Meaning, what are the drugs used to enhance athletic performance and why do they work?
The obvious one is anabolic steroids, I think everyone knows about that. But from what I recall of people who were in the bodybuilding and powerlifting community drugs like HGH and insulin were also used to build muscle on top of steroids. Plus all the drugs to deal with the side effects of things like steroids like breast cancer drugs, baldness drugs, fertility drugs, etc.
On the subject of steroids, I thought some athletes used certain kinds of steroids like nandrolone to help with injury repair. Is there an entire black market of drugs designed to help people recover from sports injuries? Is nandrolone really better than any of the dozen plus other anabolic steroids for injury repair?
I know EPO Is for stamina, has anything else been used for that? I guess amphetamines or other stimulants.
I once talked to someone who was involved in strongman competitions, he said opiate abuse was common in that sport since people used them to deal with the physical pain of all the events.
There have to be entire fields of study based on what you want to accomplish:
Build muscle
Heal from injury
Make the body more resistant to injury
Build cardio stamina
Cope with pain from activity
EPO forces the production of red blood cells and improves oxygen transport and absorption.
Caffeine increases the use of fat in endurance activities, thus sparing glycogen and allowing a longer time of exercise until glycogen depletion (hitting the wall, bonking).
It may also decrease the feeling of fatigue.
I recall people using the ECA stack (ephedrine/caffeine/aspirin) to help with weight loss. I wouldn’t be surprised if that is also used for stamina and athletic performance.
Nice article from Charlie Francis, who knows a thing or two about drugs. It is about the history of performance enhancing drug use, with many details about particular drugs.
Performance enhancing drugs are any substance that provides an advantage in any sport, so it can basically be anything. It can be an upper, downer, blood pressure med, steroid, basically anything as long as it increases performance.
Even non-human, racing horses are doped with exotic opiates to make them run harder since they don’t feel the pain, and they hope the exotic obscure substances will sneak past the drug testing:
Human growth hormone, which used to come only from cadavers and was very very expensive. Now it is genetically engineered and more common. It increases muscle growth and strength.
The Eastern Europeans made a science of the use and masking of PEDs. I believe the entire Bulgarian Olympic weight lifting team left Seoul after their lighter lifters won their classes and were disqualified for doping (IIRC the testing group had developed new ways of detecting previously masked agents). And most people have heard of the East German women’s swimming team.
But some PEDs are banned, like dianabol, whereas others, like caffeine, aren’t. Not really disagreeing with you, just nitpicking that most people, when they hear the word “drug” are thinking of the illegal kind first.