley recieved the worse end of the injuries by going into a coma for about 3 weeks. She had a bit on sweliing in the back of her brain as well. After all this Duchaine's hair began to become more and more gray. he was overlaoded with stress from every angle. Things weren't looking to good for the guru. I predict that Dan Duchaine will go out the same way as Alzado did because he has taken so many steroids over the past years.

CHAPTER 7:
Dan Duchaine is continuing to get worse. His hair is now completly grey, his face is droopy, and he's loosing his hearing...and he's not even 40 yet. Duchaine and Wood were sitting in court, yet again, for getting caught selling GHB. During this trial doctors said very different things. GHB is apparently very similar to LSD but as you get addicted and begin to take more and more of it the visual effects get alot worse. Some doctors claimed that you will begin to hallucinate like no other. The drug can take you all the way to the levels having having seizures. In court this statement was proved wrong becuase the doctor who said it had only tested the drug on animals, mostly cats, and they also proved that he was using up to 10 times the amount that even an addicted human would ever use. Another doctor said that the drug is sedative. That means that it is calming and relaxing. That is almost the exact opposite of what the other doctors were saying. Even through all this the jury still called Duchaine and Wood guilty. Meanwhile, Alzado was sitting on his death bed. The cancer was moving way to fast and death would be coming really soon. One thing that Alzado got into the habit of was hanging his leg over the side of the bed and try to lift it up to see how much energy he had left. One day while he was laying in bed he tried to do that, but he didn't have enough energy to pull it back up. Once an all-star defensive back in the NFL now, just barely 43 years old was laying on his hospital bed weaker than ever. Lyle Alzado died in 1992 of brain cancer. The doctors tried to find any other explanation for his death including AIDS from having 3 previous wives, or suggesting that the cancer was hereditary becuase his mother also died from it. The only explanation for the cancer was his excesive steroid use. This is the first time in US history that people began to see the negative effects of steroid use. I predict that people will finally start to wisen up and realize that steroids will only hurt you in the long run and they will stop being so popular.

CHAPTER 8:
The battle of steroids was still raging on. Congress kept passing bills in attempt to help the problem but, every time they seemed to do so someone would come up with something wrong with it. The complaints would start pouring into Congress so they would cancel the first bill and try something new, which would eventually get picked apart until the bill was almost pointless. By this time the war of steroids was not just a problem of Olympic athletes and football players. Now the problem started to go to other leagues including the MLB. Two players specifically were Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire. For a while the two allstars played on the same team: the Oakland A's. The two players back to back in the line up was devastating for just about every pitcher in the league. Before Canseco was traded the A's went on to win 496 games and went to the World Series 3 times. Now one might ask 'On a streak like that why in the world would you trade Canseco?' Well unlike McGwire, Canseco was very open about his steroid use. He wrote a book about himslef called //Juiced,// that even said how he wanted to get his team on them becuase it would only make them better.Canseco had also been involved with the police a few times. Nothing huge but just minor charges that could have escalated. Also Canseco would be applied for free agency by the end of this year, so why not get someone for it. The A's were not like any other team in the MLB. Most coaches wanted all the speed, so very rarely did they ever hit the weight room becuase all that new muscle would just slow down the players. To the A's that was too conservative. They wanted to be aggresive. They went to the weight room almost every day just trying to get the players bigger and bigger. Their whole mind for the game was based on the homerun ball. Thats when the steroids pretty much began. The steroids would get the guys so powerful that just a good solid hit on the ball could turn it into a home run. Dennis Degan was on the opposite side of the steroid users. He was a steroid hunter, and probabley the best one at that. He his the one who found out Dan Duchaine and even took the Gold medal back from Ben Johnson at the 1988 Olympics. However, in the steroid department the OCI was taking over, telling Degan that his position would be given away and he would be reassigned somewhere else in the FDA. At this time Dan Duchaine was going back to jail yet again for more charges involving the use and selling of steroids. One night when Duchaine had an extremly high blood pressure the took him to the Federal Medical Center. Which is pretty much a hospital for convicts. I predict that they will continue to find many many more baseball players, and other athletes for that matter, who have been on some kind of steroid, trying to themselves and edge in the game.

