Entertainment Weekly: No Line on the Horizon

Get In Line U2's Adam Clayton, Bono, Larry Mullen Jr., and The Edge

The warning has been sounded. ''Danger! Danger! U2 are experimenting again!'' This is not exactly welcome news for those who remember the band's attempts at reformulating their cathedral-rock sound with of-the-moment trendiness (Zooropa, Pop) as something to be endured, not embraced, and who had been thrilled by their return to ''old-school U2'' on 2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind. Only once, with Achtung Baby, have Bono and Co. ever stretched far and found glory.

But with their 12th studio album, U2 have Achtung it again. No Line on the Horizon is an eclectic and electrifying winner, one that speaks to the zeitgeist the way only U2 can and dare to do. ''Let me in the sound!'' Bono yelps several times on the record, most notably on the dense-and- danceable first single, ''Get On Your Boots.'' To be clear, No Line isn't some radical evolution of rock & roll. It's not even a radical reinvention of U2. Dirty guitar, heavy bass, cheesy keyboards, beeps and loops — those sounds were all there during the Zooropa/Pop digression. The difference this time is that U2 don't sound lost in them. ''No, no line on the horizon,'' Bono sings on the title track, a raw and moody ode to the muse, where The Edge's rough riffing is soothed by ethereal synth. This is an adventurous experience created by responsible people, for responsible people — a record about searching for meaning, but always knowing the way home.

The album's risk/reward pays off early with a pair of six-minute-plus epics, both of which have Bono seeking and receiving something like divine revelation in the rattle and hum of the everyday world. ''Moment of Surrender'' — wherein a profound encounter with ''a vision of invisibility'' goes down at an ATM — is an organ-fueled hymn that takes its own soulful time coming to an end. It is immediately followed by ''Unknown Caller,'' a rousing if kinda goofy spiritual wake-up call aimed at a culture of blurry-eyed BlackBerry addicts. Computer jargon is turned into spiritual maxims issued by a voice-of-God shout-chant chorus: ''Shush now/Oh, oh/Force quit and move to trash.'' Now you know what didactic spam sounds like.

But what's eye-rolling and oblique at first becomes can't-stop-thinking-about-it infectious upon repeat listens: No Line is, for certain, a grows-on-you proposition. ''Get On Your Boots,'' which has invited some ''Do I like this or not?'' head-scratching among fans and critics, blazes to life as part of a trio of great, galloping rockers that form No Line's fun-and-fiery middle section. Yet the record's instant classic is its penultimate track, ''Breathe,'' a stomping, snarling rumination about engaging the world with open arms despite so much external gloom and internal angst. Ever the optimist, Bono evokes the threats of a global pandemic, an economic crisis, and hostile neighbors, then insists: ''These days are better than that.'' Preachy? Hell, yes. And bring it on. No Line on the Horizon offers idealism spliced with new attitude and the same old grace, and is all the better for it. Memo to U2: Don't leave this behind. A–

Download This: Listen to songs from the new album on the band's MySpace

Something Extra On The Ball - June 30, 1969

Be it pick-me-ups or let-me-downs, build-me-ups or lie-me-downs, they can all be found in medicine's little black bag for sportsmen. it is into this bag?and into the dangerous world of drugs?that athletes plunge when they search for... SOMETHING EXTRA ON THE BALL

Bil Gilbert

" 'Where's the Dexamyl, Doc?' I yelled at the trainer rooting about in his leather valise," pitcher-author Jim Brosnan quoted himself as saying in his celebrated baseball book, Pennant Race. " 'There's nothing in here but phenobarbital and that kind of stuff.'

" 'I don't have any more,' said Doc Rohde. 'Gave out the last one yesterday. Get more when we get home.'

" 'Been a rough road trip, huh, Doc? How'm I goin' to get through the day then? Order some more, Doc. It looks like a long season.'

" 'Try one of these,' he said.

" 'Geez, that's got opium in it. Whaddya think I am, an addict or something?' "

An addict or something? It isn't the worst question in the world, though the word addict has an opium, cocaine, speed, heroin whiff to it that is not normally associated with the pills and shots that an athlete uses to bolster his physical condition or morale in the name of victory, a payday, or both. The difference is that addicts, in the normal usage of the word, take drugs because their systems are dependent on them, while athletes take them for a more specific purpose. Their goal is performance, but their quest for performance has led them deep into the wonders of the pharmacy. What do you find if you dig into the medicine cabinet of sport? Who is taking what and why? The answer is that most athletes are taking something, and probably not getting quite the results they think.

Essentially, the drugs used by athletes can be broken down into two categories—restorative and additive. Restorative drugs are those used by athletes who for one reason or another—illness, injury, pain, nervousness, sloth, gluttony, dissipation—are incapacitated. The drugs are given with the intent to restore, at least partly, the competitor's normal prowess. Painkillers, tranquilizers, barbiturates, anti-inflammants, enzymes and muscle relaxers are all restorative drugs commonly used in sports.

Additive drugs—a more controversial group—are used with the motive of stimulating performance beyond the natural limits, e.g., in the hope of making a man who has never run better than a four-minute mile cover the distance in 3.59 or even 3:55. For obvious reasons, additive drugs raise more legal, ethical and regulatory questions than do the restoratives. They are also physiologically controversial, since there is some scientific doubt as to whether there is such a thing as a truly additive drug. The athletic Establishment, however, is generally convinced that additive drugs do exist and, in this belief, uses compounds that stimulate the nervous system, affect muscle tissue and alter the personality.

