The Current - Why steroids might not give you that ‘superhero’ body you see online

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

Bodybuilder Greg Doucette says he regrets taking anabolic steroids for a decade, but at the time he felt his goals weren’t achievable without them. He talks to Matt Galloway about the growing pressure young men feel to use drugs to achieve the physiques they see on social media, and what habitual steroid abuse does to your body.

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When people define aesthetics, they're not talking about the 15% body fat guy. I hate to break it to you, but they're not. 6% sub is where the real magic happens. I knew it would put that muscle maturity, that little emphasis, that little oomph, so I was like, okay. I have no regrets, no complaints, more girls, more attention, got bigger.

They're easy to find on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Messages like these of men striving to look lean, muscular, and strong. Looks great, but can you trust what you see? Increasingly, influencers are getting that body that they want with the help of anabolic steroids. In Canada, steroids are a controlled drug, meaning it's illegal to manufacture, import, or sell them. But that is not stopping young men and teens from taking them.

Greg Doucette is a pro bodybuilder. He coaches clients on diet, training, and supplements. He's in our Halifax studio. Greg, good morning. Good morning. What do you see when you go through a gym? Are you able to see like how common is it that somebody would be using steroids?

Well, it's way more common than people think because most people look at guys in the gym, they see the guys with the most amount of muscle and they're thinking, yeah, they're probably on steroids, but they would never guess the guys who look average or even the women that are using steroids. And so way more people, I would say probably 30% are using steroids in the gym.

How can you tell? You can't tell. You can only tell if somebody has such an extremely overdeveloped physique that it's inconceivable that they could be natural, like an IPB pro bodybuilder, for example, but you can't tell the gorgeous girl, the bikini model that they're also using steroids because they don't

use as many of them. So just because you don't outwardly appear to be on steroids doesn't mean that you're not on them. That's just really interesting. So there's not kind of a defined cohort of people who would be using these drugs. Well, and no, and see, one of the biggest problems is that people think that if they use steroids,

they'll look like their superhero, like The Rock or some crazy muscular man or woman, but that's just not the case. Most people who use steroids look average. Oftentimes it's people who are far below average, they have horrible genetics, and they just wanna look average. They wanna look like a guy that could take their shirt off

on the beach and not be made fun of. And so these guys are on steroids and no one is the wiser. Tell me more about this and the look that those who would be taking steroids would be going for. Well, everyone wants to have the chiseled six pack, you know, sub 10%. Most people just say single digit body fat. They want to be super lean. They want to have muscle. They want to have vascularity like veins in the biceps and so on. They just want to look like perhaps Wolverine, maybe not crazy muscular,

but even the Wolverine is not natural. How much of this is about the ubiquitous presence of influencers on social media guiding people, and we're talking about men in particular who are using steroids, toward those drugs? Well, it's gotten worse every decade. If you look at our superheroes from the past, or if you look at our, you know,

the actors and so on, and the 20 years ago, the guys didn't have as much muscle as they do now. Every decade, it seems to get worse, and the people that are doing these steroids keep getting younger year after year after year. And so it's mostly the movies, it's mostly Instagram, YouTube, all these things that you see.

Back when I was a kid, I's mostly Instagram, YouTube, all these things that you see. Back when I was a kid, I'm almost 50 years old, it was mostly the pressure on women to look thin. But since that time, I think there's an equal amount of pressure on men to have a certain type of physique as it is for a woman. How easy is it to get these drugs? It's excessively easy. And most people think of steroids when they're thinking of performance enhancing drugs, but

most young people aren't using steroids. Now in Canada, it's illegal to sell steroids and so on, but it's legal to use them. So anyone can have them. It's not illegal. So it's a lot more common than you think, but it's not just steroids. People are buying SARMs, selective androgen receptor modulators, mostly available in oral form. So it's just a pill, very easy to get and not even illegal. I ask you this in part because in addition to being a coach and a pro bodybuilder, you've talked about this openly before, but you used to use

steroids, right? Absolutely. Abused them for 10 years, have regrets now. Now that I'm older and you kind of think more clearly, at the time I wanted to be an IPB pro bodybuilder, I couldn't do that without them. I was winning the Nationals World Championships natural. I had done 42 bodybuilding shows, 100% natural, and then started using steroids after, because I wanted to be like everyone else. I wanted to have all the glory. I wanted to be the champion.

I wanted to make money from it. And while doing it natural, it was just impossible for me. What were your concerns going into this? Because for all the obvious reasons, there is a stigma around it. I mean, you talk about natural, people would talk about athletes being clean or dirty, for example.

