Bodybuilding, Drugs and Risk
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Bodybuilding, Drugs and Risk Current popular interest in bodies, fitness, sport and active lifestyles, has made bodybuilding more visible and acceptable within mainstream society than ever before. However, the association between bodybuilding, drugs and risk has contributed to a negative image of an activity which many people find puzzling. Using data obtained from participant observation and interviews, this book explores bodybuilding subculture from the bodybuilders’ perspectives. It looks at: • how bodybuilders try to maintain competent social identities • how they manage the risks of using steroids and other physique-enhancing drugs • how they understand the alleged steroid-violence link • how they ‘see’ the muscular body Through systematic exploration it becomes apparent that previous attempts to explain bodybuilding in terms of a ‘masculinity-in-crisis’ or gender insecurity are open to question. Different and valuable insights into what sustains and legitimates potentially dangerous drug-taking activities are provided by this detailed picture of a huge underground subculture. Lee F. Monaghan is lecturer in Sociology at the Cardiff School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University. HEALTH, RISK AND SOCIETY Series editor Graham Hart MRC Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, Glasgow In recent years, social scientific interest in risk has increased enormously. In the health field, risk is seen as having the potential to bridge the gap between individuals, communities and the larger social structure, with a theoretical framework which unifies concerns around a number of contemporary health issues. This new series will explore the concept of risk in detail, and address some of the most active areas of current health and research practice. Previous title in this series: Risk and misfortune Judith Green The endangered self: managing the social risk of HIV Gill Green and Elisa J. Sobo Bodybuilding, Drugs and Risk Lee F. Monaghan London and New York First published 2001 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001. © 2001 Lee F. Monaghan All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Monaghan, Lee F., 1972– Bodybuilding, drugs and risk / Lee F. Monaghan. p. cm. – (Health, risk and society) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Doping in sports. 2. Bodybuilders–Drug use. 3. Anabolic steroids. I. Title. II. Series. RC1230 .M65 2001 362.29′088′796–dc21 00–062722 ISBN 0-415-22682-1 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-22683-x (pbk) ISBN 0-203-13652-7 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-17992-7 (Glassbook Format) To Beccie and Niamh Contents List of tables ix Preface xi Acknowledgements xiii 1 Introduction: risking the physical and social self 1 2 Bodybuilding: a demonised drug subculture 25 3 Parameters for successful bodybuilding 45 4 Creating ‘the perfect body’: a variable project 73 5 Bodybuilding ethnopharmacology: managing steroid risks 95 6 Steroid accessory drugs 129 7 Bodybuilding, steroids and violence 156 8 Conclusion: constructing ‘appropriate’ bodies and identities 181 Bibliography 197 Index 209 vii Tables 4.1 A typology of male muscular bodies 81 5.1 An ethnopharmacological taxonomy of different steroids used in bodybuilding 98 ix Preface Experts, and expert systems of knowledge, have a particular place in the ‘risk society’. They contribute to the production of risk, to risk measurement and to its management. Access to experts, and expert systems, however limited, allows us to more clearly refine the nature of exposure to health risks, and to minimise the harms associated with production, consumption and everyday life. Expert control over knowledge has always been challenged, via the ‘underground’ printing and reproduction of texts, but amajor change to have occurred in recentyearsisthe extent to which expert knowledge that was previously difficult to acquire, or contained within highly regulated professional boundaries and spaces, has become available to a much wider audience. The current revolution in information and communications technology – in particular, through the internet – allows unprecedented access to highly technical information, as well as to groups and individuals who are willing to interpret, question, modify and summarise this knowledge. In Bodybuilding, Drugs and Risk Lee Monaghan shows how one group has appropriated a very specific and arcane body of information – on the pharmacology and indeed pharmokinetics of anabolic-androgenic steroids and associated pharmaceutical products – for the purpose of physique enhancement. In medical terms steroid use is a high risk activity: by taking non-prescribed, illicit drugs, bodybuilders risk serious physical side effects and even death. Some would argue that bodybuilders either have, or are at risk of, a psychological disorder – muscle dysmorphia, the physical ‘opposite’ of anorexia nervosa. Yet as Monaghan shows, many of the bodybuilders he contacted had a very sophisticated, highly nuanced and intricate grasp of chemical interactions and the body’s response to them, and indeed this corpus of knowledge – entirely outside of formal pharmacopoeia – can be described as a discrete ‘ethnopharmacology’. xi PREFACE This is risk management with a difference. The detailed knowledge of bodybuilders, male and female, allows them to both push their bodies to previously unimaginable limits, whilst maintaining sufficient control so that muscles do not tear apart, livers can still process drugs (at least in the short and medium term) and hearts do not – literally – burst. This is all done in a particular habitus: the social world of gyms, among supportive peers with whom to share and compare new information, and partners who validate and are sometimes themselves participants in the milieu. The risks are not exclusively physical or mental. The social risk here is of stigmatisation, being stereotyped as violent and unintelligent (‘all brawn and no brain’) and, through the production of hypermuscular physiques, of taking beyond what is considered acceptable the (re-)construction and management of the body. Lee Monaghan describes this world, its inhabitants and structures of knowledge in a way that completely undermines the public representations of bodybuilding, to bring us a picture of men and women who are as thoughtful, reflexive and insightful as any group with a specialised human interest. Their engagement with and expertise in the complex pharmacology of drug use gives us a whole new perspective on risk in society, demonstrating how knowledge cannot be restricted to a single domain or remain the provenance only of credited experts. Bodybuilders’ everyday knowledge challenges current limits on access to information and its practical application, and demonstrates itsplaceinconfronting,living and working with risk. Thiscontribution tothe Health, Risk and Society series is most welcome, and takes us further along the road of understanding that knowledge and technologies generated for one purpose, can have other functions and be put to other uses; with scientific advances come new risks, new means of avoiding established risks, and applications with myriad unintended consequences. Bodybuilding, Drugs and Risk provides us with a remarkable insight into a previously unseen world of knowledge, risk and expertise. Graham Hart Series Editor Health, Risk and Society xii Acknowledgements In writing this book I have incurred many debts. I would like to thank everybody who contributed, either directly or indirectly, to this work. First and foremost, I wish to express my gratitude to all my ethnographic contacts. In preserving anonymity I will not identify these people by name. One man in particular, whom I call Soccer, was particularly helpful. Aswellasproviding me with manyinsights he enabled me to tap into a network of drug-using bodybuilders. This manuscript, edited by Graham Hart to whom I owe my thanks, is based on a doctoral thesis completed in 1997 at Cardiff University. I would like to thank everybody who assisted me during that three-year project. Undoubtedly, my deepest debt is owed to Michael Bloor who acted diligently as my supervisor. Neil McKeganey, who was informative in the writing of the original manuscript, rightly describes Michael Bloor as a sociologists’ sociologist. Many thanks also go to Russell and Rebecca Dobash for their academic support and encouragement. Funds were obtained during the first two years of study from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), for which I am grateful. My last year of funding wasprovidedby the School of SocialandAdministrative Studies,CardiffUniversity. (Currently The Cardiff School of Social Sciences.) I wish to thank the School for awarding me departmental funding in order to complete the original thesis. Other current and former colleagues in the School to whom I am indebted include Sara Delamont, Paul Atkinson, Ian Shaw, Samantha Edwards, Jill Bourne, Anna Weaver, Joanna Wilkes,