Given the variety of drugs now available and the inclination of athletes to experiment with them, it is all but impossible to compile a definitive list of drugs that have been used in sports for restorative or additive purposes. Also, because of the speed with which drug information is passed among athletes, drug use cannot be neatly cataloged as to sport, e.g., alcohol for archery, Benzedrine for basketball, cocaine for crew, etc. Athletic pharmaceutical practices are, so to speak, interdisciplinary, and perhaps the only orderly way to survey athletic drug usage and the effects of drugs on sport is to examine half a dozen or so drug families now popular.

A reasonable place to begin is with the additives, the best-known of which are the amphetamines, a group of synthetic drugs that are chemically similar to adrenalin and are often referred to as pep pills. On good evidence—which includes voluntary admissions by physicians, trainers, coaches, athletes, testimony given in court or before athletic regulatory bodies, and autopsy reports—amphetamines have been used in auto racing, basketball, baseball (at all levels down to children's leagues), boxing, canoeing, cycling, football, golf, mountain climbing, Roller Derby, rodeo, Rugby, skating, skiing, soccer, squash, swimming, tennis (both lawn and table), track and field, weight lifting and wrestling. The amphetamines, of which Benzedrine, Dexedrine, Dexamyl (which has a barbiturate added) and methamphetamine (the notorious "speed" or "Meth"), are among the best-known, affect the central nervous system and produce what might be called a triple threat. They act indirectly to suppress hunger spasms, and for this reason are used as appetite-killing pills by jockeys, boxers, wrestlers and anybody else who has to make a weight. The drug is a metabolic stimulant, speeding up the respiratory and circulatory systems and enabling users to remain hyperactive when they would ordinarily slow down because of fatigue. Finally, the amphetamines act directly on the brain, inducing a sense of excitement and euphoria, a sort of I-can-lick-the-world high.

But the undesirable side effects of amphetamines are numerous. The drug is feared to be physically addictive—there is some medical dispute about this—and is certainly psychologically addictive. Overdoses or too frequent doses can cause, among other things, cardiovascular collapse, cerebral hemorrhage, brain lesions, paranoia, ulcers, nutritional problems, compulsive talkativeness, irritability, aggressive behavior and constipation. In addition, an amphetamine hangover, coming down from a high, is a wretched, depressing experience.

Though amphetamines were developed earlier, their use first became general during World War II, world war being a happening that creates an instant demand for hyperactive, aggressive and even paranoid types. Returning veterans brought the drug to the sports world, where its use has been widespread ever since. As in the military, it was and is touted as a fatigue chaser and stimulant. Therefore it is most heavily used in endurance sports. Not surprisingly, bicycle racing, often cited as the most grueling of all athletic contests, is the most notorious for amphetamine use.

"I dope myself. Everyone [that is, everyone who is a competitive cyclist] dopes himself. Those who claim they don't are liars," Jacques Anquetil, a five-time winner of the Tour de France and a French sports figure of the stature of a Jean-Claude Killy or a Michel Jazy, has said. "For 50 years bike racers have been taking stimulants Obviously, we can do without them in a race, but then we will pedal 15 miles an hour [instead of 25]. Since we are constantly asked to go faster and to make even greater efforts, we are obliged to take stimulants."

Anquetil's remark was made in the summer of 1967 in the midst of what to date has been sports' messiest public drug scandal. Anquetil himself was much involved, both as a commentator and competitor. In May 1966, after winning a race in Belgium by nearly five minutes, he forfeited his victory and his check rather than provide a urine sample, which was to be analyzed for amphetamines or other banned drugs. In September 1967 a world speed record set by Anquetil in Milan was disallowed for the same reason. In between these two incidents there were two cycling deaths attributed to amphetamines, a number of suspensions at the Amsterdam world championships and a slowdown strike by cyclists protesting the fact that they were being forced to compete without the aid of their accustomed drugs.

The furor did not arise because cyclists had suddenly begun using drugs but because drug practices were so abusive that various European political and sporting agencies could no longer overlook them as they successfully had for years. In Italy, where drug usage was once estimated at almost 100%, the late Fausto Coppi, a professional champion, had remarked, "One day I will take the wrong pill and pedal backward." And Tom Simpson, the best English professional cyclist of his day, said in 1966 in defense of amphetamines, "When you get up in the morning do you need a cup of coffee to get started? Well, after cycling 150 miles the day before, we might need three or four coffees."

A year later, in the Tour de France, Simpson's "coffee" caught up with him. The 13th lap of the race was a brutal one, involving a 6,000-foot climb up a mountain in 90� heat. Simpson felt badly at the start, telling friends that he had been too "nervous" to sleep. A mile from the summit of the mountain he began zigzagging across the road and finally collapsed in a coma. He was dead on arrival at the nearest hospital. An autopsy showed that Simpson was heavily drugged with methamphetamine, a vial of which had been found in his pocket at the time of his death.

