Performance-Enhancing Drugs In Sport

The use of drugs in sport or any environment is a contentious subject. It is right that individuals should make up their own mind whether to indulge in the use and/or abuse of performance-enhancing chemicals. The term performance enhancing is meant to include anabolic-androgenic steroids and drugs which allow increased endurance by countering the effects of fatigue. Everyone exposed to such temptation should be educated with the facts as they are and not be mixed up with ill-informed comments. Ends do not always justify the means and it is my strong belief that whatever the prizes and rewards that may be perceived to be available the dangers are just too great to consider such use. I hope to develop a thesis that will explain my position and the reasons why I hold such beliefs.

The desire by athletes to enhance their performance is a strong one and the desire to succeed overrules any ethical concern or healthy logic. Athletes attempt to build their body via sporting activities, resistance training, and competition to enhance their strength, speed, power, endurance, skills, and performance. The exercise itself mixed with nutritional habits are important for the growing athlete. The deliberate use of drugs to enhance sporting prowess and achievement is known as doping. It is cheating. Such use is not only an insult to every other competitor, but it is also dangerous. The short-term and long-term effects on the human body can be quite destructive. The use of drugs in the athletic community is not a contemporary phenomenon and dates back some time.

The term doping comes from the Dutch word Dop which goes back almost 120 years. When the word doping first appeared in the English dictionary in 1889 it was defined as a narcotic mixture of opium used for racehorses. In a dialect of the Kaffirs of southern Africa, dop refers to the stimulating hard liquor used in religious ceremonies. When the Boers adopted the word, the final e was added making it Dope. The earliest reports of drug taking by athletes in competition were in Amsterdam in 1865 when swimmers in canal races were charged with taking dope. In 1869, the coaches of teams of bicycle racers were widely known to be administering the heroin-cocaine mixture now known as speedball to increase the endurance of their racers. The practice caught the attention of the sports world when the first drug-related death in sports occurred to a cyclist in a race in 1886. The French were said to be taking caffeine tablets and the British to be breathing oxygen and taking cocaine, heroin, strychnine, and brandy all in attempts to gain the competitive edge.

There are two basic classes of drugs in sport: one is the restorative drug, which aids the recovery of a previous state of health and performance. Such substances may enable the athlete to compete despite being injured and using painkillers such as aspirin or morphine and muscle relaxants, topical anesthetics and anti-inflammatories. The other class of sports drugs is ergogenic substances. In some cases, these enable performance to go beyond what would normally be possible. They may be pharmacologic, physiologic or nutritional and examples are anabolic steroids, amphetamines, cocaine and caffeine and involves the deliberate administration of a non-food substance or substances with the purpose of artificially enhancing an athlete's physical and/or mental condition. It can also be the clinical manipulation of natural substances in an athlete's body for the same purpose of falsely enhancing the physical and/or mental condition. Today, many athletes are tempted to use drugs to stimulate or sedate, to increase or decrease weight and to help combat the fatigue of a strenuous training program. They find themselves under such pressure that they and their coaches (and even their doctors) succumb to this temptation. They use banned doping substances without reflecting on the risks they are taking.

The rewards of athletic success have become enormous and financial benefits can be added to the traditional prestige of championship success. The only sure way to get results is through dedicated training and ingesting proper nutritional fuels. It has been noted that with proper nutrition, the use of proteins and amino acids, as well as supplemental vitamins and minerals in combination with heavy resistance training an athlete can achieve the end effects of drugs such as anabolic steroids over an extended period of time. When approaching sports in this natural manner there is no risk of side effect from drugs. The athlete's longevity for competition will be much longer than the doping athlete who tends to burn out in a shorter time. Shortcuts that are morally and physically acceptable simply do not exist.

The physical problems involve the health of the individual and long-term side effects are not yet fully understood. The biological preparation of the athlete is disturbed and it causes physical deterioration and sometimes death. It can also lead to addiction. The risk of side effects from a drug increases when it is taken in high doses or over a long period of time. Certain drugs can have such damaging effects on the body's different organs, that their use must be limited to very severe disease states. In the treatment of ill people, a drug's positive effects must be weighed up against its damaging effects. The selection of a drug by a doctor is based on the knowledge that exists regarding different doses, and/or for a different drug's effects and side effects at certain controlled doses. Taking a drug in completely different doses and/or for different purposes than for which it was intended, increases the risk that the drug will have unwanted side effects. This applies to a great extent to the drugs used in doping.

It is vital to understand the properties of a drug. Stimulants have been used as ergogenics for many years. The first ones were of plant origin such as the leaves of the coca plant and the African plant Catha edulis. These contain the psychomotor stimulant drug cocaine. Benzedrine or Dexedrine are amphetamines and synthetic stimulants. None of these substances is accepted for sports use and they are classed as narcotics because of the euphoria they cause which can lead to addiction. Central nervous system (brain) stimulants have been used as appetite suppressants, but their effects are short-lived and of doubtful value. Amphetamines, cocaine and related substances increase wakefulness and reduce the need for sleep through stimulation of the central nervous system. Their action suppresses the feelings of tiredness which often leads to exhaustion, but in some cases appears as agitation and irritability instead. Among misusers, tolerance is quickly built up (the effects of the drug become less and the dosage must be increased).