CHAPTER 9:
Chapter nine was mostly all about the political factor of the war on steroids. People were still arguing what kind of substance steroids were. They finally passed the Dietary Suppliment Health and Education Act of 1994. Another important event that happened in 1994 was that the players union of the MLB went on strike. They went on strike because some of the teams owners wanted to lower the saleries of the players. None of the players were about to have that. Even though the players went on strike to avoid loosing money, players like Jose Canseco was missing out on about 24,044 dollars for every game that he missed. That id why him and several other people wanted to stay ready-to-play as soon as the strike ended. Since they were strking most of the players lost their team trainers and were loosing their edge for every day that they were missing practice. So they started going to public gyms where the every day gym rats had the ability to come up to professional atheletes and start conversations. Some were even talking to the players about steroid offers and things like that. I predict that because the players went on strike that more players will be on steroids than before they started the strike.

CHAPTER 10:
In chapter ten we get to see the real Dan Duchaine. He hadn't changed one bit. After he served his latest jail time his girl friend, Shelley Harvey, went back to London because she said she didn't feel safe in America. Now that Dan was out of jail again he just figured that since his kidneys were going to blow up soon anyway, due to cysts that were expanding very rapidly. They were causing him to have strokes and the arteries in his brain were closing up. He already found out the hard way that he had lost his sense of taste when he went to a very fancy resturant, that he had wanted for months while he was in prison, and couldn't taste any of the food or wine. Along with that he had to talk extremly slow. The worst part was probably that he was still only 43. The same age that Lyle Alzado died. DUchaine continuosly went to strip clubs and took advantage of the female bodybuliders that used to idolize him. More and more people were beggining to realize that hanging around Dan Duchaine was probably not their best idea. Dan just wanted to keep his muscles and his popularity. It was extremly tough for The Guru to accept that he wasn't 28 anymore and that he was dieing away. Dieing away in both physical ways and the fact that people didn't really want to be around him, because he usually led them to trouble in one way or another. Another thing that happened around this time happened when the Oakland A's were playing the Boston Red Sox in Boston. Otherwise, Jose Canseco (Boston) against Mark McGwire and Jason Giambi (Oakland). In this game the A's hit thier 4,000 homerun as a franchise. Canseco was extremly jelous and didn't like Giambi at all for several reasons. Giambi had taken his lifting partner and best friend McGwire. Mark had him lifting and it was already clear that Giambi was on some kind of juice because his body had easily doubled in size from just a few monthes ago when Canseco played against them in the preseason. I predict that Dan Duchaine will die very soon and will have no regrets. He probably had someone else to take over after him so his legacy will continue.

CHAPTER 11:
While the testing of athletes was happing before the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, a bomb went off. Although it only killed one person it seemed to have injury approximatly 111 others. Stan Antosh discovered a new steroid: Andro, which is short for androstenedione. It was called a steroid percursor because if a doctor analyzed the pill it would not actually be considered a steroid. When you take it your body will just turn it into testosterone. It more or less becomes a steroid inside your body. This is just the sort of thing that professional athletes were looking for. One of the athletes who was looking for an edge was Barry Bonds. He took Andro so that he could increase his bat speed so he could drive the ball almost twice as far off the bat. It would also help his joint pains and just give him an overall energy boost. Other players such as Mark McGwire got their hands on Andro. However, McGwire was not very careful and got caught with a bottle of it in the locker room. The big debate was that the substance was banned in the NFL and the NCAA, but their was nothing against it for the MLB so McWire did not get any sort of punishment. Now everyone wanted some Andro, because everyone heard about McGwire's inccident through an ESPN report. Antosh was about to have the biggest week of sales ever, and he would be in jail for it. Meanwhile, Dan Duchaine was still up to no good. He found another new girl that he wanted to make babies with. She was a female bodybuilder who renamed un-named throughout the book. He got her hooked on Nubain and several other steroids. He wanted her to do so well and become the best that he didn't even realize that he was destroying her. Later, he told her that she needed calf implants if she wanted a boost to get ready for her next compitition since she got kicked out of the last one for answering positive to a drug test. The surgey went extremly horrible because the doctors never reattched the blood vessels in her legs. Now becuase of Dan Duchaine one woman in London was still suffering braine damage from a scooter accident and another would be loosing a foot becuase he told her she wasn't good enough and needed a short cut to catch up to the compition. In other words the surgury just cut her short. And yet again more and more people realize that Dan Duchane is just a selfish pig. I predict that Bond along with many other players will be questioned more and more as the years went on.