In 1965 Belgium and France passed tough anti-dope laws, but dangerous though the amphetamines are, there has been no letup in their use by athletes in the U.S. and not much abroad. Three weeks ago Belgian Cyclist Eddy Merckx, who was leading the Tour of Italy, was disqualified from the race after a test showed he had taken an amphetamine-type drug. The underground consensus is that amphetamines have been tried in most endurance events, and there is enough evidence to make the rumor credible. Joseph Rombaux, a Belgian marathoner, was deprived of his national title in September 1968 after a positive amphetamine test, and long-distance runners—after vows of secrecy have been sworn—sometimes admit to being big benny men. Soccer players in England, Italy and Brazil have been tested and found to have used the drug or else admitted using it. Wayne Le Bombard, an Olympic speed skater (as well as an Olympic cyclist) from West Allis, Wis., says, "The bennies are generally frowned on, but they're also pretty generally used. Not with a needle; I don't know of any skater who goes that far. But there are a lot of pills." A British physician, Dr. John Williams, found that amphetamines were used by British cyclists, rowers, tennis and squash players. (A three-time British squash racquets champion of the early '30s, Don Butcher, was affectionately known as the Benzedrine Kid.)

Among major American sports, amphetamine usage may be highest in football, or again it may only be easier to verify in this sport. Among professional clubs, players, physicians and trainers of the Steelers, Chargers, Cardinals, Lions and Redskins have indicated that chemical pep is or has been used. At least one professional football team made the taking of pep pills part of its pregame routine. "It usually seems to be the older players and boys who think they need an extra lift to make it through a game that want them," says Joe Kuczo, the Redskin trainer. "I personally am not convinced that they do much good, but it's a mental thing with some of them. They've been used to the pills. In the quantities they get here, at least, I doubt if they do much harm."

"It's like beating a dead horse," says Porky Morgan, Kansas State University trainer, who confirms Kuczo's opinion about amphetamine use. "All they do is mask fatigue, they don't eliminate it."

One old hoss who had his fatigue well masked this past season was a veteran pro linebacker and amphetamine user who does not wish to be identified for his accomplishments in the latter field. He recalls the game midway through the professional season when he took his usual pregame dose of bottled happiness, then became preoccupied and took a second dose. "I was bouncing all over the field," he said later. "I was running and jumping along the sidelines hollering, 'I'm a superplayer, they can't block me. No one can block me.' It was really funny. I knew I was saying it, but I just didn't care." Observers of the game reported that Mr. X's play was strong if not super.

"Sure I took them in college," says George Connor of Notre Dame and Chicago Bear fame. Connor is not more wicked, merely more frank than most. "I understand after you take them for awhile they don't do anything for you. And if everybody is taking them, what do you gain?"

In some athletic quarters there is a feeling that more pep pills are used by high school players than any others, because teen-agers are more with the drug scene than their elders and because high school coaches and trainers are less well trained or less scrupulous. However, proof of such an assumption is very circumstantial. A high school basketball coach in Ohio was once fired for giving his players amphetamines. The lockers of the Anaheim and Downey, Calif. football teams were searched last fall for pep pills. A trainer at a Southern university says, "You cannot quote me, and I will not give you the name of the high school, but there is one in Alabama that definitely uses pep pills. I know that this is quite common because I have had freshman athletes come to me and ask for the pills to pick them up for a game."

While a lot of athletes do use amphetamines, there are some who think they have taken amphetamines but haven't. Instead they have received a placebo, a sugar pill, an aspirin or a vitamin, and been told it was a pep pill. The placebo ploy brings up a crucial question, with regard not only to the amphetamines but to many drugs. That is, do they have the expected physiological effect, or is the effect purely psychological? Do amphetamines make an athlete pedal, run, swim, skate, volley, tackle or throw faster, longer or harder than he otherwise could? Though many athletes have staked their reputations, health, and even their lives on the assumption that amphetamines are truly additive, the issue remains in some scientific doubt. There have been half a dozen studies aimed at determining the effect of amphetamines on athletes, yet there are no conclusive results.

But even if the answer is yes, that amphetamines do produce a measurable improvement in immediate performance, the drug may still be detrimental to overall performance. The basis for this judgment is that amphetamines cause, among other things, loss of sleep and appetite. They adversely affect an athlete's ability and willingness to train. Thus it is reasoned that the immediate stimulation—if it occurs—may be more than offset by detrimental long-term effects.

Bob Lundy, trainer for the Miami Dolphins, says, "Amphetamines can do much more harm than good. I've seen them [football players] in a daze when reporting for practice as late as Tuesday after Sunday's game. Others take them and lose their reactions without realizing it. They may know their assignments perfectly before the game. But when they get in there, they don't know what they're doing. So we don't use them."

Another trainer, one who declines to have his name used, says, "Some of the pros need almost a full week to get over getting pepped up for Sunday. Afterward, they must either have tranquilizers or whiskey to bring them down. So they move through a cycle: pepped up, drunk, hung over, depressed and then pepped up again."

It is probably fair to conclude that the majority of medical professionals do not believe amphetamines are beneficial to athletic performance. However, a large number of athletes do believe in pep pills. This is not to say that most athletes use amphetamines—or do not use them. That proposition is simply undocumentable.

For at least the past decade amphetamine has been the stimulant of choice in sports. However, amphetamine is certainly not the only drug that has been used by athletes trying to beat fatigue. Among others that have been tried are: strychnine, cocaine (the Incas who first used such drugs called them the "herbs which make one run"), ephedrine, caffeine and iboyaine, a relatively new entry derived from kat and, reportedly, also from the Korean Tree of Life. But the situation with all of these stimulants is similar to that of amphetamine, the most closely studied of the group. The additive properties for athletic performance remain unproved; the dangers have been proved. The stimulants are medically risky because, like every drug, they are to some degree toxic. They are particularly dangerous for athletes because they artificially increase the strain on various physiologic systems, ones that are already under special stress because of exertion. The drugs also artificially prolong the period of stress by masking fatigue.

