Speaker 1: Can't wait for the next episode to drop. Be one
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Speaker 1: That's h I M A L A y A, and
Speaker 1: then follow Ozzy Confidential once you're there. I remember a
Speaker 1: girlfriend at the time saying, uh, this blood in your underwear?
Speaker 1: Why her all eyes must have scraped against the nail.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Ozzy. This antion. It's about power, a certain
Speaker 1: kind of megalomaniac pulled toward more more more. Alright, alright, alright,
Speaker 1: So here you are. It's Azzi Confidential. My name is
Speaker 1: Eugeneus Robinson, the host. So we're gonna do something special
Speaker 1: to show you that this is an actual no holes barred,
Speaker 1: deep dive into stories that are untold, unheard. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do something different. Usually I'm getting other people's stories, but
Speaker 1: for you, special, for you, it's gonna be my story.
Speaker 1: I'm in a band called ox Bowl. A cursory not
Speaker 1: even a cursory glance. Your Internet will tell you that
Speaker 1: if I'm known for anything, it's a certain kind of
Speaker 1: volatility which brings me to a friend John Mitchell, to
Speaker 1: be at the l A Times talking about an article
Speaker 1: I wanted him to write the guys goading me remembering
Speaker 1: when I was fourteen and not nearly as adept at
Speaker 1: handling the reins of volatility as I am now. I remember,
Speaker 1: you lifted weights when you were fourteen, you were you
Speaker 1: were making much progress. And I lifted weights as a hobby.
Speaker 1: But I competed right then, and my first competition New
Speaker 1: York was National Gym Association Teenage, uh New York, mr
Speaker 1: Teenage New York. When I started to go through puberty
Speaker 1: and you know some guys, oh, I was so horny
Speaker 1: all the time. That wasn't the issue for me. The
Speaker 1: issue for me was this really weird kind of sense overpowering,
Speaker 1: testosterone fueled sense of invulnerability. I think they call it
Speaker 1: a hysteria patio standing. I grew up in New York,
Speaker 1: so standing on the subway platform and as a train
Speaker 1: started to come in, I started to have this increasing
Speaker 1: obsession combined with standing on the edge of the platform,
Speaker 1: that I could throw myself in front of the train
Speaker 1: and physically stop the train that I had I had
Speaker 1: through my weightlifting ministrations, and I had developed enough physical
Speaker 1: power to actually now trains come through the station's express
Speaker 1: train speeding. I knew I couldn't stop a speeding subway train,
Speaker 1: but as it as it cruises to a stop or
Speaker 1: starts up, I was convinced, and I actually had to
Speaker 1: force myself to stand back from the edge of the platform,
Speaker 1: so that it was a very strange, weird like Octave
Speaker 1: Mirbau and the Torture Guarden talking about these overpowering obsessions compelling.
Speaker 1: It was like that, based on what I know now
Speaker 1: about testosterone, I was probably peaking, and then I started
Speaker 1: lifting weights harder, and I probably just leveled it out.
Speaker 1: I didn't have that continued obsession with throwing myself in
Speaker 1: front of the train beyond my senior year. But of
Speaker 1: course I left New York and then um I came
Speaker 1: out to California and I went to Stanford. But I
Speaker 1: didn't compete at all during Stanford. I started lifting after
Speaker 1: Stanford seriously and started competing again after I was doing
Speaker 1: insane things. I remember I was big into glandular extracts.
Speaker 1: I don't know where they got them. I don't know
Speaker 1: what was in those pills. You could get them at
Speaker 1: health food stores. I remember feeling dizzy a lot. The
Speaker 1: idea was that you had to you had to make gains.
Speaker 1: It was, you know, it was a burgeoning supplement industry,
Speaker 1: and pumping iron had come out late seventies, and you know,
Speaker 1: nobody had figured out at least two was seventeen or eighteen,
Speaker 1: like I was, had figured out that probably it wasn't
Speaker 1: just supplements that got them there. There hadn't been a
Speaker 1: lot of high profile, well publicized bust four performance enhancing.
Speaker 1: I was a purist for so long that um that
Speaker 1: it always feels kind of strange for me to talk
Speaker 1: about steroids, which is what we're talking about. I was
Speaker 1: surrounded by them when I was training in Brooklyn. I
Speaker 1: was surrounded by them at my gym in California. I
Speaker 1: trained down at Venice Golds. It was, I mean, I
Speaker 1: figured out by the time I'd hit my twenties that
Speaker 1: Arnold and all the pro body builders were taking stuff.
