He's Outraged Over The Steroid Outrage

Posted 3/21/2005 7:38 PM

Outraged over the steroids outrage
By Robert Lipsyte

As a longtime steroid user, I'm confused by the frenzied reaction to the juicy news coming out of baseball these days.

Why should we care what those players do, as long as they entertain us? Who wouldn't expect pro athletes, like the rest of us, to try to be the best they could be? And how has this become a chance for yet more face time for flabby moralists instead of an opportunity to gather some necessary information?

Here's what I want to know: Exactly which performances are enhanced — and how — by which anabolic steroids, androgens, human growth hormone and whatever else athletes shoot, swallow and sniff? What are the long-term and short-term effects? Are those enhancements and side effects different for adolescents and adults, men and women?
I have ethical questions, too. How different is steroid use from cosmetic surgery for the male TV newsies reporting these stories, from Botox for actresses, beta blockers for public speakers and all the new psychological drugs for well people with the willies — the shy, the anxious, the fidgety and the sexually apprehensive?
Speaking of which, consider the tomcat fight between two of baseball's best-known sluggers and congressional testifiers, Jose Canseco and his childhood pal, Rafael Palmeiro. In his best seller, Juiced, Canseco claims he personally injected steroids into Palmeiro when they both played for George W. Bush's Texas Rangers. Palmeiro denies it. Of course, Palmeiro, as baseball's most famous pitchman for Viagra, is no stranger to performance-enhancing drugs.

"Performance-enhancement is in a gray area," says Robert Klitzman, co-director of Columbia University's Center for Bioethics. "Would you include new technologies to improve cognitive abilities? How about access to SAT prep coaching? Assisted pregnancies?"

Meanwhile, athletes certainly have no ethical dilemma about using steroids, says Michael Miletic, a psychiatrist whose Detroit-based practice includes high school, college and professional athletes. "Steroids are totally embedded in the sports culture. We need to get past the finger-pointing. There's been a wholesale abandonment of critical analysis."

My steroid use

Analyze this: I've been shooting steroids for almost 15 years, since a third cancer operation left me unable to produce testosterone naturally. Once a month, I nail one of my quadriceps with a 22-gauge needle and pump in the oily yellow fluid. Without it, my prescribing surgeon tells me, I would be physically fatigued and mentally sluggish, lose my sex drive, be achy and depressed. No question, I'm taking a performance-enhancing drug.

Yet, even with it, I can't hit a major-league fastball, sack a moving NFL quarterback or bench-press 500 pounds. Using steroids, most people can train harder and recover more quickly from breakdown and injury. But to reach all-pro you have to be what athletes call a "freak" with those potentially all-pro genes to tweak.
But chemicals also help high school boys pump themselves into beach studs, put on extra pounds for the football team and gain strength and stamina for the campaign to win a college scholarship and a pro contract. This is the danger zone, says Miletic, who is far less concerned with the middle-aged Barry Bonds' possible career choices than with unsupervised drug use by kids.

"This is where we should be paying attention," Miletic says. "First of all, there is adult complicity here. Some parents and coaches are actively helping kids get drugs, others are looking the other way. How could you not notice the dramatic changes in your child's body?

"I don't believe kids are taking steroids because they think it helped Mark McGwire. They're taking it because teammates, opponents, a strength coach, a gym owner, is telling them it will make them better," he says.

Performance-enhancers have been around for a long time, and as our games, from Little League to Super Bowl, became less classrooms for character building and more stages for spectaculars, the pressure to enhance performance swelled like Popeye's biceps (his drug was spinach, remember?). We expect our sports heroes to do anything to win for us, to find the edge, to take risks, even to play hurt. If they don't, they're replaced by those who will.

'Where does cheating begin?'

At the same time, the self-help movement made the concept of improvement, of reinvention, of taking charge of body and psyche, a kind of mandate for everybody. To refuse to at least try to find a way to feel better, look better, do better was regarded as almost a crime. Is self-help from a mind-numbing mantra more moral than self-help from the tip of a needle?

"It's going to get even more complicated," says Klitzman, the Columbia bioethicist, "as techniques for screening embryos and scanning brains become more sophisticated. Scientists will be looking for stupidity genes and smart pills. Cosmetic psycho-pharmacology is an area where people with money will have advantages over people who don't. Is that fair? In an ideal world, there would be a level playing field. Exactly where does cheating begin?"

I'll be watching baseball this season for guys who look less bulked-up than they did last season. How many are using newer, riskier, test-proof drugs? That's probably not fair.

The pundits and politicians will declare a moral victory and move on, leaving our questions unanswered. That's cheating.

Robert Lipsyte, a former New York Times sports columnist, wrote about cancer in his memoir, In the Country of Illness. He is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.

