There’s an uncomfortable truth in sports that people avoid talking about because it makes everyone uncomfortable. When performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) become the standard, the athletes who choose to stay clean are often the ones who pay the price.
This isn’t about calling enhanced athletes bad people. Most of them at the top are incredibly hardworking, disciplined, and obsessed with becoming great. PEDs don’t magically create work ethic, pain tolerance, or competitive drive.
But pretending PEDs don’t fundamentally change the playing field is just ridiculous and dishonest.
And eventually, honesty matters.
The Athlete Who Refuses
There are athletes in every gym who consciously choose not to use drugs.
Some do it because of health concerns.
Some because of family history.
Some because they simply believe they shouldn’t need drugs to compete and others because they’re young and don’t want to gamble with their future.
But when untested sports become dominated by chemically enhanced performances, those athletes are forced into an impossible position:
Stay clean and accept lower ceilings…
or use drugs just to remain relevant.
That’s not really a choice. That’s pressure.
Because in strength sports, winning changes everything.
Winning gets attention.
Attention gets followers.
Followers get sponsors.
Sponsors create money.
Money creates careers.
The difference between first place and fifth place can literally determine who becomes famous and who disappears.
I’ve Watched It Happen Firsthand
I’ve lived that reality personally.
I lost three paid sponsorships to athletes who later started using PEDs. What made it harder to watch was that just one year earlier, before the drugs entered the picture, I was beating those same athletes in competition by hundreds of pounds.
Then suddenly the numbers exploded. The attention shifted. The sponsorships followed. And the athletes willing to enhance became the ones companies wanted representing their brand.
That’s the part people don’t talk about enough.
PEDs don’t just affect records or placings. They affect careers, financial opportunities, exposure, and long-term success. They determine who gets promoted, who gets remembered, and who gets paid.
Meanwhile, the athlete who chooses to stay clean is often left watching doors close — not because they stopped working hard, but because they refused to cross a line others were.
Would the Same Athletes Still Be Famous?
This is the question people hate asking out loud but I hear it often behind closed doors.
If PEDs weren’t taken by the “greats”, would they have still dominated?
Would the world know who Eddie Hall is?
Would Ronnie Coleman have won eight straight Mr. Olympia titles?
Maybe some still would have been champions. Maybe some were genetically gifted enough to remain elite no matter what.
But would the hierarchy stay exactly the same?
Not a chance in hell.
PEDs amplify recovery, muscle growth, strength, endurance, training volume, and adaptation. They reward the athletes willing to chemically push the furthest while surviving the side effects long enough to capitalize on it.
That changes outcomes. Period.
And when outcomes change, lives change.
The Message Being Sent to Young Athletes
This might be the worst part of all.
A massive percentage of the audience watching these sports are teenagers and young athletes.
They see the money, fame, followers and sponsorships.
They see the admiration.
And consciously or subconsciously, they absorb the message:
“If you want to be the best, you’ll probably have to use drugs.”
That’s a dangerous lesson to normalize.
Especially when young athletes don’t fully understand the long-term risks:
- Hormonal damage
- Heart enlargement
- Kidney stress
- Fertility issues
- Dependency
- Psychological effects
- Shortened lifespan
Social media makes it even worse.
You see the trophy.
You don’t see the bloodwork.
You see the records.
You don’t see the anxiety, the organ stress, or the years of health consequences that can follow.
Young athletes are constantly being shown the reward without being shown the cost.
The Enhanced Games and the Future of Sports
Now we’re seeing this mentality pushed even further with The Enhanced Games.
It’s being marketed as honesty.As transparent, As evolution. As freedom.
But underneath all the branding, the message is still the same:
Drugs make you better.
Drugs make you famous.
Drugs make you rich.
And that message is being blasted to millions of young athletes watching from the sidelines.
Mitchell Hooper openly said he would make more money from the Enhanced Games than any competition he’s ever competed in. That statement alone says everything about where strength sports are heading.
The money is no longer just rewarding performance.
It’s rewarding pharmaceutical escalation.
And what does that teach the next generation?
That there is no real alternative.
That if you want to compete at the highest level, become financially successful, gain followers, or become a star, then drugs are simply part of the entry fee.
That’s not freedom. That’s normalization.
And the people who ultimately benefit the most are not the athletes.
It’s the companies supplying the drugs.
The investors.
The corporations profiting from human experimentation disguised as entertainment.
Because enhanced athletes become walking advertisements.
Bigger lifts. Bigger physiques. Bigger performances. Bigger headlines.
Until the damage catches up with those walking billboards.
Then the machine moves on to the next athlete willing to sacrifice their long-term health for a chance at relevance.
That’s the darkest part on the contract they’re signing.
The athletes are celebrated while they’re useful, profitable, and physically capable of producing extreme performances. But when the body eventually breaks down way before it should— and many do — the system rarely sticks around for the consequences.
There’s always another young athlete waiting in line, being sold the exact same dream.
It’s Bigger Than the Athletes
The blame doesn’t fall entirely on the competitors.
The system itself encourages this culture.
Companies sponsor enhanced athletes because extreme performances generate views and sales.
Fans reward freakish physiques and impossible numbers with attention and money.
Promotions market “superhuman” performances because they know spectacle sells.
Everyone participates in the cycle:
- Athletes chasing relevance
- Sponsors chasing profit
- Fans chasing entertainment
And as long as the audience rewards extremes, the sport will continue pushing athletes toward greater chemical enhancement.
The Real Question
The uncomfortable truth is this:
PEDs don’t only affect the people using them.
They affect every clean athlete standing beside them.
They affect rankings, sponsorships, careers, who gets remembered and who gets ignored.
Most importantly, they affect the next generation watching all of it unfold.
Because every teenager sitting in a gym eventually starts asking themselves the same question:
“Can I ever make it without drugs?”
And when a sport makes clean athletes feel like they never truly had a chance, something important has already been lost.
Maybe the answer isn’t pretending PEDs don’t exist.
Maybe the answer is finally being honest about what they cost.
Not just physically — but ethically, financially, and culturally.
We need honest conversations in strength sports.
We need more than transparency.
We need organizations, sponsors, and fans willing to stop glorifying chemical escalation as the only path to greatness.
And most importantly, we need young athletes to understand this:
Your value is not determined by how much you’re willing to sacrifice your long-term health for attention, money, or validation.
Because if the only way a sport can survive is by convincing kids they need drugs to matter, then the sport itself has already failed.
0 Comments