Speaker 1: Fell in love with the with the weight training, or
Speaker 1: with the feeling of being strong and being big and
Speaker 1: all that, and I wanted to win Mr. Union was
Speaker 1: I wasn't interested, not at all, not at all interested.
Speaker 1: And then something strange happened. I competed in the in
Speaker 1: the Mr. California. Uh natural right. It was supposed to
Speaker 1: be a non steroid aided show, which was comically not.
Speaker 1: I finished last but prior to that, some friends and
Speaker 1: we're gonna be in San Diego. You're gonna be close
Speaker 1: to Juanna, go across the border and get us some stuff.
Speaker 1: So they gave me a bunch of money and they
Speaker 1: gave me a laundry list because you could legally steroids there,
Speaker 1: and so the show was drug tested, but it was
Speaker 1: a polygraph. So as I'm sitting there in some kind
Speaker 1: of like Abu Grab type room in San Diego with
Speaker 1: the Athletic Commission, I have a Fannie pack full of
Speaker 1: these steroids which I had no intention of taking, and
Speaker 1: they're asking me if I had ever taken them, and
Speaker 1: technically I had not taken them, right, so um, I
Speaker 1: answered and passed the polygraph. Um. But something about coming
Speaker 1: in last place, I don't say it unseated me. But
Speaker 1: I started to think about the long view, and I go,
Speaker 1: you know, some of these guys, they're gonna be gone tomorrow.
Speaker 1: You know I'm a lifer. I'll be lifted. I've been
Speaker 1: lifting weight since I was nine years old. I'll be
Speaker 1: lifting in when I'm it's gonna be a lifelong thing.
Speaker 1: So steroids, what seems to be like a quick gain
Speaker 1: for some people, could be mixed in like a healthier supplement.
Speaker 1: And on the drive back from San Diego started to
Speaker 1: have these thoughts, and I and because I'm a hopeless
Speaker 1: and researcher, keep in mind, this is well in advance
Speaker 1: of any Internet. I worked at a defense company then
Speaker 1: and went into the Lexus Nexus network, which was part
Speaker 1: of the Darker Thing, and did all this research on steroids,
Speaker 1: and I developed like you talked about mid Romney. I
Speaker 1: developed a folder binders full of women, a steroid research folder,
Speaker 1: which I still have to this day, And and made
Speaker 1: what I thought was informed decision that I was going
Speaker 1: to take steroids. I had been a purist for so
Speaker 1: long that I didn't want to be publicly identified as
Speaker 1: a guy who used. I was initially I wasn't ready
Speaker 1: for that yet. It's weird. Well, I could like like
Speaker 1: why who would care? I was surrounded by but that
Speaker 1: became my thing, Like I was the guy, like a
Speaker 1: guy who wouldn't. And in the punk rock community, straight
Speaker 1: edge was a thing, not drugs. Straight clear mind that
Speaker 1: I was going to do this thing. You know. Part
Speaker 1: of one wanting to be kind of sold vot about
Speaker 1: it was that I would I would do it myself.
Speaker 1: And keep in mind, it's not the needles that you
Speaker 1: use for steroids or entry. I am needles intromuscular there
Speaker 1: eighteen to gauge. They're really giant needles. There's a catch, right,
Speaker 1: and the catches that you have to inject it into
Speaker 1: a muscle, So it has to be a large muscle grouping. Now,
Speaker 1: I know guys who shot themselves in the quadra set
Speaker 1: and but these are guys who had already used and
Speaker 1: were big and had lots of muscle around the knee
Speaker 1: um or the thigh, and somehow couldn't do that. Um.
Speaker 1: But the most common was the buttocks. But it's hard
Speaker 1: to turn and do and see if you're alone. But
Speaker 1: I just decided that was going to be the best place.
Speaker 1: And um, I remember a girlfriend at the time saying, uh,
Speaker 1: this blood in your underwear. Why go oh, eyes must
Speaker 1: just scraped against the nail. But you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: at that point, I still was in denial sort of
Speaker 1: about wanting to publicly be identified as a steroid user.
