Performance-enhancing drugs are widely used to boost athletes’ abilities to increase their advantage in all the competitions they play (Savulescu et al. 2004). Currently, the International Olympic Committee has eradicated the use of performance-enhancing drugs in all sports, hence enhancing fair competition in games. The players commonly used drugs, and this propagated unfair competition, thus diminishing the morale of sports worldwide (Savulescu et al. 2004).
Consideration of these types of drugs revolves around both the advantages and disadvantages in sports. These effects may be psychological or physical for the athletes. For example, anabolic steroids boost the performance level of testosterone that is excreted by the human body (Thevis & Schänzer, 2009), increase the size of human muscles, and help the body regain as much as possible. This can be administered either through injection, as a pill, or even taken as a typical treatment by players in sports (Ormsbee & Vukovich 2008).
Types Of Performance-Enhancing Drugs
There are different types of these drugs that are commonly used by players to boost their performance in the field:
They are:
- 1) Anabolic steroids
- 2) Androstenedione
- 3) Human growth hormone
- 4) Erythropoietin
- 5) Diuretics
- 6) Creatine
- 7) Stimulants
The rate of using performance-enhancing drugs, which most people commonly refer to as doping, has both disadvantages and advantages (Dubin 2009). Most people believe that the positive effects are more worthwhile than the adverse effects, yet at some points, this is impossible. Mostly, the adverse effects tend to be greater than the positive results (Finnoff et al. 2010). In many cases, young players have embarked on performance-enhancing drugs to adjust themselves to insecurities, mainly due to pressure from their friends and, more so, the effects of majorly negative body image issues. Anabolic steroids mark the highest degree, not leaving behind androstenedione and creatine, which are widely used by most teenagers (Robinson 2008). The use of these drugs by most players may be basically to improve their fitness to perform better in sports.
Let’s Look At The Drugs Mentioned Above, How They Are Used, And Some Results
Androstenedione-This helps players to train hard and also assists them in recovering quickly from the fatigue experienced during exercise (Pope et al. 2013).
It causes problems such as acne, low libido, a decrease in the size of the testes and also masculinization in ladies.
Human growth hormone-It is always available under prescribed conditions. It is administered by injection. The adverse effects include weakening of muscles, pain in joints and fluid retention (Wiefferink et al. 2007).
Erythropoietin-It is mostly used by players to accelerate the movement of oxygen within the muscles. It tends to be the most harmful drug and can lead to death, strokes and heart attacks. It also reduces the level of water within the body tissues. This kind of medicine leads to dehydration, exhaustion, and death too (Kayser, 2005).
Creatine tends to be one of the most common supplements in sports. It is always accessible to everyone, and it assists human muscles in releasing energy in small calculated doses. It results in nausea, weight gain, muscle cramps and damage to kidney tissues (Thompson & Cafri 2007).
Stimulants– They can increase blood pressure, and they tend to increase endurance, lower fatigue, and make players alert all the time. Their effects include dehydration, heart disease, stroke and convulsions (Greely et al. 2008).
Positive And Negative Effects Of Performance-Enhancing Drugs
Adverse effects of performance-enhancing drugs include the following (Mah 2008):
Taking performance enhancing drugs can cause:
- Loss of sponsorships to players
- Loss of players’ income
- Reduced achievement
- Breakdown of relationships with friends and fans
- Isolation from sports
Huge Effects On Emotional And Psychological Well-Being
There are different types of steroids that are commonly used. They (Cadwallader et al. 2010) include Anadrol, Anavar, Deca-Durabolin, Dianabol, testosterone, and trenbolone. These steroids are in plenty.
