College: Is It Still O.K.?

By: Eric Cogovan

For many athletes the ultimate dream is to play sports in college. They spend their entire childhood and teenage years striving to do the best in hopes to have the opportunity to continue playing into their college years. Many athletes who go on to try and play college sports have had great success in their high school years of playing sports. Many of these students don't realize how hard it can be to continue on and be successful at sports at the college level. There are thousands of high school athletes with the dream of becoming a college level player which creates higher stakes for them to accomplish in order to play when they enter college.

The opportunity to play college sports can come down to a small difference such as one students being only seconds faster then the other it becomes increasingly stressful to be the best. A number of athletes may feel such pressure that they resort to unhealthy measures to become the best. College athletes may feel that the only way to become better is to use illegal steroids to increase there ability and look better then the rest of their competition. Also it can be contagious, if one athlete is using steroid other team members may feel the only way they can compete with them is by using steroids themselves. This is a vicious and unhealthy pattern which can have a horrible outcome.

Not only is steroid use unsafe and illegal it can lead to many other hazardous health issues. The continued use of steroids can lead to many abnormal muscle growth, aggressive behaviors, and even cause the user to become addicted, which can ultimately end in the death of the person who is using these steroids. Often college athletes are not just using one type of steroid, they have a specific pattern of how they use them. Usually in a cycle pattern where they use a number of steroids for a short period of time followed by a period where they do not use them at all. This cycle continues and often they combine different steroids which is called “stacking”.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association has estimated that about 1 % of college athletes abuse steroids at a rate three times that of non-athlete students. This number may seem small but any steroid use among athletes is illegal and inappropriate. Not only is steroid use illegal and dangerous it is unfair to those athletes who choose not to use them. College athletes do not use these steroids to receive a high off of them they use them to increase there performance. This becomes an unfair advantage for these athletes and does not allow for actual sthletic ability to be recognized. Also the use of steroids is dangerous and have many horrible consequences. Steroids are like any other drug and can become very addictive and can cause death in extreme cases. There are number of health risks which in the end can cause a lot of damage to a persons body. The main goal of steroid use in college is to enhance the persons physical ability so they can become the best athlete but in the end it can harm the body and completely ruin a persons health for the rest of their lives.

Sources:

http://www.helium.com/items/1299831-drugs-and-sports-steroids-use-among-college-athletes

http://www.higheredcenter.org/high-risk/drugs/steroids