Speaker 1: And we're talking now eighties eight eight. And I know
Speaker 1: this because I was in the worst movie of eight seven,
Speaker 1: Leonard Part six, with a bunch of bodybuilders who were
Speaker 1: using and wouldn't talk to me about it because they
Speaker 1: knew it's a kid. Don't do what I did. Do
Speaker 1: what I say to fly the straight and narrow, And
Speaker 1: those guys, all to varying degrees, ended up having not
Speaker 1: all of them, some of them ended up having serious
Speaker 1: problems connected to what some would say we're personality deformations
Speaker 1: that came as a result of steroids. You're walking along,
Speaker 1: you see a guy in the hole. You go, oh
Speaker 1: my god, how did you get in that hole? And
Speaker 1: the guy goes, well, I put my hand on that
Speaker 1: branch there, and you go, what branch? This branch and
Speaker 1: you put your hand on that branch, goes yeah, And
Speaker 1: I put my other foot on that other branch. You
Speaker 1: what this foot? Yeah? And I jumped up and down
Speaker 1: really hard, really and then what you know, and then
Speaker 1: you fall and you're in the hole next to the guy,
Speaker 1: you know, and that's you. Just you have to realize
Speaker 1: that there's certain things. And I've recognized the cycle now
Speaker 1: with younger people have come up to me and start
Speaker 1: talking to me about, yeah, boy, I would. I don't
Speaker 1: think I would ever do steroids, And that's always that's
Speaker 1: always a poker tell I don't think. You don't think
Speaker 1: you would ever? Really that means you think you would ever.
Speaker 1: So I went through the same you know, it's probably
Speaker 1: the life cycle of a story user denial and uh,
Speaker 1: knowing it's not good and then figuring, you know, if
Speaker 1: the science were faster on this, this would just be
Speaker 1: another supplement in the rational and then of course taking it.
Speaker 1: And once you take it, your advantage point is no
Speaker 1: longer reasonably trustworthy. Because one thing that nobody ever talks
Speaker 1: about when they talk about steroids, about how fucking great
Speaker 1: they make you feel, they don't want to talk about
Speaker 1: the fact that one of the things that was so
Speaker 1: compelling about it was that on the at least on
Speaker 1: the upward portion of your cycle, you feel like superman
Speaker 1: mental acuity through the roof. I mean, if you're prone
Speaker 1: to being creative, super creative, um, four hours of sleep
Speaker 1: at night, no refractory period, you could you know lots,
Speaker 1: I mean, and you just good natured. And people said, well,
Speaker 1: what about the royal rage. I personally think it's like alcohol.
Speaker 1: It magnifies you know they're bad drunks, but these are
Speaker 1: kind of bad people. It magnifies who it is that
Speaker 1: you are. It's on the down portion of your cycle
Speaker 1: where you start to have weirdness, but on the up
Speaker 1: portion it was it was absolutely fantastic. First week. You
Speaker 1: would have a regime of half a c C maybe
Speaker 1: some orals pills that would go with it. You would decide.
Speaker 1: My personal favorite was one called Sustana, which was a
Speaker 1: mix of four testosteronies, approprianate and mathate, and I can't
Speaker 1: remember the other two. And the pills I decided were
Speaker 1: not only worthless but bad for you because your liver
Speaker 1: attempts to metabolize them all at once, whereas the objectible
Speaker 1: it pass just a liver several times, so it's not
Speaker 1: as hard on your liver, which is one of the
Speaker 1: big problems. We too would be like one c C
Speaker 1: right and no pills. There's sometimes people would combine it
Speaker 1: with bills if you had good ones, like Anna Bar
Speaker 1: was a good strength pill I remember, and I was
Speaker 1: taking this one called Deck of the Roblin, which was
Speaker 1: supposed to be one of the healthiest, safest as these
Speaker 1: things go. Steroids ever but again, nobody tells you about
Speaker 1: the head game. They don't mention that ever, ever, ever, ever,
Speaker 1: unless they're talking about it in the negative. I mean,
Speaker 1: the thing is, it's like, if you've ever watched a
Speaker 1: movie the Invisible Man. The chemical makes them invisible, but
Speaker 1: it also makes them crazy. I realized the part to
Speaker 1: make the world corp, you'll know who the invisible man.