Did you think about that when you were considering taking these drugs? Well, no, because in bodybuilding, it's not just allowed, it's expected. So when I was natural, the talk was, why aren't you doing steroids? Look at your physique, Look how good you look. Imagine how good you would look if you added in steroids. And I had competed for so long without them, that people basically

said, take them. And so every year would go by and there'd be more and more pressure. And I didn't really feel the pressure to do it until I got a lot older when I got into my 30s. And at this point, I'm not making any more gains. I'm at my natural genetic limit. I can't get any better. And I'm like, unless I use steroids, I'm not gonna be an IFBB Pro. I'm not gonna make a living from this. And that's what I wanted to do. So this was the thing that you thought

would get you beyond your natural limit, but get you beyond the peak that you had. I didn't just think it, I knew it. And as soon as I took it, I turned IFBB Pro. So it literally worked. It did all those things. What did you take? I took pretty much everything in the kitchen sink. Like if you named a steroid, so it literally worked. It did all those things. What did you take? I took pretty much everything in the kitchen sink.

Like if you named a steroid, I probably took it. And what was the impact? I mean, describe to me the difference between Greg, who is not taking these drugs, and then Greg, who is using them. Well, with steroids, I think I put on about 15 pounds of muscle right away, like within, let's call it months, like less than a year.

And I went from having like a really good physique to a physique that like, you would get second looks all the time. Not only, when you're natural, you kind of look good with your shirt off with a pump, but with steroids, I had added so much muscle that even with a t-shirt on, even with a jacket, it was obvious.

Now, not all of it was good. You start getting gynecomastia, which is a female breast tissue development in your nipples. You're getting more acne. My face was very puffy. So when I look back at my photos from 10 years ago, I feel I look much better now at 49 than I did in my 30s because there's a lot of edema. There's swelling. You basically look like a marshmallow. Like you're puffy. It's not a good look. And looking back at the time, I thought it was good. But reflecting back on it now, I feel like I'm a lot healthier. Even when I was using steroids back in the past, I wasn't doing cardio. And so I got to an age in my 40s, I'm like, I can't do this forever. And my health, I don't want to like die young. So I eventually just made the decision to stop and get into doing doing cardio doing a lot of bike racing and then kind of

Convinced people of the dangers now oftentimes people call me a hypocrite you abuse steroids and you're telling people not to do them I'm like, well, doesn't it take somebody who use them to know all about them to then warn people about the dangers What were some of the other side effects that you experienced from taking them? Well, the problem isn't so much when you take them. It's when you stop So while you're taking them, you essentially feel like Superman. You feel invincible. You're more aggressive, you have more confidence, you have more energy, you're just better at everything, you're a lot stronger.

Once you stop taking them, then all of a sudden, that all goes away. Your muscles get smaller, you have less energy, and a lot of libido issues, it's harder to have sex, it's much more difficult, and this comes from having very highly elevated levels of testosterone, but then when you stop, it's the exact opposite. So you go from being like a Superman to just like a woman, you feel like a woman, your testosterone levels are as low as a woman.

Why did you stop taking them? Well, I was in my mid-40s, and I had gotten as big as I could get. I basically was using as many steroids as I could handle. So every year the dose would go up and up and up trying to put on more muscle. And I basically said, I can't improve anymore. And I said, it's either keep going on this steroid route and completely ruin my health or do something different.

And so I decided to get back into my roots. Like when I a child, I was doing, well a child, I was a teenager, I was doing triathlons since the age of 13 into my 20s and I said, I'm gonna start doing cardio again. So I started riding the bike to replace that high I got from lifting such heavy weights in the gym. I decided I'm gonna get enjoyment from improving at something different, something healthy. And I knew that cardio was really good for your health, your heart and so on, and doing steroids is the opposite. And so by switching over and pivoting into cycling, I was able to get that dopamine rush,

that high from being better at something in cycling and replacing that feeling I got from lifting weights. You also tangled with the law though, right? I mean, you were convicted of smuggling and distributing steroids. You got a 21th conditional sentence, a year of probation. The police seized, what, $250,000 worth of steroids? Well, they, they exaggerate. That's how much they said it was worth. It was actually 62,000, but it's still a lot. But yeah, this all happened. And obviously that set my mind in an egg of a

spiral. I was depressed for a long time. I was basically infamous. I lost my teaching career. And so I was forced to just, you know, I was forced to be a bodybuilding coach and pretty much that's it. And then I went into YouTube, started making videos, educational videos about diet, training and all that. And I ended up getting famous, which was, you know, very lucky, especially considering the history that I had. What do you think this says, and you've hinted at this earlier, and we're gonna talk about this more in a moment, but what do you think this says about we as a society

and what we expect from men in terms of the image and what it means to be a man and how we think about masculinity when what influencers are selling us is a look that you're saying is not natural, that it has to be exaggerated through steroid use. Well everyone wants to fit in. Everyone wants to feel special.

