Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
- Matthew 7:13, 14

For me, bodybuilding became a way of life. The book of Proverbs reads:

There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. 
- Proverbs 14:12

Bodybuilding seemed so right to me. I lived it, breathed it, slept it. I used to say, "There are two kinds of people in this world, bodybuilders, and those that want to be!"

By this time I had graduated from the little blue pill to injectable steroids. I had met this one bodybuilder who had won a number of titles. He told me he wasn't competing in bodybuilding any more. I wanted to know why. He said things had gotten out of control.

He told me about an experiment conducted on two bodybuilders. The object was to find out what effect anabolic steroids had in creating growth without exercise. He said researchers pumped these guys full of steroids. The men grew like crazy.

I remembered seeing one of these bodybuilders at a contest eight years earlier. He was talking to a group of bodybuilders who had gathered around the booth. He was drinking a beer.

I remember him pulling up his shirt to show his abs. The crowd was amazed. His stomach muscles looked like thick, rugged blocks chiseled out of granite. He appeared to be in top physical condition. But he boasted that he hadn't trained in eight months. 

Eventually I began cutting back on my own workouts and upping the dosage of steroids. It worked.

I usually got my steroids from other bodybuilders. One day I went to a friend's house to pick some up. His training partner was filling a syringe from a spoon. He looked up and said it was a Dilaudid, a painkiller made from Opium. 

I said, "I'm starting to think bodybuilders are some of the biggest drug abusers to ever walk the planet!

The guy looked at me and said, "Are you just starting to find that out?"

"Not really," I thought. A year earlier a bodybuilder asked me if I had ever trained when I was high on pot. I had told him no. He got me high and told me to get ready for one of the best workouts I had ever experienced.

We returned to the gym to train delts. He guided me through the workout. I experienced a mind-to-muscle link that I had never felt before. We ended the session by swapping my steroids for his pot.

Over time I learned that cocaine and crystal meth were used for burning away body fat, diuretics to shed excess water, the list goes on and on. For more vascularity when I was competing in bodybuilding contests, I would open a bottle of wine in the pump-up room before walking on stage.

So much for the bodybuilding lifestyle.

Chapter 7: The Beginning of the End