Not being keen, high or sharp enough is a fundamental condition that athletes have always tried to compensate for. But there is another absolutely opposite occupational problem that athletes and their handlers face: athletic competition acts like excessive heat on a tempered knife blade—the sharp cutting edge of the instrument is destroyed. The resultant choking up, pressing, nervous tension, call it what you will, is a common sporting ailment and one for which numerous drug cures are now being tried. Some of the names are common enough: Miltown, Nembutal, Equanil, Librium; some not so common: Tofranil, Triavil.

One Sunday noon in Pittsburgh in the dressing room of the visiting Washington Redskins, Dr. George Resta paused in his work of injecting vitamin B-12 into the arms of football players to listen to a loud agonizing retching sound coming from the commode cubicle. "Harris," said Resta annoyedly, like a man who has forgotten to turn off a light in the basement. "We forgot his tranquilizers." Rickie Harris, a defensive back, appeared shortly, looking drawn after having lost his carefully planned breakfast. Resta opened his bag and handed Harris a tranquilizer. After Harris had gone off to deal with his pregame miseries as best he could, Resta said, "There are a few like that. We give them something pretty mild, just to take the edge off. You don't want them so sleepy they get beat on passes."

The use of sedatives, barbiturates, tranquilizers and muscle relaxers (presumably to prevent cramps and tightness) is common in most sports from the college level up. However, unlike the situation with amphetamines, the practice is usually not secretive. Anytime sleeping pills, tranquilizers or relaxants are thought useful by a physician or trainer they are given, and no bones are made about it. One reason for this is that these are restorative drugs, and the never-set-forth ethic of sport medicine is hazier with respect to such compounds than it is with an additive drug such as amphetamine. No one contends that the sedatives increase performance potential beyond normal limits. In fact, it is generally conceded that they have the opposite effect; that because they dull the senses a man under their influence probably does less well than he otherwise would if he were normally free of tension. Nevertheless, the ethical problem is there, as it is with all drugs. The inability of a .200 hitter to deal with pressure is as much a natural limitation for him as the inability of a cyclist to pedal faster then 20 mph. The ballplayer who takes tranquilizers—many do—and the cyclist who pops pep are both trying to get from a drug something that they do not think they naturally have.

Golf is a prime example of a sport in which the struggle against pressure is a major part of the contest. Tension is to golf what the oxygen debt is to a miler, muscle fatigue to a cyclist and pain to a hockey player. It is therefore meaningful that this sport is one of the few in which sedative use is surreptitious and regarded as an underhanded practice. When interviewed at a recent tournament, a number of the touring pros were immediately suspicious of any mention of sedative use, quickly claiming that if—perish the thought—drugs were used, public knowledge of this would be bad for the "image" of the game. However, it was gingerly admitted that maybe a few golfers took a few calm-down drugs, like maybe Tommy Jacobs, Al Geiberger, Dave Hill. When queried, most gave an answer similar to what Doug Sanders, often on the list of the guys-who-do, had to say. "I have taken tranquilizers. And Mayo Clinic gave me something to help me sleep, but I seldom take it. I mean practically never. This is not a motion game like football. You've got to be mentally alert. You can't be leaning against a tree that isn't there." What is suggested here applies to all athletic use of barbiturate-type drugs: the trick is in the dosage. You want to feel casual enough to lean against the tree, but you want the tree really to be there. The moral question is something else again.

In addition to exhaustion and tension, all athletes are at some time in some degree challenged by a third physiological phenomenon—pain. The relationship between pain and sports is ancient and close. For some, pain is the prohibitive price that makes games not worth playing; for others it is the secret but ultimate opponent. For most it is a necessary vocational byproduct. Though the image of the athlete as a virile, courageous, uncomplaining pain bearer has been assiduously promoted and popularly accepted, athletes in general fret, worry and complain more about pain than nonathletes. There are several good reasons for this. Games are physical, sometimes violent, and the chances of getting a broken bone, bruise or cut are clearly greater in sports than in less active pastimes. Also, athletes tend to be more dedicated body watchers than most. "They are not exactly hypochondriacs. They are just exceptionally cautious about their bodies," says Dr. Thomas Silva of the Boston Celtics. The normal athlete will immediately note and be concerned about small throbs, aches and twinges that a nonathlete accepts stoically as just part of being alive. Because he is concerned with physical performance, a very little pain can distract an athlete to a significant degree. An accountant with a sore toe is likely to accept the infirmity silently. The same ailment in a baseball pitcher often will be headline news. The player, in turn, will act as if he were threatened by advanced gangrene, and he can hardly be blamed, since his livelihood may be involved in his sore toe.

Under these unnerving circumstances, it is not surprising that pain control is one of the most common reasons drugs are used in sports. The anti-pain drugs are of two kinds: those that provide a local anesthetic for aches and strains, such as Novocain and Xylocaine, which are usually given by injection, and ethyl-chloride, which is sprayed on, and those that begin with aspirin and work up to the opiates, which act on the central nervous system. Then there are the potent anti-inflammants such as cortisone and Butazolidin, and the now-banned DMSO.