CHAPTER 12:
Chapter twelve was about the IOC working with the governments around the world to try to prevent more athletes from using steroids before the Olympics and using them at all for that matter. These athletes that were using steroids were the idols of many, many people across the world, so when they took steroids it let the people that wanted to be just like them thing that taking steroids was a good way to make yourself better and stronger. People even down to middle-schoolers started to take steroids. It said that by 1999, 2.7 percent of middle-school athletes in Massachusetts were using legitiment steroids including Andro. Dan Duchaine continued to be his typical self. After his current girlfriend had to get her foot amputated (all thanks to him) he began to be very mean. He told her how she would always be in a wheel chair and she didn't really mean much to him anymore. When she finally decided that she couldn't take anymore of Duchaine's BS she ended it. At which point Dan broke down and cried and cried that he did love her and wanted her back but, over the next few monthes they were living on completley different sides of the country. Dan was continuing to get sicker and sicker. While living in New York the Winter got to him and he obtained a cough that he just couldn't shake. The cough proceeded to get worse and worse, yet he still refused to go to the doctors becuase he insisted that he knew more about his health than any other doctor out there. Dan's health got so bad that he couldn't even sit at the dinner table and finish a whole meal without just falling asleep. Dan met another woman who he found very attractive named, Shelley Hominuk. However, she didn't have the same feeling for hom as he did for her. He called her every day for the longest time just so they could talk. One day Shelley realized that Dan hadn't called for almost a week. She went over to his house and used a spare key to get it. She found Dan Duchaine dead on his bed. Although Dan Duchaine was only 46 years old when he died, everyone that knew him would admitt that his death was not a surprise. Some would go on to say that they were surprised he even made it that long. I predict that even though Duchaine was finally out of the picture that his legacy will carry on and the steroid nation will continue on strong.

CHAPTER 13:
The 2000 Olympics had just started in Sydney, Austrailia. The IOC began running more testes than ever before making sure that they would catch every athlete that was trying to compete while using performance-enhancing drugs. It was clear that technoligy was imporving at very high speeds. The better that the dealers got at hiding the drugs, the better the drug testing scientists got at making the tests and using machines to figure out whether or not the subject was using the 'roids. It was still very popular to be buff and in shape, so people continued to buy and sell steroids. But now more than ever, it was very likely that if you were going to take steroids before a compititon, you were probabley going to get caught and kicked out. At the same time the annual Arnold Classic was going strong. It was held every year in Columbus, Ohio. Arnold was almost 60 years old and it finally occured to him that is was time to calm down with the action movies and all the body buliding. But he seemed to know a lot about politics and ended up giving it a shot at running for the governor of California. . . and made it. I predict that Arnold woll take his position for granted and take steroids while he teaching others not to take them.