Everyone wants to look cool, to be accepted by society. Every year that gets pushed further and further away from the normal. At this point, even the people who have the best physiques in the world, the champions, they're Photoshopping their photos because they don't feel like they're good enough. No matter how great a physique you get, no matter how many steroids you get, it's never going to be enough.

It wasn't enough with me. When I first took steroids, I thought, oh, if I put on 10 or 15 pounds, I'll never want more. And then you put on 15, then you put on 20, and it's never enough. I could have put on 20 pounds more and then I would have put on 20 more after that. So there is no end result that's going to be good enough. You're never going to be satisfied. As you said, you're famous now. You have a lot of people that follow you through YouTube

and beyond. Do you feel like you have a responsibility in some ways for young men? I mean, there would be young men who would see other influencers and think, well, for me to get there, I have to take these drugs. Well, to be honest, the temptation for me to go back on steroids is there. I look at some of the old photos of my physique and it's like, wow, I wish I looked like that again. I wish I had that much muscle. I'm a world record holder in the bench press, deadlift, Guinness record holder,

all these things. I can't lift anything close to those weights. So sometimes I go to the gym and like, boy, it would be nice to do one more cycle and just see how I could look. Maybe I can compete in the 50 and over division and win that. But.

Why don't you do that? I have to think of the people that I'm influencing. I have over 2 million followers on YouTube and I preach about being healthy and fit and safe and living a long and healthy life. And so the fact that so many people, if I was to do steroids again like that and compete, it would be sending a message that it's safe, it's healthy, it's this guy, Coach Greg says it's okay, he's doing it himself, and so what message that would be.

And so I feel like it would be irresponsible with the millions of people that would be watching me to do that. And so that's an extra motivation for me to stay doing what I'm doing. Now when I say I'm natural, I'm not saying I'm not taking anything. I'm on doctor prescribed testosterone from my doctor, 140 mg of testosterone a week. And the reason for that is because of my years of abuse, my body couldn't produce testosterone normally again. And so I had to be given a prescription because without it I would have no sex drive,

I would feel like dog shit. I've tried it. I was off of everything for about six months. I had no energy, brain fog, all of it. And so I'm on a medication called testosterone, which is a steroid because I need it from all those years of abuse. And that's for the rest of my life. Coach Greg, it's really good to talk to you about this.

Thanks for being here. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Greg Doucette is a pro bodybuilder, YouTuber, and coach and author. He was in our Halifax studio. Hi, my name is Alameen Abdelmahmoud and I would like to invite you to the group chat. It's called commotion and I promise it is not another text thread that's going to blow up your phone.

It's a podcast where I talk to some of the smartest and funniest culture critics we can find about the biggest stories in arts and pop culture. We are talking about things like Beyonce's Grammy snub or the future of the WWE and so much more. You can listen to new episodes of commotion every weekday available wherever you get your podcast. Cal Ganson has been listening in. He's an assistant professor in social work at the University of Toronto.

He's with me in studio. Good morning. Good morning. Thanks. Greg gave us his reasons as to why so many young men would be feeling as though they would need to take steroids. How do you understand that? What does your research tell you?

I think it's really exactly what he's talking about. These immense pressures for males in particular to increase their body size, to align with this unrealistic body ideal that is highly muscular, that's lean, that's cut, that's powerful, right, displays the sort of the norms of masculinity like aggression, like dominance, like strength and physicality. There's also the functional piece that he mentioned really well, which, really well, which is, you know, when you are stronger, you actually can function better. You can do things for people. You can really show that dominance in a physical space,

not to mention the many things he also mentioned, like the media and social media in particular. Tell me more about this and about the role of influencers in particular, in terms of what it means to be a man now. What are young men seeing online? I think they're seeing lots of narratives around, they're actually seeing multiple things.