There is probably not a single sports physician in the United States, including the most conservative, who has not given a pain shot or pill at some time, and there are precious few athletes who have not taken such remedies. The explanation for the practice is the same in every sport. The sermon goes like this: "I give Novocain (or drug X) injections. However, I never give a boy a shot and send him back to play if a weight-bearing joint is involved. Pain is nature's warning, letting the body know something is wrong. If a boy continues to perform on an ankle or knee that has been deadened to pain, he runs the risk of aggravating the injury, disabling himself for a longer time, causing permanent injury or winding up in his 40s with traumatic arthritis."

No physician or trainer says he has ever given a painkiller that created a health risk for the receiver. However, most physicians and trainers, if pressed, admit that some others—often with opposing teams—do inject in this way. They will tell, off the record of course, stories about crippled halfbacks, distance runners hooked on Demerol (a synthetic morphine), pitchers whose elbows have degenerated because of too much cortisone. Obviously there is a mathematical, if not a moral, paradox here. Just as obviously, there is no way to collect testimony that will resolve the paradox—nobody is going to say, "Sure, we ruined Slug's knee, but we got three good games out of him before it went." Perhaps all that can be said is that what is good and what is bad painkilling practice is a matter of opinion, often firmly stated opinion. Some doctors feel that shooting so much as a sprained thumb is dangerous and unethical, while others see nothing wrong with freezing a broken leg.

With one exception, the major athletic drugs, whether restorative or additive, are used to achieve temporary results. They are taken before, during or after a contest, to get ready for it, to help during it or to repair damage done to the mind or body by the game. The exception is the drug group known as the anabolic steroids. The purpose for which these drugs are used by athletes is exclusively additive. The intention is not to change momentarily a mood, sensation or bodily process, but to alter the body of the user on a relatively long-term basis, to artificially create a better athletic instrument.

Steroids are a group of complex compounds naturally produced by many plants and animals. The steroids are hormones, and among these are the androgens, male hormones produced by the testes and the cortex of the adrenal glands. Anabolic steroids used by both male and female athletes are derived from male hormones. (Among the most commonly used are Dianabol, Durabolin and Deca-Durabolin, Maxibolin, Anavar, Nilevar and Winstrol.) The androgens have many effects on the body. They influence the development of male reproductive organs and secondary sexual characteristics, beard growth, thickness of skin, depth of voice, and they stimulate the libido (sex drive). A second major effect of the androgens is anabolic, i.e., body building. They improve the assimilation of protein and thus promote increased weight and muscle mass. Presumably this characteristic evolved because it served the species to have males bigger than females. (However, if given in excess to youngsters, they may stunt growth.)

The term anabolic steroid (literally, body-building hormone) is both euphemistic and misleading, since it implies that the principal effect of such drugs is body building and that the androgenic (sex influencing) properties have somehow been removed or greatly inhibited. Actually, as even the drug manufacturers admit in the small promotional print, there is no such thing as a strictly anabolic steroid. All of these drugs do affect sexual processes and characteristics.

Athletes take anabolic steroids in hopes that the drug will artificially make them bigger and stronger. However, more sophisticated athletes are now aware that the anabolic steroids may cause potent glandular reactions. The nature of these effects, benign or malignant, temporary or permanent, are a mystery and a worry not only to athletes but to physicians and physiologists as well, since there have been no serious, controlled, inclusive investigations of what the drugs do for or to young healthy bodies. Several of the so-called studies that have been made have been do-it-yourself affairs that produced more rumors than facts.

In the early 1960s a high school team physician, working in cooperation with a pharmaceutical company, gave anabolic steroids to members of the football team. The program was clandestine. It apparently violated state interscholastic regulations and came to an abrupt halt when other football coaches heard about it and complained. Supposedly a report on the effects of the hormones on the high school boys was made, but the pharmaceutical company will not release it and the doctor will not discuss it.

Dr. H. Kay Dooley, of Pomona, Calif., now perhaps the physician who most openly advocates the use of anabolic steroids—though under a doctor's supervision—oversaw a study in 1965 testing three different commercial brands of the drug on 10th- and 11th-grade football players in Bloomington, Calif. Dooley believes the drugs did increase muscle size and improve performance, and he says there were no undesirable side effects. However, he says his procedures were not sufficiently controlled to provide hard evidence supporting the efficacy of the drug. He would like to see "a good scientific study" done.

Perhaps the best existing document on the subject was published in 1966 by Dr. William M. Fowler Jr., then of the UCLA Medical School. Summarized, the Fowler report found that the hormonal drugs do increase weight. However, said Fowler, "To equate increases in weight with a possible increase in strength can be erroneous, since considerable evidence exists that much of the increase in weight is due to water retention." Fowler concluded that the relationship between anabolic steroids and strength increase in athletes is unproved, and may be unprovable because it does not exist. As to the dangers connected with the drug, Fowler lists as major ones: testicular atrophy, change in the libido, liver damage and edema.

In preparing his report, Fowler queried 38 "well-known weight lifters or field-event men." He found "50% had taken or were taking one or more of the anabolic steroids. Of the users, 47% had received the drug from physicians, and 47% were taking a dosage that was two to four times greater than the therapeutic amount recommended. All of the 19 men on the drugs expressed the belief that their performance had improved. Only five denied any side effects. Most of the 19 men had been taking anabolic drugs on and off for at least one year."

