When watching someone participate in any sport, the audience thinks about how much effort was put into practicing, and not what the player smoked to gain their superhuman stamina. In sports, the competitors need to practice to become better, not default to who has the money to buy the best drugs. Performance enhancing drugs may help during a couple of games, but it’s not worth putting so many lives at risk. Forest Tennant JR. , who is an NFL drug adviser, has estimated that half of all professional athletes have been exposed to drugs in their careers.
Recreational drugs are taken by athletes, not for performance enhancement, but for the purpose of enjoying themselves. As harmless as this sounds, people easily become dependent on these substances. Alcoholism is one of the major health problems for both athletes and nonathletes. Alcohol differs from the many other recreational drugs, mostly because drinking is legal and socially acceptable to do. Many times, people don’t see alcohol as a drug, and that is one of the many reasons there are so many alcoholics. Alcoholics are prone to liver damage, muscle degeneration, neurological disorders, as well as psychiatric disorders.
Drinking before participation in fast paced sports puts athletes not only in danger of losing their lives, but also other serious disadvantages. Numerous studies have shown that hand-eye coordination, certain reflexes, and balance suffer after even just one drink. When athletes take a drink for recreational use, they do not take into consideration the effects that they could suffer in the long run. A survey of the male athletes competing in the Big Ten Football athletic conference found that 36% of the athletes drank during the season, and over 50% drank off season.
For sportsmen who don’t earn as much money as other athletes, they may be led into criminal activities to retrieve the substances. Drug use is not only banned from sports competitions, but also the possession of drugs. These drugs range from illicit drugs to nutritional substances, including some protein shakes. Despite the efforts of law-enforcement officials, illicit substances are as readily available as legal drugs are in retail stores. Research has demonstrated that an increased number of young athletes are beginning to experiment with drugs.
Though these studies have not clearly proven that these drugs are being used more for recreational use, or for ergogenic use, the same death-dealing results are prone to occur. Ergogenic drugs are substances used to positively alter the performance of sportsmen and sportswomen. Athletes desire to be better runners, obtain improved stamina, and also to have muscular bodies. These are the motivations for athletes to not only be more active, but to begin experimenting with many of the illegal substances mentioned. Just like any other person who has been exposed to drugs, athletes expect to try drugs, and never become dependant on them.
This doesn’t have a positive outcome for most people, both athletes and nonathletes. “The merciless rigor of modern competitive sports, especially at the international levels, the glory of victory and the growing social and economic rewards of sporting success increasingly force athletes to improve their performance by any means. ” This quote, coming from the (IOC) Manual on Doping, states that athletes are basically forced into using drugs. In this point of view, it is quite obvious how easily it is for athletes to believe that drugs are their only hope. being pressured in this way, though, does not make illegal activities any less illegal.
Many drugs have been used by elite professionals to gain unfair advantages over competitors. Not only is this a form of cheating, but an illegal form of cheating. The Anti-Drug Abuse act prohibited the use and distribution of steroids for anything other than medical prescriptions. After this act was enforced, more and more similar acts against drug use were passed. Now in sports, athletes have been watched closer than ever before, but witnessing doesn’t always make a difference in court. A West German study has discovered that smoking three cigarettes in a time period of half an hour, there is about a 15% decline in athletic performance.
If this happens in the first half hour, what could happen in a sports season? This leads to not only the death of careers, but the deaths of athletic role models. The same role models younger athletes base themselves upon. Studies have shown that the amount of young athletes using drugs has increased. Not only this, but more and more different drugs have been introduced to them. Ergogenic drugs used today include many different steroids, growth hormones, creatine, and ephedra alkaloids. Athletes are beginning to have a “head start” on the types of drugs that should be used.
Children are being exposed to drugs, and begin to use them as early as their middle school years. Although these drugs may actually be prescribed for some athletes, there is a fine line between prescription and street drugs. Therapeutic drugs are painkillers and minor tranquilizers that artificially relax the body. Therapeutic drugs only temporarily mask the pain that athletes try to disguise with these drugs. This leads to athletes becoming bankrupt, losing their body’s ability to naturally cope with the damage, and drugs may cost them their whole careers, and leave them with permanent damage.
Athletes aren’t oblivious to the effects of using these drugs, and this is why many athletes haven’t turned to these cheating methods. Other athletes have either begun for their own selfishness, but some are pressured into addiction. Coaches and sports fans expect top athletes to play with pain. Drugs affect all organs of the body, whether you are an athlete or not. These drugs affect the body by either relaxing the body, or quickening the rate of many bodily functions. Generally, drugs are known to raise heart rate, breathing rate, and and blood pressure.
The denouement of drug use leads to an endless of medical problems physically, and mentally. Usually, these begin with the physical problems, and eventually lead to mental problems. If recreational drug use was allowed in sports, there would be advantages to the well paid athletes, and unfair disadvantages to less paid athletes. These drugs would be good for athletes who require the weight gain, muscle gain, and other physical benefits. These benefits would only succeed under medical supervision, but it would be nearly impossible to keep these athletes from being led to addiction and overdoses.
Drugs being used in athletic competitions have many positive short-term effects, however, there are endless amounts of negative effects. These effects eventually end with death, and this is when the public finally begins to acknowledge problems like these. How useless is it that people finally start listening after talented athletes have passed? In summary, sports should not be the exception to laws against the drug production and usage. The substances used in athletics are the same substances used by the public, the same drugs that have led the drug overdose death rates to grow more than 3 times in only the last 25 years.