by Thaxton Lewis

Created on: March 05, 2008   Last Updated: September 10, 2011

Unless we are going to change the word sports to simple mercenary entertainment, then steroid use should never be allowed in professional sports.

Why? Because we don't allow men on PCP to box, we don't allow people on Ritalin to run marathons. And why not?

Because to play a sport means to compete with everything you have, and to let your natural ability, training techniques, love and dedication to the dream of being the best, to competing against the best, come to fruition, and to experience that dream without tainting it with enhancement drugs.

People dedicate their entire lives to running faster, throwing better, hitting harder, and being healthy and in shape to perform the tasks needed to prove that they are the best.

The competitive spirit and the desire to win captivates us the viewer, and when we see gymnasts who do flips on fractured feet, or see someone knock out an opponent after being knocked down several times and counted out, only to come back and win, it gives us the feeling that we can do anything.

To unnaturally enhance your body because the spirit of competitiveness wears you down, and the anxiety over winning goes from motivating you to making you want to cheat, diminishes why you wanted to compete in the first place.

It's like cheating in a spelling bee, or getting away with an affair, at the end of it all the only real loser is yourself.

And certainly, I understand that you cannot win all the time, and that there is a tremendous amount of pressure on the modern athlete to live up to and surpass colossal expectations, but half the time steroids does not even make the person perform better. Over time it just makes things worse, and the health of the user suffers greatly for it.

I read a detailed account of steroid abuse in the novel Chemical pink by Katie Arnoldi, and it was depressing what that drug did to that woman in the story.

It is not even for the sake of sports that steroid use should never be allowed, it is for the sake of the athletes that it should never be allowed. For their health, for their lives, for their futures, and most importantly, for their dreams.

To win, to be the best, only to have it taken from you because you used a drug that did not even help you win is disgraceful, and very, very sad.

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