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Pot Prisoners Cost Americans $1 Billion A Year

Pot Prisoners Cost Americans $1 Billion a Year
By Paul Armentano, AlterNet

Posted on February 10, 2007, Printed on February 10, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/47815/

American taxpayers are now spending more than a billion dollars per year to incarcerate its citizens for pot. That's according to statistics recently released by the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics.

According to the new BJS report, "Drug Use and Dependence, State and Federal Prisoners, 2004," 12.7 percent of state inmates and 12.4 percent of federal inmates incarcerated for drug violations are serving time for marijuana offenses. Combining these percentages with separate U.S. Department of Justice statistics on the total number of state and federal drug prisoners suggests that there are now about 33,655 state inmates and 10,785 federal inmates behind bars for marijuana offenses. The report failed to include estimates on the percentage of inmates incarcerated in county and/or local jails for pot-related offenses.

Multiplying these totals by U.S. DOJ prison expenditure data reveals that taxpayers are spending more than $1 billion annually to imprison pot offenders.

The new report is noteworthy because it undermines the common claim from law enforcement officers and bureaucrats, specifically White House drug czar John Walters, that few, if any, Americans are incarcerated for marijuana-related offenses. In reality, nearly 1 out of 8 U.S. drug prisoners are locked up for pot.
Of course, several hundred thousand more Americans are arrested each year for violating marijuana laws, costing taxpayers another $8 billion dollars annually in criminal justice costs.

According to the most recent figures available from the FBI, police arrested an estimated 786,545 people on marijuana charges in 2005 -- more than twice the number of Americans arrested just 12 years ago. Among those arrested, about 88 percent -- some 696,074 Americans -- were charged with possession only. The remaining 90,471 individuals were charged with "sale/manufacture," a category that includes all cultivation offenses, even those where the marijuana was being grown for personal or medical use.

These totals are the highest ever recorded by the FBI, and make up 42.6 percent of all drug arrests in the United States. Nevertheless, self-reported pot use by adults, as well as the ready availability of marijuana on the black market, remains virtually unchanged.

Marijuana isn't a harmless substance, and those who argue for a change in the drug's legal status do not claim it to be. However, pot's relative risks to the user and society are arguably fewer than those of alcohol and tobacco, and they do not warrant the expenses associated with targeting, arresting and prosecuting hundreds of thousands of Americans every year.

According to federal statistics, about 94 million Americans -- that's 40 percent of the U.S. population age 12 or older -- self-identify as having used cannabis at some point in their lives, and relatively few acknowledge having suffered significant deleterious health effects due to their use. America's public policies should reflect this reality, not deny it. It makes no sense to continue to treat nearly half of all Americans as criminals.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/47815/

Pot Prisoners Cost Americans $1 Billion A Year

By Paul Armentano, www.alternet.org

American taxpayers are now spending more than a billion dollars per year to incarcerate its citizens for pot. That's according to statistics recently released by the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics.

According to the new BJS report, "Drug Use and Dependence, State and Federal Prisoners, 2004," 12.7 percent of state inmates and 12.4 percent of federal inmates incarcerated for drug violations are serving time for marijuana offenses. Combining these percentages with separate U.S. Department of Justice statistics on the total number of state and federal drug prisoners suggests that there are now about 33,655 state inmates and 10,785 federal inmates behind bars for marijuana offenses. The report failed to include estimates on the percentage of inmates incarcerated in county and/or local jails for pot-related offenses.

Multiplying these totals by U.S. DOJ prison expenditure data reveals that taxpayers are spending more than $1 billion annually to imprison pot offenders.

The new report is noteworthy because it undermines the common claim from law enforcement officers and bureaucrats, specifically White House drug czar John Walters, that few, if any, Americans are incarcerated for marijuana-related offenses. In reality, nearly 1 out of 8 U.S. drug prisoners are locked up for pot.

Of course, several hundred thousand more Americans are arrested each year for violating marijuana laws, costing taxpayers another $8 billion dollars annually in criminal justice costs.
According to the most recent figures available from the FBI, police arrested an estimated 786,545 people on marijuana charges in 2005 -- more than twice the number of Americans arrested just 12 years ago. Among those arrested, about 88 percent -- some 696,074 Americans -- were charged with possession only. The remaining 90,471 individuals were charged with "sale/manufacture," a category that includes all cultivation offenses, even those where the marijuana was being grown for personal or medical use.

These totals are the highest ever recorded by the FBI, and make up 42.6 percent of all drug arrests in the United States. Nevertheless, self-reported pot use by adults, as well as the ready availability of marijuana on the black market, remains virtually unchanged.

Marijuana isn't a harmless substance, and those who argue for a change in the drug's legal status do not claim it to be. However, pot's relative risks to the user and society are arguably fewer than those of alcohol and tobacco, and they do not warrant the expenses associated with targeting, arresting and prosecuting hundreds of thousands of Americans every year.