One is I think they're seeing ways to be a man. What does that mean for their body? How do they treat other people? What is the sort of norms that they should follow? But I also think they're hearing another narrative, which is all men are bad, right? Toxic masculinity, this is a negative thing, right? And I think there's a kind of a pushback against that as well, which creates, I know, attention

for a lot of people and a lot of young men to be able to sort of identify what's the type of man I want to be. I can't really fall within this more emotional sort of quote unquote feminine male, because that's bad in a particular way, or not seen as really good. And then there's also the sort of I can't be like a more masculine man because that's seen in a particular way, or not seen as really good. And then there's also the sort of, I can't be like a more masculine man because that's seen as toxic, right? And so I think there's a push and pull

of trying to figure out where do you fall within that sort of spectrum of masculinity. What's the effect of that, do you think? I think a lot of risk behaviors, a lot of confusion, you know, drives to increase muscularity and strength. You know, I think isolation, loneliness, you know, poor emotion regulation and communication techniques.

So like, I think it's massive, it's a massive effect. You looked at the messaging directed at teens in particular. What is looks maxing? What does that mean? Yeah, looks maxing is, you know, a trend online. It really goes back, you know, a bit of time now, but it's really sort of catch some fire recently. It's the whole sort of phenomenon of trying to optimize

one's physical appearance. And so, while Greg was speaking about sort of muscular bodies, Nooks Maxing is more specifically focused on how one's face looks. Is your jaw chiseled in a particular way? Is your cheekbones defined in a particular way? Do you have hunter eyes? What are hunter eyes? Just like really a particular way? Do you have hunter eyes? What are hunter eyes?

Just like really a particular shape of eyes that is supposedly the most attractive type of eyes that you can have. You know, so all types of different ways in which your face can appear. How is this connected to, I'm gonna go through some other terms here, body and muscle dysmorphia.

Sure, well certainly if you are obsessively thinking about your physical appearance, your body, your face, that can create biodismorphia, which is sort of perceiving yourself as different than you actually are, and creates obsessive patterns and behaviors of trying to change your physical features, which can be obviously quite problematic. Muscle dysmorphia is sort of specifically focused on perceived insufficient muscularity. So you see on social media this influencer, the person who perhaps is giving you ideas

on weight training and what have you, and they look like this, you don't look like that. And so there's daylight between the two. Massive daylight, which creates internalization of that body ideal to say, that's what I need to look like. It creates body dissatisfaction because I don't look like that, so therefore I feel bad about myself.

And then that leads to all types of different behaviors, steroids certainly being one of them but lots of other behaviors like use of protein supplements or creatine or pre-workout or just over-exercising or changing one's diet to actually achieve that body. I mean it's interesting that a lot of those influencers are also selling those supplements, right? For sure, I mean sure. This is definitely something that we need to be thinking about as far as how do we educate young men to be able to watch these videos and learn about what

is sort of the background. Is this person making money from selling this product? Or how many views does this person get on this video? And how does that actually pay them, right? So some of the things they may be sharing with you might not be 100% accurate. It might be particularly harmful. And so we actually need to make sure

that we can help those young people decipher what's accurate, what's not, and get the right information for themselves. Tell me about Trend. What is Trend? Trend is a type of steroid. And so it's very easy to go online. You search online, you know, Trend, which is,

or Trendalone, which is the sort of technical name, and you can find places that will, you can purchase it, and it will be sent right to your house. I think something we need to recognize is, a lot of these are being kind of manufactured or processed through facilities that we don't really know where those are and how they're getting to you.

And so that sort of being on the quote unquote black market creates increases of risk. And so Trenbolone is just one type of steroid that is intended to increase your muscle mass and strength. What are the physical side effects? Greg talked a little bit about what he went through. If you are taking these drugs, what aren't those influencers telling you? Yeah, I think Greg's examples are really important. They can really affect your cardiovascular system, your neuroendocrine system. They can really change your liver

functioning, your kidney functioning, et cetera. Your sex hormones, obviously, and your libido and actually ability to have reproduce can be affected. You can have dermatological effects, right? Acne, like he was mentioning, or edema. So they're really wide ranging. And something we need to also recognize is that a lot of steroid users, young steroid users,

are not typically using them, quote unquote, appropriately. Right? What does that mean? It means that they're not maybe cycling on and off to allow their body to kind of reproduce its own testosterone. They might be doing something that's called blasting and cruising where they're just staying on it for as long as they want because they just keep seeing the gains that they're getting in the gym and on their body. Uh, but we actually, you need to actually go off of it to be able to allow your body

