The Peter Attia Drive - Qualy #99 - The steroid controversy： Mark's use of them and Peter's perspective

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00:00:40.480 So for this competition, are you using anabolic steroids or diuretics or any of the other sort

00:00:45.720 of aids that one would use?

00:00:47.020 You know, as in bigger, stronger, faster, you know, I talked about utilizing them from the

00:00:51.640 time I was 25. I've been using them. You know, I've been, I say in the movie, I'm going to

00:00:56.900 probably be on and off them the rest of my life. And that's what I believe. It's direction

00:01:01.900 I chose. When you choose a certain thing and you like the result of it, like, I don't feel

00:01:07.720 like there's any reason to go back. And for me, for now as well, you know, I get it prescribed,

00:01:12.860 which is a kind of added bonus to making sure that it's like, I guess, more on the up and

00:01:17.480 up. But to me, it doesn't really make any difference whether you grab it from some dude

00:01:21.240 at the gym or whether you get it from a doctor. I actually think that the, I think that, you

00:01:25.840 know, there's, they're not going to be all that regulated anyway, no matter, no matter

00:01:29.920 how you slice it.

00:01:31.000 But, but what are the, again, I don't know anything about how bodybuilders use steroids.

00:01:36.120 What are the, what are the, you know,

00:01:38.480 Clean body mass is the main thing. So people get confused about what they actually do.

00:01:42.220 People get confused about what steroids do. I think people think that, that steroids automatically

00:01:47.300 make you strong and they don't necessarily automatically make you strong. What they do

00:01:52.840 in most cases is they allow people to gain more weight. Now there's some cases where people don't

00:01:57.740 gain a whole lot of weight and they do gain strength. But if you don't continue to gain weight at some

00:02:03.360 point, that strength will only level up so much. So when you introduce steroids, steroids don't

00:02:09.360 multiply on top of themselves. They only work to a certain level. So you're, you're on level one with

00:02:16.180 your lifting and you progress and your genetics and everything allow you to get to level four.

00:02:20.780 You take steroids and maybe over a period of time, you get to like level six, but you're still not

00:02:24.520 going to be able to get to level eight, nine, or 10, where these guys like Jay Cutler and some of

00:02:28.840 these mammoth people are because of their genetics, because of their environment as children, because

00:02:34.460 of X, Y, and Z, you're probably just never going to be able to level up to their potential.

00:02:40.060 But, which is an important distinction because I think a lot of people,

00:02:42.680 Yeah. Well, a lot of people look at, you know, let's just pick Phil Heath because he's the best

00:02:47.240 in the world today. And you're like, it's all drugs. It's all drugs. But I don't think people

00:02:50.580 understand, like I could inject a human being with every anabolic steroid period. Like let's get the

00:02:56.420 world's supply of anabolic steroids and inject it into me. Yeah. I couldn't look one 10th of what

00:03:02.320 that guy looks like. Right. And the best coaching and the best, whatever. People like to make things

00:03:07.060 easy and simplify it and they can't come close to Phil Heath. They can't even, you know, come close

00:03:12.400 even with a ton of drugs. So they just want to say, Oh, it's just steroids. It's not, it's not like,

00:03:16.800 Oh, this guy works harder. This guy's better. And I do think that steroids cloud the sport. I do.

00:03:21.800 I do think that if there was a way to get steroids out of the sport, that it could be more popular

00:03:26.900 across the mainstream. However, well, it's part of the reason why it has become more popular because

00:03:31.560 they do have like men's physique and they got some of these different categories. Now where you're seeing,

00:03:35.700 you're seeing more men and women. It's gone more, yeah, more mainstream with some of that stuff.

00:03:39.940 The body types don't look as crazy, right? Yeah. Now there's a, um, a category called classic

00:03:45.020 physique. And it's like, it's interesting because like in the very first year of classic physique,

00:03:50.480 my friend, Danny Hester, he won Mr. Olympia classic physique. He's about 190 pounds. He looks awesome.

00:03:57.200 He's always, he always looks awesome. He's about my height, 190 jacked shred. It looks amazing.

00:04:02.320 And then the next year, the guy that wins, it's like 240. You know what I mean? You're like,

00:04:05.560 this is not classic physique anymore. Like, yeah. Like what happened to the little guys that were

00:04:10.360 in great shape, you know? And the guy that won looked, he looked amazing, but it's, and it's a

00:04:15.740 different look than the bigger bodybuilders, but it's not like, it's not yet a natural thing. It's

00:04:21.540 not like one guy's natural and one guy's on. It's like they're just on different levels, right?

00:04:25.700 Yeah. So classic doesn't mean drug free. It means you're trying to produce a phenotype that

00:04:30.240 is not the biggest. You're trying to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger is like, what's

00:04:32.580 funny is like now they have a category. Arnold Schwarzenegger was Mr. Olympia seven times.