Speaker 1: So all of a sudden, I hearkened back to that
Speaker 1: subway thing, and I remember that I had written an
Speaker 1: article about a bodybuilder out in Sheep's at Bay who,
Speaker 1: in the midst of this kind of meglomaniacal steroid thing,
Speaker 1: had convinced himself that he could stop a car like
Speaker 1: me with a train, except he had a bunch of enablers,
Speaker 1: and all these guys were all taking steroids in the
Speaker 1: common parlance juicing, and they follow him. He goes, I'm
Speaker 1: I can stop a car, and they go out to
Speaker 1: whatever that is, the highway that sneaks through Sheeps had
Speaker 1: Babe b Qui or something like that, and they sat
Speaker 1: on the guardrail and he waited, and he jumped out
Speaker 1: into the lane in front of a car. And technically,
Speaker 1: if you want to be philosophically consistent. He did stop.
Speaker 1: The car broke both arms and broke a leg and
Speaker 1: was hospitalized. But that car did stop, not the way
Speaker 1: he thought, you know. And uh, so I remember that
Speaker 1: there had been stories about guys who had gotten ill,
Speaker 1: but most of the people who got badly hurt on
Speaker 1: steroids were from other things. It was like from diuretics
Speaker 1: to lose water weight during the contest. Uh I uh,
Speaker 1: and I figured these guys were just doing it wrong.
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Speaker 1: a z A Y. I had one Royd rage moment
Speaker 1: where I had in these multiple cans of protein powder
Speaker 1: because you're taking tons of protein, and I had this
Speaker 1: old fashioned can openers, so it left a really jagged
Speaker 1: line on the inside of a can. And the dog,
Speaker 1: had had a big master at the time, had shouldered
Speaker 1: his way into the house and I just started screaming him,
Speaker 1: and I threw the can at him and and they
Speaker 1: cut through all four of my fingers, and which was
Speaker 1: a real problem one I didn't like abusing my dog too.
Speaker 1: Now that I had my fingers almost cut to the bone,
Speaker 1: it was gonna it was gonna bite into my lifting time.
Speaker 1: Would you become pathological about your lifting time? Because if
Speaker 1: you're taking steroids and not lifting, it's like money out
Speaker 1: the window in your in the steroid adult state. And
Speaker 1: uh so, I said, look, I need to control myself.
Speaker 1: I can't be one of those guys, you know, I
Speaker 1: knew guys like that that that I couldn't be one
Speaker 1: of those guys, and so um, but what was happening is, um, well,
Speaker 1: what's happening is but what was that thing that Tyson
Speaker 1: says about everybody's got a plan until they get punched
Speaker 1: in the face. I literally got punched in the face
Speaker 1: by steroids. I didn't account on the fact, and there
Speaker 1: was nothing in the source material that says, once you
Speaker 1: take half a c C and one c C and
Speaker 1: to CC, your ability to cap it at two and
Speaker 1: a half CC is gonna be non existent. Moreover, you're
Speaker 1: gonna want to go, well, if two and a half
Speaker 1: CEC is to maybe three and a half CC, what
Speaker 1: about four? What about five? What about six? I mean,
Speaker 1: you know this. I don't want to even say this
Speaker 1: is a worldwide phenomena, but it seems to me a
Speaker 1: particularly Western thing of just more, bigger, more, And so
Speaker 1: I ended up. I remember trying to crazy glue together too.
Speaker 1: I am the bodies of the syringes of tubes so
Speaker 1: that I could fit more rather than take two separate shots,
Speaker 1: which I'd have to sacrifice the actual needle part I
Speaker 1: was trying to craze. He glued together two stems so
Speaker 1: I could have a super long needle and get six
Speaker 1: ccs UM. I didn't have enough insight at that time
Speaker 1: to realize that UM deviating from the plan was going
Speaker 1: to be problematical for me. But he used to be
Speaker 1: a TV show called a six million Dollar Man, and
Speaker 1: he had like a bionic leg and a bionic arm,
Speaker 1: and he would do all these amazing things, like he
Speaker 1: could run sixty miles an hour. But they never dealt
Speaker 1: with the issue of what happens to the non bionic
Speaker 1: leg if the bionic leg is running sixty miles an hour. Right,
Speaker 1: And this is where I was. My body was used
Speaker 1: to get in these chemicals that was making it do
Speaker 1: phenomenal things. I was deadlifting over six pounds. I had
Speaker 1: gone from a body weight of one to sixty five.
Speaker 1: I was bench pressing three fifteen that's three forty five
Speaker 1: pound reps and a forty five pound bar in the middle,
Speaker 1: close grip, benching for eight to ten as a warm up,
Speaker 1: squatting almost five pounds. I was a really big, strong guy.