CHAPTER 14:
Terry Madden had become the CEO of the United States Anti Doping Agency (USADA) in 2000 and had just celebrated the 1st anniversary of being put in that position. The USADA was made so the the IOC didn't have to deal with the punishments of steroids users. They had bigger things to think about than whether or not 12,000 athletes were using performance enhancing drugs. The people that did get caught using drugs were then put into the hands of the USADA and they figured out what the would do to them. While all of this was happening the allstar slugger, Mark McGwire was dying down. Now on the Cardnils for the '01 season and he seemed to be strking out way more often than hitting the big shots over the fences. He had been thinking about retiring for a long time because he realized that he was not the player he used to be and was hurting his team more than helping them. The final sign for him came at the end of the season when they were only a few games away from clinching the divison. There was runner on first and McGwire was up. The Cardnils needed this run to go to the post-season. Cardnils manager, Tony La Russa, pulled McGwire and put in a rookie to pinch hit. This where McGwire quickly understood that his team did not have the confidence in him that they used too. He was just too old. 2001 was Mark McGwire's last season in the bigs. Meanwhile, that same year Barry Bonds had just one his 4th MVP award. He had broken the single season homerun record (previously set my McGwire) and later go on to break Hank Aaron's all time homerun record. Bonds contiued to do amazing things where McGwire had just left off. I predict that people will begin to question all the new records that were being set because all of the new steroid hype that was going around.

CHAPTER 15:
Don Catlin was running tests on a few of the women on the US cycling team, when he came a cross some strange. In on of the womens bodies he found traces of a steroid Norbolethone.He didn't know who the athlete was that he found, so he decided to check out this drug that knew to him. He found out the steroid was actually very old, and when he went undercover to try to get a sample of it the man he spoke to said that it was so old that they stoped selling it and ran out supply years ago. The man said, without realizing who he was talking to, that the drug he found might be a compund of some kind of birth control pill because the two pills were very simialr in there make-up. But Catlin knew that what he was dealing with was not just an ordinary birth control pill.Catlin later found out that the user was a women named, Tammy Thomas. She was clearly found out but didn't stop taking it. She was eventually banned from olympic cycling for life. Everyone thanked Catlin for his good work in finding out who the steroid user was and what she was taking. But he was the only one to still beileve that the job wasn't done yet because whoever was dealing out her steroid supply was still out there, and porbably still making loads of money from other clients Just about a month and a few days later some increbible happened. Tim Montgomery became the fastest known human when he ran a 100-meter dash in 9.78 seconds. I predict that some one new will probably break Montgomery's record very soon because they will be takeing more steroids then everyone else.

CHAPTER 16:
In 2003, Steve Bechler died because of extreme over heating. When he finally got to the emergency room his temperature was at 106 degrees. His body was shutting itself down because he was loosing so many blood and brain cells. Even though they finally got his temperature down to 102 his body had lost so many cells that he called it quits. Starting with his lungs, all of his major internal organs began to shut down all together. When Steve was pronounced dead the next thing was to figure out what had caused it. They found out that, that day he had taken three pills of a weight lose pill called, Xenadrine RFA-1. He said that he had gained too much weight during the off season and said he had to cut it off ... and fast. Unlike other professional athletic leagues, the MLB still did not have any steroid testing policies. After the daeth of Bechler the league decidded that something had to be done. Because it was thought that nearly 75% of all MLB players were using some kind of steriod they brought up the idea that they would start running tests on the players. However, this did not fit too well with the players union. The players threatened to go on strike if they started to check for steroid use. So they started their hunt for steroids in the minor league. When Bud Selig found out that nearly 11% of minor league players were on some kind of juice, that ment that like it or not, the MLB would start doing some kind of steroid test. They settled on doing one anonymous and random steroid test per year. They said that if the percent of steroid users in the MLB was above 5% then further action would be taken. Further action is still clearly being taken today so that obviously tells that the number had to be well over 5%. Also at this time Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that he would be running for governor of California because something clearly had to be done to help out one of the most popular states in the US. Schwarzenegger decided that he was up to that challenge. I predict that there will continue to be athletes who use steroids even thoug there are now more consquences and they will probably get found out.