to reproduce its own sex hormones, own testosterone. Um, and so without that, you actually potentially create more damage to your body and you know as Greg was mentioning right he needs to be on testosterone now to be able to allow his body to actually function at its quote-unquote normal state. So that's kind of the damage that could come from going off of these in an unprescribed way if I can put it that way. Yeah and I think an emphasis that I would make is that if we know that young people are really interested in using these steroids, and we need to be able to communicate to them

that medical oversight might actually reduce and mitigate many, many of the harms. And I'm certainly not advocating for the use of steroids, but I think if we take a harm reduction approach, we could actually prevent some of the really negative effects that a young person is gonna have from them. And that includes psychoeducation, that includes making sure that their blood levels

are being monitored, making sure that they're going on and off cycles to be able to allow their body to kind of restart its own testosterone production. What alarms you the most about this? Well, I think a lot of it's alarming. I mean, certainly the sort of social aspects of it are really problematic, you know, just this immense pressure that a lot of young men are feeling to look a certain way. There's obviously been decades and decades of this

pressures for women in particular. And now we're seeing how that's it's sort of manifesting for men. What is the danger in that? Because, again, being strong, being fit are good things. So those are things that everybody should strive toward. Totally. I think it's kind of like the obsessive nature of it, the pathological aspects of it, where even Greg kind of mentioned,

he still thinks about what would it be like to go back on. And we've done research that has shown that actually many young people, like one in five actually experience some level of dependence when they're on steroids. Like they don't, obviously it's not an addictive drug, but they feel dependent on them because it gives them a certain sense of accomplishment or feeling of success. And so I think, I think that sort of social aspects of it, the individual aspects of it,

where one might actually be just an immense distress, emotional distress, psychological distress, they might not be able to function in their work or their occupation or their educational system. All those things kind of can be impacted. What do we do about this? I mean, part of this is about access to these drugs, but the larger picture is what we as a society are doing when it comes to the expectations

of young men in particular and what we expect and what they internalize as their own expectations. So what do we do about that? I think initiatives that focus on reducing weight stigma, for example, making sure that there's this acceptance of all bodies, right, body positivity, body neutrality is an important thing, right? Not being able to identify and accurately represent

bodies online, for example, I think this is maybe a stretch, but moderating content that goes online that might be potentially problematic. We know that social media companies, for example, have policies around reducing content on pro-anorexia or pro-eating disorder content, but we don't have that for steroids, for example. We know that a lot of people, as Greg mentioned, are going to social media to literally learn this is how you find steroids, this is how you use them, do this, and this will happen. Is it fair for us to be putting that information out there

and potentially influencing a young person to do this if they see it as A, accessible, B, quote unquote, evidence-based and informed from previous users? What about a larger conversation around masculinity and what masculinity in 2025 looks like? I think that's a very important conversation for sure that we need to be able to sort of think of masculinity

as a spectrum certainly, as a multitude of different ways in which you can be a man. There's no one way to be a man. And we need to sort of dismantle figures or sort of tropes of manhood as being problematic, unemotional, aggressive, anti-feminine, those types of things. And just, yeah, having conversations, right?

I think this type of conversation is crucial, be able to kind of put that out there because a lot of people aren't necessarily thinking about that in their day to day. They just absorb it passively and as they walk through life, and then they'll have conversations with the men in their lives about what it means to be a man. In the meantime, people will be on these social media apps and they will see somebody that they follow who offers, you know, this is a great all-around weight routine. And you look at the person, you think, wow, I could get like that. You may not be able to get like that without the drugs.

How do you know, how can you tell the difference between what's a healthy fitness routine and one that's not? I mean, that is a very, very good question. I think everybody has to figure out what works for them in their body and in their sort of daily life, right? I think Greg also mentioned this, which I think was very important, which is, you know, everyone has this genetic capacity, right, you can work out in the gym all day long

and you might not be able to gain as much muscle as the person next to you. And certainly steroids help you get past that genetic max. But I think for people it's really about consulting with, you know, trainers or trusted individuals, right? Just going online and finding people who are spewing this information creates, you know, misinformation, right? And that might work for them. It might work for many other people that are viewing it, but it might not work for you. And so who can you go to that you trust that you can actually gather that information from? That's so interesting. Kyle, thank you very much. Yeah, thanks for having me.

Kyle Gansum is an assistant professor in social work at the University of Toronto. It's a conversation around influencers. It's about steroids, but it's also about masculinity. And, and as we said, what it means to be a man in 2025 in the face of what influencers are peddling on social media apps. If you have any thoughts on any of that, we'd love to hear from you. You can email us, thecurrent at cbc.ca. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.