Considering the debatable effectiveness, the potential dangers and the abusive use, Fowler arrived at a strong conclusion: "The use of androgens in athletes is unethical and illegal, and those using or administering them should be banned from further competition or professional activity."

Another concern is the suspicion of many physicians that the anabolic steroids may increase the chances of premature cancer of the prostate. Says Dr. Allan J. Ryan of the University of Wisconsin: "We won't be truly able to evaluate the damage this fad may have caused for 10 or 15 years."

All in all, the anabolic steroid scene is not a happy one. There is a lot of clandestine gossip that the drug is effective and safe—or that it is useless and dangerous—but no one has convincing proof either way. Many anabolic steroid users feel guilty about the practice and suspect they are doing something sneaky, but no sporting body in the U.S. has specifically declared the drug illegal, or for that matter even plainly said that its use is unethical or dangerous.

Among many who are perplexed by the anabolic steroid problem and the general confusion surrounding the athletic medicine chest is Dave Maggard, the young University of California track coach who was a shotputter on the 1968 Olympic team. Maggard's problem is simple: he is uncertain how he should advise the young men he is coaching.

"What I wish," says Maggard, "is that some reputable scientific group would really study certain drugs and tell us yes or no as to whether they are effective, and yes or no as to whether they are dangerous. Then I'd like to see the NCAA, the AAU, the U.S. Olympic Committee and all the conferences go ahead and put us straight—tell all of us to either use the drugs, or don't. I think if most drugs were banned—things like amphetamines, barbiturates, anabolic steroids—most athletes would stop using them. It's this halfway stuff, the rumors, the idea maybe you have to use them to be competitive that has made it such a mess."

That there is not now sufficient information to give firm answers on the safety and effectiveness of the many drugs that athletes use does not diminish the importance of Maggard's question, nor provide an excuse for ignoring it.

"Someday," says Dr. Ryan, "somebody will find a drug that measurably improves performance, is expensive, and is not available to everyone or known by everyone. That is the day when we are all going to have to stand up and be counted on what is right and wrong—we will have to decide then what sport is all about."

Unlike the conservative Dr. Ryan, a good many athletes, coaches, trainers and physicians believe that we already have found the alchemist's stone; it is anabolic steroids, amphetamines, strychnine, iboyaine, muscle relaxers, B-12, cortisone, etc., etc., etc. Whether it is true or not, the belief and the practices that follow the belief are enough to suggest, as they have to Dave Maggard, that the stand-up-and-be-counted time has already arrived for the athletic Establishment.

Problems In A Turned-on World - June 23, 1969

The pill, capsule, vial and needle have become fixtures of the locker room as athletes increasingly turn to drugs in the hope of improving performances. This trend—one that poses a major threat to U.S. sport even though the Establishment either ignores or hushes up the issue—is explored here in Part I of a series
by Bil Gilbert

Among the less startling assertions one could make today would be that we live in a drug culture. The vast majority of us gobble an aspirin here, gulp an antibiotic there, whiff a decongestant now or a few milligrams of nicotine then. We take a little opiate in our cough syrup, a jab of Novocain from the dentist, caffeine to start the day, alcohol to mellow it and a sedative to blank it out at bedtime. However, after it has been admitted that most citizens dope themselves from time to time, there remain excellent grounds for claiming that in the matter of drug usage, athletes are different from the rest of us. In spite of being—for the most part—young, healthy and active specimens, they take an extraordinary variety and quantity of drugs (see cover). They take them for dubious purposes, they take them in a situation of debatable morality, they take them under conditions that range from dangerously experimental to hazardous to fatal. The use of drugs—legal drugs—by athletes is far from new, but the increase in drug usage in the last 10 years is startling. It could, indeed, menace the tradition and structure of sport itself.

To begin, consider some examples of the role drugs have come to play in sport:

"A few pills—I take all kinds—and the pain's gone," says Dennis McLain of the Detroit Tigers. McLain also takes shots, or at least took a shot of cortisone and Xylocaine (anti-inflammant and painkiller) in his throwing shoulder prior to the sixth game of the 1968 World Series—the only game he won in three tries. In the same Series, which at times seemed to be a matchup between Detroit and St. Louis druggists, Cardinal Bob Gibson was gobbling muscle-relaxing pills, trying chemically to keep his arm loose. The Tigers' Series hero, Mickey Lolich, was on antibiotics.

?"We occasionally use Dexamyl and Dexedrine [amphetamines].... We also use barbiturates, Seconal, Tuinal, Nembutal.... We also use some anti-depressants, Triavil, Tofranil, Valium.... But I don't think the use of drugs is as prevalent in the Midwest as it is on the East and West coasts," said Dr. I. C. Middleman, who, until his death last September, was team surgeon for the St. Louis baseball Cardinals

?After suffering a shoulder injury during the second quarter of the 1969 Sugar Bowl game, Arkansas Quarterback Bill Montgomery went to the sidelines, got a needleful of painkiller in the joint and came back to complete 11 passes and beat Georgia 'The shot helped," said Montgomery "My shoulder didn't hurt bad until the shot began to wear off in the fourth quarter."

?"Give me two sleeping pills," said Los Angeles Laker star Jerry West to his trainer following the first game of the 1969 NBA championships in which West scored 53 points against the Boston Celtics.