According to federal statistics, about 94 million Americans -- that's 40 percent of the U.S. population age 12 or older -- self-identify as having used cannabis at some point in their lives, and relatively few acknowledge having suffered significant deleterious health effects due to their use. America's public policies should reflect this reality, not deny it. It makes no sense to continue to treat nearly half of all Americans as criminals.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/47815/

Internet Junkies: Hooked Online

One In Eight Americans Find It Hard To Log Off
By JOANN KLIMKIEWICZ, Courant Staff Writer

Its abusers come seeking escape - maybe from stress, low self-esteem, the tedium of everyday life.Whatever may drive them, they seek out this temporary high, this fix of pleasure that pulls them back for more, and more still. They may be left riddled with guilt or shame afterward. Yet if they go too long without it, they may feel moody and uneasy.

The "drug" of choice is the Internet - that wonder of technology that was supposed to make our lives easier, our world more accessible, our relationships closer. And while it has succeeded in doing those things, it has also given rise to a wave of junkies, and possibly a new category of clinical mental disorder.Internet addiction, or compulsive computer use, is not a new concept.

The phenomenon was first tagged 10 years ago as social observers and behavioral scientists increasingly heard anecdotes of people whose compulsive Internet habits - gambling, pornography, online chatting and shopping - were dramatically interfering with their work and personal lives."It's getting more and more recognition," says David Greenfield, a clinical psychologist in West Hartford and an authority on the subject of Internet addiction. "It's a worldwide disorder, and it is clearly not going away anytime soon."What it's called - addiction, compulsive or pathological behavior, Internet-enabled behavior - is not as important, says Greenfield, as whether it's taken seriously.

And a recent study by researchers at Stanford University appears to be helping the cause - and may help them get the disorder recognized by the American Psychiatric Association in its next revised edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. A task force is at work on the fifth edition, due out in 2012.The study reported that one in eight Americans exhibited at least one sign of problematic Internet use. About 14 percent said it was hard to stay away from the Internet for several days, with more than 12 percent saying they often stayed on longer than intended. Almost 9 percent said they tried to conceal "nonessential" Internet use from family and co-workers.

Experts say the study is significant and refocuses the debate because it's the most rigorous conducted on the subject to date - a nationwide, randomly selected telephone survey of more than 2,500 adults.Also reigniting the debate is a $5 million lawsuit brought against IBM by a former employee who alleges the company wrongfully terminated him for misusing his computer at work.James Pacenza admits he visited inappropriate chat rooms while on the job. But the Vietnam veteran says he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, which led him to "self-medicate" with the Internet and eventually develop an addiction.His attorney argues the company was wrong to fire Pacenza before first offering him assistance as they would a drug-addicted employee. They contend the condition merits protection under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The company last month asked a New York U.S. District Court judge to dismiss the case."This may be the first lawsuit, depending on the outcome, that will actually force recognition of this as a problem," says Greenfield, founder of the Center for Internet Behavior.

But some psychologists don't see the value in classifying it as a new addiction."It does us no benefit to try to label it as a unique issue. [To call it] Internet addiction or compulsive disorder identifies the Internet as the stimulus, or the problem, and I don't think that's it at all," says John Grohol, a Massachusetts psychologist who runs the online resource PsychCentral.com and has written critically on the subject of Internet addiction."People watch too much TV. You could argue a person engaged in reading a book who doesn't want to put it down is addicted to reading that book," Grohol says.Grohol says the behavior shouldn't be viewed through the lens of the Internet but for whatever the underlying problem may be - poor time-management skills, depression, anxiety.

"My theory is, this happens over and over again in history," says Grohol. The telephone, the radio, TV - "When you introduce a new technology into society, it takes a generation or two before it becomes well integrated."But Greenfield says the technology and lure of the Internet is, in fact, different from TV or telephone because of its magnitude and 24/7 cheap, easy access to just about anything. Users perceive a certain amount of anonymity, lose their inhibitions online and, subsequently, their concept of time."It's almost impossible to self-limit and monitor your Internet use," says Greenfield. "Almost everybody abuses the Internet, even if they're not addicted. Even I do."Greenfield says that 6 to 10 percent of the estimated 150 million Internet users in the United States engage in compulsive or addictive behavior.

Overseas, in countries such as Korea and China, Internet addiction is a huge problem - a consequence of economic booms and sudden, easy access to the technology. The difference is those countries view the problem as serious and legitimate, offering clinics and treatment programs.

"We're lagging behind other countries" in terms of recognition and treatment, says Kimberly Young, a clinical psychologist in Pennsylvania and director of the Center for Online Addiction."I certainly don't take an alarmist position [on compulsive Internet use] or take a negative view of the Internet," says Young, whose 1998 book, "Caught In the Net" (John Wiley & Sons, $35), was the first to address online sex addiction. "But it's easy to minimize this, to say, `Eh, we're all addicted to the Internet,' because we're all so absorbed in it."But [the question is] is it causing a problem in your relationships? Are you in danger of losing your job over it? Do you lie about it? And that's really where the issue and need of diagnosis comes in."