Speaker 1: But of course they you've heard about it. They talked
Speaker 1: about a weird dysmorphia. I had no sense of how
Speaker 1: big I was really. I just knew I wanted to
Speaker 1: get to three hundred pounds. That's what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: And if it was four ccs or five ccs or
Speaker 1: six c cs at that point, that's what I was
Speaker 1: gonna do. And then I have a weird relationship with
Speaker 1: my father. We only talked once since I turned nineteen,
Speaker 1: and he came out to talk to me. Maybe I
Speaker 1: was thirty at that point, twenty nine or something, and
Speaker 1: he I said, look, I'm not breaking my schedule for you.
Speaker 1: I got stuff to do, because well, what do you
Speaker 1: want to So I'm going to the gym. Come with
Speaker 1: me to the gym. We can talk while we're at
Speaker 1: the gym. He was flying through or something, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna work out together. And it was just this great
Speaker 1: moment where I had a completely soured on the prospect
Speaker 1: of having a father, but even though we had had problems.
Speaker 1: And so we go to the bench press and uh,
Speaker 1: I put one fifteen pounds and he's like, I said,
Speaker 1: he goes, I can't do I said, yeah, I know
Speaker 1: you can't do it. It's for me he goes, well,
Speaker 1: I can't spy you. I got just standing here. Just
Speaker 1: I don't I don't need you. So you measure your
Speaker 1: hands out from the ends of the plates. And usually
Speaker 1: when you do a bench press, you hold your arms
Speaker 1: like you're doing a push up, so your arms are
Speaker 1: shoulder with the fart. They're pretty wide. But I measure
Speaker 1: it out, and then I measured it again so that
Speaker 1: now my thumbs are touching in the middle, and I'm
Speaker 1: doing what you call a close script bench press. Most
Speaker 1: people can't bench press three d and fifteen pounds anyway
Speaker 1: close grip where your your wrist ben at the middle
Speaker 1: and your your your hands are only thumbs with apart.
Speaker 1: It's incredibly hard. And I loaded it to my chest
Speaker 1: and I can and I'm watching him from the bench.
Speaker 1: He's looking down at me, and I'm watching him and
Speaker 1: where eye contact. And as I get down to my chest,
Speaker 1: I pause, and then I knock out eight to nine
Speaker 1: rips and just looking at him. And as I finished,
Speaker 1: I hold it at the top and I go, you
Speaker 1: can just guide it back in, and so he pulls
Speaker 1: it back to two inches into the into the upright
Speaker 1: struts that hold it and uh, he goes, I stand up,
Speaker 1: and I'm still looking at him. I stand up and
Speaker 1: he goes, I can't do this. I got I know,
Speaker 1: let's take off some weight for you. And it was
Speaker 1: a great kind of inversion inversion moment. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: of course we went back to never speaking to each
Speaker 1: other again. So that was the last time I spoke
Speaker 1: to him. You know, if if you grew up on
Speaker 1: ABC after school specials, you might think that that was
Speaker 1: a good moment, But that was that was a steroid
Speaker 1: fuel moment of rage, you know. And what I was
Speaker 1: hoping was transmitted in that moment was old man, you'd
Speaker 1: don't have a chance, you know, or like the line
Speaker 1: from Cape Fear, you know, I can outthink you. I
Speaker 1: cannot fight you. I can out you know, lift you,
Speaker 1: and outrage you. I can out thank you, and I
Speaker 1: can out philosophy. I have exceeded you in every way.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a general good sign of mental health, but
Speaker 1: it was in terms of my personal development probably a
Speaker 1: really good sign. I was getting over wanting to be
Speaker 1: a son. Uh God, this is the part where I'm
Speaker 1: supposed to be really candid to encourage others to be candid.
Speaker 1: But I remember the girlfriend I had at the time.
Speaker 1: There was a resistance to telling her because not only
Speaker 1: was your athletic performance through the roof, but sexual performance
Speaker 1: also through the roof. It's so cheesy, it's you know.
Speaker 1: I asked one of my body build a friends. I go, hey,
Speaker 1: do you let people know that you're on it? Do
Speaker 1: you just let them think you're this way always? He
Speaker 1: was like, I'm this way always because I'm always on,
Speaker 1: And I go, I'm not always on, but I feel
Speaker 1: like I should totally disclose, and he's like, I don't
Speaker 1: do that. So there there were well, there were reasons
Speaker 1: why people were not really looking too hard, like, gee,
Speaker 1: you've gained ten pounds. I mean, everybody saw me taking protein.