Steroids Tend To Cause The Following Detrimental Effects To The Users:
Acne, increased aggression and mood swings due to considerable addictions to drugs can cause low libido since they affect the reproductive organs (Hope et al., 2013). They cause liver diseases, high blood pressure and also psychological dependency, leading to an increased risk of contracting HIV due to impaired judgment. Sharing needles among players can also pose risks. In males, these drugs may cause infertility, breast enlargement, and baldness; in females, they may cause male features such as deep voices and facial and body hair. Lastly, they may lead to damage to the fetus during pregnancy. Increased risks include hair loss, acne, infertility, hypertension, addiction and drug dependence, and abnormalities in body organs, such as liver cirrhosis, breast enlargement, and tumors in young players; overall, heart and circulatory problems can increase death rates. For the most part, doping has the following adverse effects on the human body: liver diseases, kidney disorders, oily skin, and heart failure. It can also alter mental states, causing hallucinations, and can increase blood pressure and cause infertility, shrinking of the testicles, baldness, and gynecomastia.
Taking Human Growth Hormone Has The Following Adverse Effects:
It causes diabetes in the individual, loss of muscles, pain in joints and bone pain. Heart diseases tend to be a universal cause of hypertension (Brennan et al. 2013). It causes hypertension, affects the abnormal growth of organs in the body and, in general, accelerates osteoarthritis. This drug thickens the blood, and that’s why it leads to heart diseases, increased stroke and also the loss of cerebrum in the human body since it affects the brain tissues (Brennan et al. 2013).
Recreational Drugs
The use of recreational drugs is banned in sports, and players need to know that the use of drugs such as cannabis sativa can be dangerous to their health and their level of performance in games and can also have massive effects on their lives in sports (Wiesing 2011). These recreational drugs increase the risk of baldness in players over time, acne and infertility. They increase the risk of hypertension and addiction in players. Therefore, drug dependence causes abnormalities in human body organs, such as liver cirrhosis, breast enlargement, tumors in young players and, in general, heart problems in blood circulation, increasing death rates (Iversen et al. 2013). Doping has the following adverse effects on the human body: liver diseases, kidney disorders, oily skin, and heart failure. It can also change human moods, cause hallucinations, increase blood pressure, cause infertility, shrink the testicles, and lead to baldness and gynecomastia (Mazanov & Huybers 2010).
Positive Effects Of Performance-Enhancing Drugs
In most cases, it’s good to view blood doping as a benefit rather than as a disaster for our players. Doping tends to increase the body’s ability to cope with difficulties experienced in the field, which sometimes pose challenges to players, and they may find themselves using performance-enhancing drugs to adjust their bodies to challenging situations in the field (Wiesing 2011; Stubbe et al. 2014). Performance-enhancing drugs have the following benefits for players:
- They boost and increase endurance.
Blood doping tends to improve the endurance levels of players (Iversen 2013). Endurance is all about the ability of a player to withstand a particular activity for an extended period of time (Mazanov & Huybers 2010) without getting fatigued. All these features are suitable for players since they require extra energy to persevere through difficult situations during the game. Doping increases the level of endurance by almost 7%, therefore improving the player’s performance in the field (Wiesing 2011).
- Helps in long distances
By doping, most people who participate in long distances or marathons can perform well (Bowers 2002). This is because doping helps to improve the level of oxygen gas within the body tissues, and in that case, enormous energy is generated to keep them in the game without becoming tired (Donovan et al. 2002). When adequate oxygen is supplied to muscles, there is sufficient respiration and hence less fatigue, enabling athletes to complete long distances in marathons and cross countries without fail, thus improving performance (Uvacsek et al. 2011).
- Improving performance
In most cases, the primary use of doping is to develop or boost the level of performance. That’s why most people are using steroids so as to achieve their dreams in the field and also to reflect on their passion for sports at large (Brand 2014). Looking at the current performance of players, there seem to be improvements from year to year. Every year, a player aspires to perform more and more. This is enhanced through better training, enhanced techniques in the field, and generally increased health of an athlete (Sabini & Monterosso 2005). Through doping, players can compete better and, in so doing, lead to improved performance in games.
