Steroid Drug Abuse Ireland Investigative Documentary

Steroid Drug Abuse Ireland Investigative Documentary

Anabolic steroids are synthetic, or human-made, variations of the male sex hormone testosterone. The proper term for these compounds is anabolic-androgenic steroids. "Anabolic" refers to muscle building, and "androgenic" refers to increased male sex characteristics. Some common names for anabolic steroids are Gear, Juice, Roids, and Stackers.

Health care providers can prescribe steroids to treat hormonal issues, such as delayed puberty. Steroids can also treat diseases that cause muscle loss, such as cancer and AIDS. But some athletes and bodybuilders misuse these drugs in an attempt to boost performance or improve their physical appearance.

The majority of people who misuse steroids are male weightlifters in their 20s or 30s. Anabolic steroid misuse is much less common in women. It is difficult to measure steroid misuse in the United States because many national surveys do not measure it. However, use among teens is generally minimal.

Reporter Barry O’Kelly leaves no stones unturned, or kilos unburned, in this investigation into an epidemic of steroid use in Ireland.

The culture is already brazenly conspicuous. “Once you start posting on Instagram you want to get bigger, get more ‘likes’,”

Killian explains. Steroids, like addictive substances, enslave the user: “You feel strong, you feel nobody push you,” enthuses one Eastern European body builder called Ramy. If you stop, he adds, “you feel like Spongebob”.

In the sad case of Mark Egan, told by his widow, Sarita, the family man became dependent on steroids in search of a better physique for his wedding day. He died a different character, by suicide, following a torment of psychotic and paranoid episodes. No transformation photo could capture the extreme gulf between before and after.

In secretly filming fitness instructors and personal trainers who readily supply these drugs, O’Kelly’s investigation might simply never end. “We’d be very careful with who we’re dealing with,” one instructor tells him, as the hidden camera peers up attentively to contradict him.


Scandalously operating out of a vitamin and health supplement shop operated by an equally incautious body builder, both men are filmed at length openly discussing their “business”. “That’s easy f**king money, that is,” says the body builder.

The other revelation of the programme is how little fines or censure work as a deterrent. One man, previously named in a Sporting Ireland investigation for supplying a prohibited substance, is filmed still peddling the same steroids.

“It’s a cost of business,” Prof Brendan Buckley says of the fines. That ought to tell you everything you need to know about the reliability of the market.

So what are the solutions to this steroid epidemic? Adequate enforcement of the law, offers Prof Buckley. Better education about its consequences for young people, says almost everyone else.

But the example of one man, James Fennelly, hints at something more radical. Fennelly’s nadir came on The Late Late Show, asked to lift a car on live television as Ireland’s Strongest Man. “It was car crash stuff,” he says, referring to his mental state at the time, rather than the segment. He resigned himself to quit drugs immediately after.