?On Oct. 24, 1968 in Grenoble, France, Jean-Louis Quadri, 18, a soccer player, dribbled toward the opposing goal. However, before he could get off his shot he collapsed on the field. He was dead on arrival at the Grenoble hospital. An autopsy indicated he was heavily drugged with amphetamines (pep pills). On Nov. 3, 1968, also in Grenoble, 23-year-old Yves Mottin was the surprise winner of a regional cross-country bicycle race. Two days later he died, and again amphetamines were a contributory factor. On Feb. 5, 1969 two French cyclists, Paul Barnay and Michel Fayolle, were indicted in a Grenoble court where they admitted having furnished Mottin with the fatal drugs, which they had smuggled into France from Italy.

?Amphetamines were among the drugs banned for use by athletes in the 1968 Olympic Games, and for which post-event testing was conducted. A U.S. weight lifter, who admitted most of his colleagues took a few amphetamines before competing in order to get that extra little lift, was asked how the Olympic ban affected performance "What ban?" he asked blandly "Everyone used a new one from West Germany. They couldn't pick it up in the test they were using. When they get a test for that one, we'll find something else. It's like cops and robbers."

?"Are anabolic steroids [a male hormone derivative that supposedly makes users bigger and stronger than they could otherwise be] widely used by Olympic weight men?" rhetorically asks Dave Maggard, who finished fifth in the shotput at Mexico and is now the University of California track coach. "Let me put it this way. If they had come into the village the day before competition and said we have just found a new test that will catch anyone who has used steroids, you would have had an awful lot of people dropping out of events because of instant muscle pulls."

?Dr. H. Kay Dooley, director of the Wood Memorial Clinic in Pomona, Calif., is well known among athletes as one of the few physicians who openly endorse use of anabolic steroids. "I don't think it is possible for a weight man to compete internationally without using anabolic steroids," says Dr Dooley. "All the weight men on the Olympic team had to take steroids. Otherwise they would not have been in the running" Dr. Dooley was one of the physicians in charge of medical services at South Lake Tahoe, the 1968 U.S. Olympic high-altitude training camp. "I did not give steroids at Tahoe," says the California physician, "but I also did not inquire what the boys were doing on their own. I did not want to be forced into a position of having to report them for use of a banned drug. A physician involved in sports must keep the respect and confidence of the athletes with whom he is working."

?On Sept. 13, 1968, Mike R. Breckon, manager of the Canadian national cycling team then preparing to race in Greece, gave team members a memo telling them how and when to take two drugs that were supplied in a separate packet. Breckon closed his instructions with the remark, "You will no doubt note that very small amounts of strychnine are contained in both these preparations. Don't get the wrong idea that the substance is poisonous.... It is on the forbidden list of substances in the CCA [Canadian Cycling Association] rules concerning the use of stimulants, but as you will not be taking it during the race and it is being administered to you under prescription by a doctor, there is no problem."

?"It is not unusual for an athlete to carry his own little kit with hypodermic syringes. Athletes have learned to inject themselves," says Harold Connolly, U.S. Olympic hammer thrower. "Some track athletes," says Russ Hodge, a U.S. decathlon man, "spend $30 or $40 a month on pills, steroids and food supplements."

?Four years ago George Richey, a tennis pro and father of tennis internationalist Cliff Richey, withdrew his son (or got him fired) from the U.S. Davis Cup team because, among other things, Cup Captain George MacCall had wanted to treat young Cliff's sore thumb with a drug called DMSO. DMSO was at that time widely used. It was believed to be a wonder cure for every athletic ailment from cauliflower ear to tennis thumb. A wonder cure it wasn't. In November 1965, the Food and Drug Administration restricted the use of DMSO to controlled clinical testing on the grounds that 1) its use had gotten out of hand, 2) its effectiveness was questionable and 3) its possible dangers had not been determined.

Such a collection of pharmaceutical vignettes can be expanded at will, but while the amount and kinds of drugs used in sports are impressive, the important difference between athletic and nonathletic drug use comes down to a matter of motive. An athlete takes—or is given by his supervisors, medical and otherwise—many drugs that he would not take or be given if he were not an athlete. And the rationale for much athletic drug use is unique, for the drugs are not taken either with the intention or effect of improving or maintaining health, or to achieve a pleasurable sensation, but rather because the athlete or those around him believe he will perform better drugged than undrugged.

For example, the family of hormonal drugs, which are widely known in athletic circles as anabolic steroids, were developed as restorative aids for patients seriously debilitated by age, accident, major surgery or other infirmities. As with any drug, there are risks attendant with their use—in this case, disruption of certain glandular functions, particularly the sexual. However, a physician may reasonably prescribe anabolic steroids to an emaciated 70-year-old man on the assumption that if the drug helps add 10 pounds to his wasted body this advantage will outweigh the risk of decreased sperm production, testicular atrophy or prostate discomfort. On the other hand, there is no conventional medical reason for a healthy 23-year-old, 240-pound shotputter to use the drug. But many do, because they believe the drug will make them bigger and stronger than they are and because they believe they cannot become national or world-class competitors without it. It is their motivation that makes athletic anabolic steroid users unique.