- Helps to reduce oxygen depletion
Different exercises incur different levels of performance. In activities such as wrestling, marathons, skating, skiing, and cross-country events, large amounts of oxygen are used because human body tissues require significant amounts of oxygen during exercise (Morgan 2009). Therefore, in all those types of games, the body is not in a good position to cater to that vast amount of oxygen that can necessitate them to enter a state that is commonly known as oxygen debt. It occurs in the human body and leads to anaerobic respiration within the body tissues, causing the formation of lactic acid, which accumulates in muscles and causes fatigue (Evans‐Brown et al. 2009). Blood doping helps to supply an adequate level of oxygen gas to human tissues. In that manner, their bodies regenerate enough energy, thus enabling them to complete the games without fail and, therefore, achieve better performance in games (Ko & Evenden 2009).
Performance-enhancing drugs have both negative and positive effects on users. Reductions in oxygen depletion, performance boosts, increased endurance and support over long distances are among the advantageous effects of doping (Carpenter 2007) for players, while the effects mentioned above create the adverse impact of doping on players. The use of performance-enhancing drugs, commonly referred to as doping, has both disadvantages and advantages (Dubin 2009). Most individuals believe that the positive outcomes are more worthwhile than the adverse impacts, yet in some cases this is not true.
For the most part, the negative effects tend to be greater than the positive outcomes (Finnoff et al. 2010). In numerous cases, young players have turned to performance-enhancing drugs because of insecurities, mainly due to peer pressure and negative body-image issues. Anabolic steroids rank among the most commonly used, along with androstenedione and creatine, which are widely used by high-school students (Robinson 2008). The use of these drugs by most players may be intended to improve their fitness and performance in sports. At present, the worldwide Olympic board of trustees has destroyed the utilization of execution improving medications in every one of the games, consequently upgrading reasonable rivalry in sports. Medications were regularly utilized by the players, and this proliferated to out-of-line rivalry, consequently reducing the confidence in games common (Savulescu et al. 2004).
When considering these types of drugs, there are both advantages and disadvantages in sports. These impacts may be mental or physical for competitors; for example, anabolic steroids increase testosterone levels in the human body (Thevis and Schänzer 2009), increase muscle size, and help the body recover as quickly as possible. These drugs can be administered through injection, as pills, or as topical treatments by players in sports.
References
Bowers, L. D. (2002). Abuse of performance-enhancing drugs in sport. Therapeutic drug monitoring, 24(1), 178-181.
Brennan, B. P., Kanayama, G., & Pope, H. G. (2013). Performance‐Enhancing Drugs on the Web: A Growing Public‐Health Issue. The American journal on addictions, 22(2), 158- 161.
Cadwallader, A. B., De La Torre, X., Tieri, A., & Botrè, F. (2010). The abuse of diuretics as performance‐enhancing drugs and masking agents in sport doping: pharmacology, toxicology and analysis. British journal of pharmacology, 161(1), 1-16.
Dandoy, C., & Gereige, R. S. (2012). Performance-enhancing drugs. Pediatrics in Review, 33(6), 265.
Donovan, R. J., Egger, G., Kapernick, V., & Mendoza, J. (2002). A conceptual framework for achieving performance enhancing drug compliance in sport. Sports medicine, 32(4), 269- 284.
Dubin, A. H. (2009). Performance-Enhancing Drugs. Opening the Black Box: The Mysteries of Therapeutic Exercise Unlocked…, 29.
Finnoff, J. T., Chimes, G. P., & Murray, T. H. (2010). Performance-enhancing drugs. PM&R, 2(4), 285-293.
Greely, H., Sahakian, B., Harris, J., Kessler, R. C., Gazzaniga, M., Campbell, P., & Farah, M. J. (2008). Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy. Nature, 456(7223), 702.
Hope, V. D., McVeigh, J., Marongiu, A., Evans-Brown, M., Smith, J., Kimergård, A., … & Ncube, F. (2013). Prevalence of, and risk factors for, HIV, hepatitis B and C infections among men who inject image and performance enhancing drugs: a cross-sectional study. BMJ open, 3(9), e003207.
Iversen, J., Topp, L., Wand, H., & Maher, L. (2013). Are people who inject performance and image‐enhancing drugs an increasing population of Needle and Syringe Program attendees?. Drug and alcohol review, 32(2), 205-207.
