When one addiction takes the spotlight, others are frequently forgotten. The conversation about addiction and mental health should encompass all of addiction without slighting one addiction type. Social shame and stigma regarding specific addictions causes the sickness to be more sick. Meaning, it enhances the guilt and shame regarding that addiction. Addicts feel a greater sense that they are social outcasts and that nobody cares about their wellbeing. Worse, they often begin to feel they don’t deserve the overwhelming love and attention being received by other addictions. Problematically, this can keep them in a cycle of using not just out of shame and guilt but out of a false sense of pride. Since there is not as much attention being paid to one addiction over another, some addicts feel that their addiction is not such a big deal and they can continue participating in it.
Telegraph UK reports that steroid use has risen by 400% in the last five years. That is a statistic comparable to the increase in heroin use. 71% of addicts who go to a local needle exchange “are now collecting equipment not for heroin or amphetamine, but rather to administer steroids.” Problematically, “once they start using they’re down the rabbit hole and it can easily spiral into addiction.”
When steroids are injected directly into the core of the muscle, a most common method of administration, they “build tissue within the body, which helps promote muscle and bone mass, primary by stimulation the muscles and the bone cells to produce protein, which in turn helps promote new muscle growth.”
For steroid addiction there are factors of both chemical dependency and routine at hand. Steroids can stimulate the brain in a similar way to narcotic drugs because there is an association with reward and using steroids. As body-image perception becomes distorted, there is a lack of judgment in how much steroids is enough. Coupled with a building chemical tolerance, this can lead to addictive behaviors of abuse, hiding, lying, and struggling in silence.
If you are struggling with steroid addiction, there is help available for you. Design For Change offers treatment programs for steroid addiction to bring you the freedom of recovery. Everyone is capable of recovering. Call us today for more information on our treatment programs and recovery services: (877) 267-3646.
