AIKHAL: Anabolics I have Known and Loved, by Adam Lehrer

I’ve been physically active most of my life, and was an elite track and field athlete during my youth. During my running career, my physique was a bit different. At 5 ft 9, I was a hard and vascular 155 to 165 pounds – slender but compact. As I got older, however, maintaining such a low body weight without eroding my strength and endurance became a chore. This was, believe it or not, how I got addicted to hard drugs. It started with Adderall, which I would sometimes take up to 60 MG of on both training and racing days. Amphetamines decimated my appetite, however, and continued use of them resulted in the early atrophy of my musculature. OxyContin, however, felt like a small miracle. Utterly devoid of pain but still able to consume carbs and protein, my body on them became a machine. The problem was that the machine would not run without the opioids. Pills turned into heroin, and by my mid-’20s, I was bottomed out junkie long past my athletic career. I kicked the drugs when I was 26, a

I’ve been physically active most of my life, and was an elite track and field athlete during my youth. During my running career, my physique was a bit different. At 5 ft 9, I was a hard and vascular 155 to 165 pounds – slender but compact. As I got older, however, maintaining such a low body weight without eroding my strength and endurance became a chore. This was, believe it or not, how I got addicted to hard drugs. It started with Adderall, which I would sometimes take up to 60 MG of on both training and racing days. Amphetamines decimated my appetite, however, and continued use of them resu