Kayser, B., Mauron, A., & Miah, A. (2005). Legalisation of performance-enhancing drugs. The Lancet, 366, S21.
Mah, B. (2008). erPoll results: look who’s doping: in January, Nature launched an informal survey into readers’ use of cognition-enhancing drugs. Brendan Maher has waded through the results and found large-scale use and a mix of attitudes towards the drugs. Nature, 452(7188), 674-676.
Mazanov, J., & Huybers, T. (2010). An empirical model of athlete decisions to use performance‐enhancing drugs: qualitative evidence. Qualitative research in sport and exercise, 2(3), 385-402.
Ormsbee, M., & Vukovich, M. (2008). Performance Enhancing Drugs. IDEA Fitness Journal, 2.
Pope Jr, H. G., Wood, R. I., Rogol, A., Nyberg, F., Bowers, L., & Bhasin, S. (2013). Adverse health consequences of performance-enhancing drugs: an Endocrine Society scientific statement. Endocrine Reviews, 35(3), 341-375.
Robinson, T. (2008). Performance-Enhancing Drugs. ABDO.
Savulescu, J., Foddy, B., & Clayton, M. (2004). Why we should allow performance enhancing drugs in sport. British journal of sports medicine, 38(6), 666-670.
Stubbe, J. H., Chorus, A. M., Frank, L. E., Hon, O., & Heijden, P. G. (2014). Prevalence of use of performance enhancing drugs by fitness centre members. Drug testing and analysis, 6(5), 434-438.
Brand, R., Heck, P., & Ziegler, M. (2014). Illegal performance enhancing drugs and doping in sport: a picture-based brief implicit association test for measuring athletes’ attitudes. Substance abuse treatment, prevention, and policy, 9(1), 7.
Sabini, J., & Monterosso, J. (2005). Judgments of the fairness of using performance enhancing drugs. Ethics & Behavior, 15(1), 81-94.
Morgan, W. J. (2009). Athletic perfection, performance-enhancing drugs, and the treatment- enhancement distinction. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, 36(2), 162-181.
Evans‐Brown, M., Kimergård, A., & McVeigh, J. (2009). Elephant in the room? The methodological implications for public health research of performance‐enhancing drugs derived from the illicit market. Drug testing and analysis, 1(7), 323-326.
Ko, T., & Evenden, J. (2009). The effects of psychotomimetic and putative cognitive-enhancing drugs on the performance of a n-back working memory task in rats. Psychopharmacology, 202(1-3), 67-78.
Carpenter, P. C. (2007). Performance-enhancing drugs in sport. Endocrinology and Metabolism Clinics, 36(2), 481-495.
Thevis, M., & Schänzer, W. (2009). Performance‐Enhancing Drugs. Olympic Textbook of Science in Sport, 283-303.
Thompson, J., & Cafri, G. E. (2007). The muscular ideal: Psychological, social, and medical perspectives. American Psychological Association.
Uvacsek, M., Nepusz, T., Naughton, D. P., Mazanov, J., Ránky, M. Z., & Petróczi, A. (2011). Self‐admitted behavior and perceived use of performance‐enhancing vs psychoactive drugs among competitive athletes. Scandinavian journal of medicine & science in sports, 21(2), 224-234.
Wiefferink, C. H., Detmar, S. B., Coumans, B., Vogels, T., & Paulussen, T. G. W. (2007). Social psychological determinants of the use of performance-enhancing drugs by gym users. Health education research, 23(1), 70-80.
Wiesing, U. (2011). Should performance-enhancing drugs in sport be legalized under medical supervision?. Sports medicine, 41(2), 167-176.
Academic Master Education Team is a group of academic editors and subject specialists responsible for producing structured, research-backed essays across multiple disciplines. Each article is developed following Academic Master’s Editorial Policy and supported by credible academic references. The team ensures clarity, citation accuracy, and adherence to ethical academic writing standards
Content reviewed under Academic Master Editorial Policy.