Speaker 1: And there was a guy who I knew who was
Speaker 1: on a similar thing, and he asked him once. And
Speaker 1: the weird thing is this is all completely illegal, but
Speaker 1: a large number of people doing it that we worked
Speaker 1: out with we're all cops. So it was a very
Speaker 1: interesting way of I mean, this is prior to Barry
Speaker 1: Bonds and Mark McGuire and the home of the steroid
Speaker 1: era of baseball, and these guys would take a growth
Speaker 1: horm and all this other stuff allegedly, but you had
Speaker 1: this weird detente with cops. So you know this guy
Speaker 1: you know, was a cop, and he goes, you look
Speaker 1: at pretty good. I go, yeah, because game about fifteen
Speaker 1: pounds in the last month and a half. Yeah about that.
Speaker 1: He goes, what do you? What do you? I would
Speaker 1: say cyber genics, and so that became that would became yeah,
Speaker 1: me too, cyber genics too. And there was a thing
Speaker 1: called Cybergenics and that was pretty powerful, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: doing pounds of raw weight game. No, that's not cyber genics.
Speaker 1: But I never competed again. And after I took them
Speaker 1: because the purest in me didn't want to, I still
Speaker 1: at a certain level thought it was cheating and didn't
Speaker 1: want to do it. I didn't want to do it.
Speaker 1: So but also something else happened when I started taking steroids.
Speaker 1: Bodybuildings seemed to be aspiration really seemed to be too small.
Speaker 1: This is this is the key to kind of the
Speaker 1: mental deformations. It seemed to be. It seemed to be
Speaker 1: kind of a parochial greatness. And I was I was
Speaker 1: I was looking for Master four life greatness like things.
Speaker 1: You know, I was gonna be the best singer and
Speaker 1: the best writer, the best not just good, the best,
Speaker 1: the best anybody had ever seen. I mean it was
Speaker 1: a kind of madness, right and um kind of madness.
Speaker 1: But I look back and I was super productive during
Speaker 1: that period. Published a lot of magazines, did a lot
Speaker 1: of interviews, did a lot of work one awards. Not
Speaker 1: just athletic, was that anything but athletic? Was you know? Um?
Speaker 1: And I don't know that I make a one to
Speaker 1: one connection, but if you're being productive, then some of
Speaker 1: that stuff is good. That might happen. And we were
Speaker 1: all I mean it was Nobody ever talks about the euphoria.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, you might get feeling, are you certain
Speaker 1: euphoria on angel dust, but you're not able to really
Speaker 1: physically back it up. But this was just we were euphoric.
Speaker 1: And but it was a cyclical euphoria, right you for
Speaker 1: that up portion of your cycle, and U the down
Speaker 1: portion was routinely terrible. So all the heaven that we
Speaker 1: had all been enjoying these bodybuilders, bouncers, uh you know
Speaker 1: barbell boys that I knew when we would cycle at
Speaker 1: the same time on the downtop, I mean I remember
Speaker 1: going over pulling guns out of people's mouths because they
Speaker 1: was suicidal. Myself. Remember sitting watching some commercial for Scrooge
Speaker 1: was it Bill Murray movie, And at one point they're
Speaker 1: talking about putting a little love in your life. I'm
Speaker 1: sitting there sobbing like a baby. And it wasn't even
Speaker 1: the movie. It was a commercial for the movie worse Right,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, my God, loving your life. And then
Speaker 1: at that point I realized, I think I may have
Speaker 1: mismanaged the down portion of the cycle. But that was
Speaker 1: a very dangerous couple of weeks because I was having
Speaker 1: like and they say in the Apocalypse now, I was
Speaker 1: having ideas that were increasingly unsound. Idea it became cha
Speaker 1: and uh. I was involved in the relationship then that
Speaker 1: was probably not the best of all relationships. And I
Speaker 1: always thinking, I gotta I gotta settle down, I gotta
Speaker 1: get serious about life. We me and her, we could
Speaker 1: get all tied in. And of course, about two weeks,
Speaker 1: twelve or fourteen days afterward, when your body starts producing
Speaker 1: testospode again, your perspective comes back. But you know, during
Speaker 1: that two weeks, I could have said and done a
Speaker 1: lot of dage. I could have asked three or four
Speaker 1: people to marry me. You know who knows it was.