CHAPTER 17:
In 2004 the government had heard enough about the steroid problem. President George W. Bush was stilll putting terrorism first since 9/11. Also the DEA, USADA, MLB in general knew that something had to be done because it seemed like America's past time was no longer about skill. It seemed to be whoever could take the most drugs would win. Now whether or not the players union would go on strike, the MLB passed and controlled substance list that contained both, Andro, THG, and Norbolethone. Next thing people knew was that the idea of using performance enhancing drugs went down to the high school levels. They were saying that if players in the big leagues were using them, then why shouldn't they? A mom of a high schooler in Texas found unused steroid needles in one of his bags and was furious. He told her that almost everyone on the team was using some kind of steroid, and he only tired once but then stoped because he didn't feel right about it. Everyone thought the mom was crazy just because she was blaming the school for something all the people thought was just her own sons fault. Later 9-12 students confessed that they had been using some kind of steroid. Even some of the parents confessed that they knew their kids were using steroids and just didn't say or do anything about it. A woman named Jackie Speier also wanted something done with the steroid issue. She kept nagging and nagging to the point that everything just about humanly possible was done to prevent high school kids from using steroids at all, and the ones that were hooked would not be aloud to participate in any sports. An agent for the DEA, who did not share is name because he is still doing undecover business for them, was getting mexican sellers to come to the States for big sales and then arresting them once they were 1) in possesion of illeagal drugs and 2) were considered illegal aliens for crossing for the border and not gaining citizenship. This agent is well on his way to completly eliminating all of the Mexican steroid sellers that are shipping drugs into our nation. I predict that even though they are taking out many steroid dealers, that they will continue to pop back up and there will always be sellers in the nation.

CHAPTER 18:
Jose Canseco ratted out several other players in the MLB who he insisted were using steroids. This was a good thing and a bad thing that he did. It was good because people needed to start coming clean about thier steroid and performance enhancing drug uses. This was a bad thing because it was very unfair of him to do. He confessed his use of steroids after he had quit baseball and was moving on. He gave out the names of others iincluding Sammy Sosa, Frank Thomas, and even his own former teammate Mark McGwire. Those were just a few of the names he handed out. In going to court just about all of the names that Canseco had given away all checked out for a positive steroid test. While of this was going on Victor Conte was managing his popular steroid empire. Even though he may not have known it, he was following right in the foot-steps of former seller/ guru, Dan Duchaine. And while he continued to sell and make huge sums of money, the undercover agents for the USADA were busting people in Mexico, and had more recently found out that they had people mass producing certain steroids some places in China. Now they could see that the sellers were continously making new combinatations of products to put on the market to keep one step ahead of the governemnt, and their controlled substance list. If every time by the time one steroid was added to the illeagal/ controlled substances list, there was a new one on the market then how could they ever get caught? As of right now Victor Conte's idea seemed to be wprking rather perfectly. Sooner or later I predict that someone will slip up and say something and he will serve major jail time, if he doesn't die of the same fate Duchaine brought upon himself by dieing due to his over active steroid uses.

CHAPTER 19:
The era of steroids is finally starting to decline. The special agencies were continuing to crack down on even more steroid users by creating better tests that showed more types of performance enhancing drugs and they were also finding the sources of where all of the steroids were coming from, and making tons of arrests. Athletes were finally starting to understand that steroids were just like every other drug. They make you feel good for a while, but in the long run you are very quickly shortening your life and overall not helping yourself at all. Another thing that was happing was Arnold Schwarzenegger was taking care of California, as the new governor. For the most part people said that he was exactly what the state needed, so people would calm down and help the state get back on thier feet. However the problem really was that he didn't like it that much and when he came time for his annual body building connvention, the Arnold Classic, in Columbus, Ohio, he was there in a heart-beat. The only thing was, was that, that connvention had many vendors trying to get every gym rat customer they could to try some sort of steroid product. When the people of California found out about that, they weren't to happy. They knew that the Arnold Classic was commercializing steroids and they also knew that their guru headed governor was supposed to be in the state try to discourage people from using steroids. In their eyes, their governor was a giant hipocrit. I predict that Arnold will not hold his knew governing postion becuase he didn't like it and he would go back to body buliding and movie making.