00:04:37.340 He was considered in the Guinness book of world record, the greatest male physique, which

00:04:40.680 is just a title that gave him. He couldn't win a California bodybuilder. That's what I'm

00:04:44.160 saying. You can't win anymore. Like it. So, so they, if you look like Arnold, you'd win

00:04:48.200 classic physique now, which is kind of crazy. So who's your favorite seventies, eighties

00:04:52.980 bodybuilder? Frank Zane, Mike Menser, Mike Menser. Yeah. And Arnold, Arnold's a really

00:04:58.000 big influence. Huge fan of Dorian Yates too. You know, we blood and guts. A lot of that

00:05:03.360 was Mike. Well, he was, he was later, right? Nineties. Oh yeah. And Menser and Yates actually

00:05:08.440 have quite a bit in common philosophically. They trained, they trained together too. And

00:05:12.240 I trained with Mike Menser when I first came out here, when I moved out here in 93, like

00:05:16.560 you see people at the gym and you're a meathead. First thing I did was like, I'm training with

00:05:21.080 Mike Menser. You know, I don't care. He blew out my knee because he had me do these crazy

00:05:24.880 squats in the squat machine and it messed up my knee for like six months, but it's,

00:05:28.900 I still had got to train with him that, which was cool. But at the time I got to train with

00:05:33.400 him, I showed up at the gym and he was outside smoking a cigarette and he was all fat. And 0.66

00:05:38.080 it was just like, Oh, this is Mike Menser now. This is what he is. You know? And it's

00:05:41.400 like, you know, you, a lot of times in life, especially me, I've met all my heroes and pretty

00:05:46.580 much everybody's let me down. So it's just the way life is, I guess.

00:05:49.940 Have you ever met a hero that where they exceeded your expectation?

00:05:54.260 Um, I don't know. Let me see. Have we? Yeah, we have many times. I'm sure. I'm sure we

00:06:00.040 have. Ed Cohn. Yeah. Ed Cohn. Jay Cutler. Stone Cold Steve Austin's one of my favorite

00:06:04.880 people in the entire world. He's amazing. He's so intelligent. Joe Rogan's fucking cool.

00:06:08.520 He's so well-researched. Like he just, he's just awesome to be around. Like there's, there's 0.98

00:06:13.080 people like that. I think where we, the rock, the rock is an amazing dude. Like when you

00:06:17.940 meet the rock, you're like, well, it's all probably just an act, but the rock will look

00:06:22.840 you in the eye, shake your hand and say, how's your mom doing? Like, and he means it, you

00:06:26.920 know, and you could, you could feel that he means it. And, uh, and that's important, especially

00:06:31.640 when you're that big of a celebrity and stuff like that. You know, one of the things I struggle

00:06:34.760 with, and I was actually talking about this a little bit when I was on Joe Rogan's show,

00:06:38.540 I've been pretty vocal and open about my view that once I really spent like five years learning

00:06:45.180 everything there was to learn about anabolic steroids, I came to the conclusion that, well,

00:06:49.980 I can't speak to what happens in bodybuilding. Cause I think that takes it to a different

00:06:53.120 level, but certainly within the level of how they're used in cycling or, you know, more

00:06:59.660 physiologic levels of use, I can't see any evidence of harm. Now EPO is different. You

00:07:04.840 can certainly take too much EPO and cause problems. But once you start talking about testosterone,

00:07:09.580 stenozolol, oxandrolone, these drugs that are typically used in sports, again, I was having a very

00:07:15.040 hard case. I'll give you, I'll show you right here, my tricep that's torn. I was bench pressing

00:07:20.060 455. After it, my triceps hurt a little bit. They were sore. And then I popped my tricep. I've never

00:07:27.000 been hurt lifting in my entire life. At the time I was on a ton of juice. So your argument would be

00:07:31.580 that you just didn't have the tendon strength necessarily. Yeah. And I attribute that to steroid

00:07:35.760 use for sure. A hundred percent. So to say that there's no ill effects of them or no side effects or

00:07:41.720 Yeah. I guess I'm thinking more of the cardiometabolic stuff. Yeah. Liver, kidney,

00:07:44.940 cardio. No. But can you injure yourself? You know, Joey Diaz, one of my favorite people in

00:07:50.220 the world. He's hilarious. He says, he's like, you see these guys in the gym and they're like 50

00:07:53.800 years old and they used to take steroids. And now, now it's like, like a bag of shit. You know, 1.00

00:07:57.660 it's like, I kind of agree with that statement too, that there are a lot of people that have taken

00:08:02.280 steroids and abused them and gotten really crappy skin and crappy, like just, you know, 0.79

00:08:07.920 things that, uh, that don't look good, not necessarily aesthetic and probably not healthy.

00:08:12.800 I'm sure that they've driven a lot of people's blood in a bad direction, which could, which could

00:08:17.740 lead to other things possibly. Right. But, but not definitely. So I think that's where we're looking

00:08:22.700 at like the detrimental effects of steroids would be among, it's like among the users that are losers.

00:08:29.420 If that makes sense. It's like, it's among the users that, that aren't paying attention to

00:08:32.840 everything else. Yeah. And I guess under medical supervision though, when you're again, doing

00:08:37.660 these things within physiologic doses, which is pretty different than what the average person is

00:08:42.120 doing. We're talking like something that a doctor would prescribe. Yeah. When it's like, yeah,

00:08:46.740 it's like you, well, you know, for example, you take somebody whose testosterone is like

00:08:50.300 two standard deviations below the mean and you revert them back to the mean or median level of

00:08:56.380 testosterone. If we're going in that respect, I would have to go back and say that you're a hundred

00:09:00.460 percent right. I haven't seen anything like even a muscle tear on a normal dose, but I was,

00:09:06.520 I was using pretty good doses. How much were you taking? Well, I was at the time I was using

00:09:10.480 trend balloon and I was using testosterone together. And then I was taking some other oral stuff. It was

00:09:16.020 like right after I got out of rehab, I'm like, I got to get jacked, you know? And like, and it's funny

00:09:20.420 because they tell you in AA that if you're on steroids, it affects you from the neck up and you're not

00:09:24.860 allowed to take them. Hope you enjoyed today's special bonus episode of the Quali. New episodes

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The Peter Attia Drive - January 23, 2020

Qualy #99 - The steroid controversy： Mark's use of them and Peter's perspective

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