Seated in the bakery opposite his favorite gym, Karl stands out from the average passerby. Fins in place of trapezoids, congested biceps, his extraordinary physique is the fruit of work over more than ten years which has taken him to bodybuilding competitions. A brief parenthesis in his life as a coach, during which he will touch on doping with his fingertips. On the advice of his trainer, Karl consumes Anavar for several days, an anabolic steroid used to counter the involuntary muscle loss of people suffering from HIV or undergoing chemotherapy. In a healthy subject, it promotes muscle mass gain. “After 4-5 days, I was lifting heavier and longer. I felt stronger and like my muscles were thicker. But I quickly stopped because I had unbearable cramps. »
Steroid rage and the Superman effect
A bad for a good. Had he continued down the path of anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS), our coach could have experienced side effects that were both more serious and visible. We can cite testicular atrophy – reduction -, gynecomastia (the appearance of small breasts), and more serious, steroid rage. A concept that emerged in the mid-1980s, after the increase in the number of American bodybuilders behind bars began to concern observers.
This can result in a very brief psychotic episode during which a trigger, very often innocuous, will cause uncontrollable anger. Paul*, a guy weighing over 90 kg, remembers very well the day he turned the aisle of a supermarket upside down.
I felt that I was more irritable than usual. And then something stupid, a person who doesn’t calculate when I ask him to move his shopping cart which was blocking the way, makes me go crazy. I grabbed the shopping cart with both hands, smashed it against the display, pushed another person violently aside, and rushed forward with my shopping cart. On top of that, I insulted the whole world. »
At a minimum, taking steroids increases aggression in its user. The professional bodybuilder Florian Poirson, a rather very calm and warm-looking character, was able to see this to his cost. “When I started taking it, I realized it had an impact on my mood. At the time, an ex-girlfriend quickly made me understand that I was freaking out over nothing. I questioned myself, and, fortunately, I was well supported. »
Paul, who was not convinced by the supermarket episode to stop doping, also evokes a feeling of “positive” anger, comparable to euphoria. “It’s the Superman effect,” comments Dr. Jean-Pierre de Mondenard, former Tour doctor in the 1970s and an expert on the issue. It makes you confident to the point of feeling indestructible. “I’ve seen guys under-produced for a year or more go down the drain because of that,” continues the bodybuilder. Guys do stupid things in everyday life and leave their wives on a whim. It’s devastating. »
These behaviors could be explained by an unsavory cocktail of overconfidence and hypersexuality, linked to the increase in libido caused by the explosion in testosterone levels in the blood. Jean-Pierre de Mondenard: “Without having precise data, I have seen many people take anabolic steroids with complicated family lives,” says the doctor. For example, I had a guy in my office who had sex 11 times a day with his wife. So she left. »
No scientific consensus around “rabies” but proven aggressiveness
Steroid rage as a “Hulkesque” phenomenon is still discussed within the scientific community, which seeks to delineate its contours, particularly its direct link with crime. The case of the late double world wrestling champion Chris Benoît, who killed himself after killing a woman and child in 2007, is a good example. If the investigation report had agreed on the advanced damage to the Canadian’s brain at the level of an “85-year-old person suffering from Alzheimer’s” due to the consumption of steroids, the suspicions of “roid rage” did not have never been confirmed.
This is often used by lawyers looking for extenuating circumstances.
to their customers. This was the case for bodybuilder Paul Bashi, sentenced to 14 years in prison for domestic violence and part of whose defense consisted of incriminating the industrial consumption of anabolic steroids rather than the individual himself. The trail of steroid rage had also been put forward in a hasty manner in a much more publicized trial, that of Oscar Pistorius.
However, in 2006, a study by Uppsala University (Sweden) estimated that steroid users were approximately twice as likely to be convicted of a weapons offense. A slight downside will push scientists to recognize the limits of their work : for example, it is difficult to establish the number of people within the panel who acted because they were naturally violent, or because they were under the influence of steroids.
Rage or not rage, the link between increased aggression and steroid use remains proven. In a study conducted in the United States on hamsters by researcher Richard Melloni (2017), teams of scientists came to the conclusion of a correlation between aggressive behavior and the taking of anabolic-androgenic steroids. “No one today can say that the steroid rage is an illusion,” concludes Dr. de Mondenard.
*The first name has been changed