CHAPTER 20:
Chatper twenty was mostly just a summary of the things that have happened in the steroid world up to this point. At least up until the year the book was published. Barry Bonds finally broke Hank Aaron's all time home run record, but many people had different sided opinions about it. Some people said that he didn't deserve the title at all because they considered the steroids to be cheating, but others said that, that steroids were just something that Hank Aaron didn't have in his age, and because Bonds did there should be nothing wrong it. Meanwhile, Terrence Madden and Don Catlin were still finding imports of drugs that were coming from contries including China, Mexico, India and most of the Eastern European contries were sending them over. The USADA caught several groups and jailed them by setting up fake deals and making them travel to the United States so they could legally arrest them. By this time it seemed like every professional athlete was using some kind of juice. My opinion on it is that if every single person in every league is using drugs to help them, won't that just make everyone equal again? Then your back to square one where all the same people are the best and nothing much will be changed. It seems as if what Dan Duchaine started so many years ago will never die. I predict that people will continue to use steroids until the government threats the death penatly to everyone the catch using steroids. Steroids have become a way of life for some of these players and it doesn't seem that anything anyone else says about it will stop them.

=﻿Plot:= The plot of //Steroid Nation// starts at the very beginning, when taking a pill to make you stronger was a brand new idea. It fascinated everyone. It seemed that for the longest time steroids could only do good things. It's when people like Dan Duchaine came along to abuse the power of the steroids. He started seeling them to anyone willing to buy. He was making huge sums of money becuase it was popular and everyone wanted to try some of the performace enhancers. The govenrment didn't even know what hit them. They didn't know how to classify steroids to the public. They weren't really drugs like cocaine or marajuana, but then again they weren't something to be messing around with either. The government finally created agencies and started passing bills to cut down on all the steroids going around. It seemed as if the dealers were always one step ahead of the government becuase they were always escaping being arrested and always found ways to keep their secrets. Steroids were finally becoming a worldly idea when Olympic athletes were caught using steroids from all over the world. Steroids were becoming illegal because, well in simple terms, it was cheating. And even worse of all the athletes on TV that people idolized were caught using steroids which then made kids think that it was ok to use steroids. Before anyone knew high-schoolers and even some middle schoolers were caught inject the juice. People like Terry Madden and Don Catlin were the main agents that did alot of the busting of dealers and athelets using what the dealers were giving them. This is a current issue still today and it doesn't seem like its going to end any time soon.

=﻿Author's Goal:= The author's main goal for writing this non-fiction novel was to inform the readers that steroids are not good things. They were made for a certain purpose and shouldn't be used for anything other than their purpose. Their purpose is mostly to either help little old weak people who are not producing enough hormones, or to help weak animals heal. People who already have enough of their main hormones shouldn't want to get more of them. While reading this book I learned about many people who were involved with the distribution of steroids and their consequences. Steroids might seem like a good idea at the time but in the long run you are only hurting yourself. You are taking years off of your own life by taking steroids. They are no different than any other major illegal drug out there. Steroids are one of those things that seems so cool and a greta idea, but they will only hurt you later and when you get caught using them (because you most likely will) there will be major consequences that follow your actions.

=﻿Muckraking Theme:= The author unconvered many hidden facts about what was happening and what is still happening today. He found out the main people involved in dealing and bringing steroids to the United States. He worte the book like a timeline. It started back at the very beginning when steroids were a completly new thing and the book ended by the time that steroids were a current issue and major athletes and others were using them all the time. Ideas that he shared in the book were the names of the countries that had the most involvement in the steroid issues. They included: the US, Mexico, China, and Thailand. He also uncovered that facts that Dan Duchaine and Mike Zumpano created the //Underground Steroid Handbook.// That event is what intially kicked off the battle of steroids. Other things that he uncovered was that people like Lance Armstrong, Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds all got some kind of punishment for taking steroid.