Speaker 1: It was a cavalier attitude about things that I wasn't
Speaker 1: prepared and wasn't in the source material. The thing is,
Speaker 1: this community also included women and women bodybuilders who take
Speaker 1: steroids very frequently. The changes that they encounter through or irreversible.
Speaker 1: And there was this one friend of mine and she
Speaker 1: had gone out with a friend of mine and they
Speaker 1: broke up, and she was in the gym and we're
Speaker 1: training together, and she had this very kind of effective way,
Speaker 1: this kind of breathy thing. I remember at the time,
Speaker 1: I mean its in my twenties. I think this is
Speaker 1: kind of sexiest kind of breathy thing she's doing. But
Speaker 1: we were actually training together, so it was annoying. After
Speaker 1: a certain point, I couldn't hear her, and I just said,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, what you say? What did you want me
Speaker 1: to put on? We were changing the weights on the day,
Speaker 1: and she was put on early five, and I realized
Speaker 1: that it was an accommodation that she had made because
Speaker 1: her voice had dropped an ox, so as long as
Speaker 1: she kind of whispered, she could maintain a higher voice,
Speaker 1: but when she raised the volume of her voice. It was,
Speaker 1: and that's like forever. I'm sure if I were to
Speaker 1: find it today, she sounds. So it was. So I
Speaker 1: was surrounded by examples of people who I mean mostly
Speaker 1: the women who had physical changes that they were never
Speaker 1: going to be able to come back from UM. And
Speaker 1: and indeed, you know, I got paranoid enough about some
Speaker 1: of those changes that I actually sought out a doctor.
Speaker 1: I went through several so I could find a doctor who,
Speaker 1: in my mind was good enough some might say crazy
Speaker 1: enough to do the surgery that I had wanted done,
Speaker 1: which was UM. When you have men who have too
Speaker 1: much estrogen in their system, get this thing called kind
Speaker 1: of camacity of fat starts to form behind the nipple
Speaker 1: in the chest, and you know, you start to develop
Speaker 1: kind of secondary female sexual characteristics. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: common thing that happens naturally, but it happens a lot
Speaker 1: when you see people who are abused steroids. So I said,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get around this because once I started steroids.
Speaker 1: Of course, the thing I told me about, that told
Speaker 1: myself about that first cycle was I just did it wrong.
Speaker 1: Next time, I'll do it right. So as a as
Speaker 1: A as A prophylactic measure. I want all that stuff,
Speaker 1: all those all those glands taken out. The doctor said, well,
Speaker 1: we can't do it if if after it happens, because
Speaker 1: then technically it'll be cosmetic. So why don't What if
Speaker 1: you would have a biopsy, dumb, we could say maybe
Speaker 1: it's possible be preconcerous and we could pull it out.
Speaker 1: That way, go cool, let's do it. So insurance pays
Speaker 1: for it. So I had to burst into the laboratory
Speaker 1: and it was like to get my mammogram. But at
Speaker 1: least now when women talking about mammograms, I know what
Speaker 1: it's like. It's unpleasant and uh. And they did the
Speaker 1: surgery and they cut open my chest and uh, like
Speaker 1: use those those claws that they have an amusement parks
Speaker 1: to get stuffed animal toys to reach and pull out
Speaker 1: all the glandular matter and cut it off. Took my nipples,
Speaker 1: put them back on and sewed them back on, and
Speaker 1: put drainage tubes in my chest, which I wore for
Speaker 1: three weeks. So that was I mean, if you smoke
Speaker 1: a joint three weeks later, you're probably not remembering that
Speaker 1: joint you smoke three weeks later, when I have tubes
Speaker 1: in my chest. I kind of remembered that this happened
Speaker 1: because I want to take steroids, so I was I
Speaker 1: was in at this point. I was committed to the
Speaker 1: lifestyle you see now sitting here like this. It makes
Speaker 1: me sound crazy. It made you feel good enough that
Speaker 1: it was an actual effort to stop. And I have
Speaker 1: to say the circumstances under which I finally decided to
Speaker 1: stop or what you know, alcoholics call you have these
Speaker 1: moments of clarity, and it was a pretty potent one.
Speaker 1: We were all racing the three hundred, and I say
Speaker 1: we I'm talking about me and maybe nine other guys,
Speaker 1: ten twelve, maybe twelve tops, and I got a call.
Speaker 1: One day. A couple of things happened simultaneous. One of
Speaker 1: the guys, who was one of the dealers, would get
Speaker 1: his big shipment and he would come to the gym
Speaker 1: and announced that he had had it, and then he,
Speaker 1: like Johnny Appleseed, would go from house to house to
Speaker 1: deliver it um And one day he got into the
Speaker 1: post office, got the shipment, went from house to house
Speaker 1: and the d e A followed him and busted every
Speaker 1: single person that he delivered to. Lastly him somebody had
Speaker 1: gone over to his house to pick up a shipment
Speaker 1: was sitting there as a guy this in the Blue
Speaker 1: blazers kicked through his door. They come back to the
Speaker 1: gym and they say so and so got busted, and
Speaker 1: everybody who had purchased from him or used from him
Speaker 1: interrupted their workouts. It was literally like a like a
Speaker 1: run on the bank to opposite everybody gribbage in bags
Speaker 1: and you could tell exactly who was using because they
Speaker 1: were all just out to go home. It's not like
Speaker 1: like coke where you know, I'm gonna flush it down
Speaker 1: to No. This stuff is hard to get, mostly to hide,
Speaker 1: give it to your girlfriend, put it at her house,
Speaker 1: or do whatever. So there was a massive bust. Right.
Speaker 1: People were looking at real people, friends were looking at
Speaker 1: jail time. And that was a pretty potent call. You know,
Speaker 1: if ever there were signs, that was probably a pretty
Speaker 1: good sign. You know, that was a good time to stop.
Speaker 1: But um, but people do start to know that you're
Speaker 1: the guy who knows guys. So I didn't buy again,
Speaker 1: but I made introductions again to people who would I
Speaker 1: mean guys I knew who were hardcore users and they
Speaker 1: were not going to stop. I remember asking one guy.
Speaker 1: I go he was like an elder statesman, and I
Speaker 1: was like, I'm gonna ask him, like, how do when
Speaker 1: I was up to six c seeds? Like, how do
Speaker 1: I know? I haven't read in many cases of overdose?
Speaker 1: How do I know if I've taken too much? And
Speaker 1: I asked him and he goes, well, I know I've
Speaker 1: taken too much when I and he pulls his shirt
Speaker 1: up and yeah, he's got there, you know, the ripped
Speaker 1: abs and stuff. And he pulls his shirt up and
Speaker 1: he goes, when I feel my liver and he points,
Speaker 1: and I for the first time notice something poking out
Speaker 1: of right under his rib cage, and he just when
Speaker 1: I feel it, when I see it start to swell
Speaker 1: through my shirt, I back off. That was another sign
Speaker 1: there's never any why you never asked somebody, well, why
Speaker 1: would you smoke a joint? Why would you drink glass
Speaker 1: of wine? Sometimes you just do these things just to doom.
Speaker 1: You know, it's life on planet human, you know, why
Speaker 1: would you? Why would you do that to yourself? You don't.
Speaker 1: I'm many times I've actually heard that, you know, regards
Speaker 1: the tattoos or people do strange things sometimes and there
Speaker 1: was nothing quite as strange as this. Now you made
Speaker 1: it through that one, all right? Next up, next week,
Speaker 1: we've got a Swedish royal, former beauty queen, speaker of
Speaker 1: three languages, world renowned nietzsche scholar PhD holder, and in
Speaker 1: a weird, unfortunate twist of fate, maybe Crackhore. Welcome to
Speaker 1: one Miss Josephine knock Off on the next edition of
Speaker 1: Ozzy Confidential. Ozzy Confidential is produced by who Else Made
Speaker 1: Eugenez Robinson, an executive produced by Robert Coolos, and this
Speaker 1: episode was sound designed, edited and mixed by Jamie con
Speaker 1: and Nick Johnson. For more Ozzy Confidential, check us out
Speaker 1: on Azzi dot com. That's o z y dot com
Speaker 1: slash confidentential. We published editorial companion articles on Azzi and
Speaker 1: photos videos for every single story, so to check them out,
Speaker 1: go to Ozzy dot com slash Confidential That's o z
Speaker 1: y dot com slash Confidential and you can see behind
Speaker 1: the scenes. You can learn more about the stories we tell,
Speaker 1: and even become an official o c and you'll be
Speaker 1: kept uh in the knowe on all things azzimm Indanger
Speaker 1: and if you want to get in touch with us,
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Speaker 1: shirt if we did what you gotta say, good, bad,
Speaker 1: or ugly or maybe we'll get too lazy doing that. Thanks,