Another example of the same general phenomenon occurs in the case of the broken-legged hockey player. Midway through the sixth game of the 1964 Stanley Cup finals against Detroit, Bobby Baun, then of the Toronto Maple Leafs, was hit on the leg by the puck and carried from the rink on a stretcher. In the training room he received an injection of Novocain. His leg was taped, he returned to play, and he scored the winning goal in overtime. The next day it was determined Baun had a cracked right fibula. Nonetheless, he was shot with painkiller and willingly, probably eagerly, took his regular turn on the ice the following day.

Numbing a broken leg and sending the patient out to play hockey is not a treatment any physician would follow with a nonathlete. It may not cause complications, but the procedure has no known therapeutic value. It is not conceived as a method of speeding up or improving the knitting of bone. The only motive was to enable a man to play a game that he could not otherwise have played.

There are abundant rumors—the wildest of which circulate within rather than outside the sporting world—about strung-out quarterbacks, hopped-up pitchers, slowed-down middleweights, convulsed half-milers and doped-to-death wrestlers. Nevertheless, it is the question of motive and morality that constitutes the crux of the athletic drug problem. Even if none of the gossip could be reduced to provable fact, there remains ample evidence that drug use constitutes a significant dilemma, not so much for individual athletes as for sport in general. One reason is that the use of drugs in sport leads one directly to more serious and complicated questions. Is athletic integrity (and, conversely, corruption) a matter of public interest? Does it matter, as appreciators of sport have so long and piously claimed it does, that games be played in an atmosphere of virtue; even righteousness? If not, what is the social utility of games—why play them at all? Drug usage, even more than speculation about bribery, college recruiting, spit-balls or TV commercials, raises such sticky questions about the fundamentals of sport that one can understand the instinctive reaction of the athletic Establishments: when it comes to drugs, they ignore, dismiss, deny.

"Somebody should speak out on this subject, and speak out strongly," says Dr. Robert Kerlan, until recently the physician for the Los Angeles Dodgers as well as for a number of individual athletes in all sports. "I'm not a therapeutic nihilist," says Kerlan "Situations arise where there are valid medical reasons for prescribing drugs for athletes. There are special occupational health problems in some sports. However, the excessive and secretive use of drugs is likely to become a major athletic scandal, one that will shake public confidence in many sports just as the gambling scandal tarnished the reputation of basketball. The essence of sports is matching the natural ability of men. When you start using drugs, money or anything else surreptitiously to gain an unnatural advantage, you have corrupted the purpose of sports as well as the individuals involved in the practice."

The view of Dr. Dooley is quite different from that of Dr. Kerlan. In fact, the two men in many ways represent the opposite poles of medical and metaphysical opinion regarding drug use in sports. Nevertheless, both the Los Angeles area physicians share the common belief that this is a serious matter and one that should be aired thoroughly in public.

Dr. Dooley is a wiry, excitable, even a pugnacious man, and also a very busy one. His Wood Memorial Clinic is usually crowded with halt, lame and worried athletes who have come for treatment, information or reassurance. He treats professional, college, high school and even grade school athletes. The majority come from the Los Angeles area, but not a few are from other parts of the country, Dooley perhaps being better known among participants than physicians.

"I don't pretend to be a researcher or a scientist," says Dooley. "I'm a practicing physician who is interested in athletes. A lot of physicians are stuffed shirts when it comes to sports. Athletes do want to perform better, that is what it is all about. If I know of something which may improve performance, a training or rehabilitation technique, a drug that is legal and which I don't believe involves any serious health risk, I see no reason not to make it available to an athlete. I can't see any ethical difference between giving a drug to improve performance and wrapping an ankle or handing out a salt pill for the same purpose. Athletes hear about these things and they are going to get them one way or another."

Between the opposed views of the two West Coast doctors—Dr. Kerlan's that drug abuse constitutes a growing athletic crisis and Dr. Dooley's that the use of drugs is the sporting wave of the future—there are all shades of opinion and all kinds of fancy hedging and dodging. But there is also one thing that is agreed upon—a greater quantity and variety of drugs are being used now than were used a generation, a decade or even a year ago.

Setting aside ethical considerations for the moment, there are obvious reasons why athletes should use so many drugs. The most obvious is that there are more drugs available these days for everyone than ever before. Furthermore, we have all been sold on the efficacy of drugs. We believe that the overflowing pharmacopoeia is one of the unquestioned triumphs of the age. We have been sold on drugs empirically because we have tried them and enjoy the results. We have been sold by countless magazine and newspaper stories about wonder drugs—many of which later turned out to be less than wondrous—by massive pro-drug propaganda campaigns mounted by pharmaceutical manufacturers, by TV actors dressed in doctors' coats and by real doctors, many of whom are very quick with the prescription pad. Generally, we have accepted rather uncritically the central message of this persuasive pitch—drugs are good for you. These days it is a cultural reflex to reach for a vial, an atomizer, a capsule or a needle if you suffer from fever, chills, aches, pains, nausea, nasal congestion, irritability, the doldrums, sluggishness, body odor, obesity, emaciation, too many kids, not enough kids, nagging backache or tired blood.

It would be surprising if athletes were not influenced by the same trends and tendencies that have the rest of us so high on drugs. A Pepper Martin, if plunked in the ribs by a Schoolboy Rowe fastball in 1934, would have trotted down to first base without doing anything about his injury because 1) there was nothing he or anyone else knew to do about it, and 2) he would have thought it a little sissified to have taken medicine for a bruise. In 1969 when a hitter catches one in the side, the game is likely to be stopped while he is sprayed with ethyl chloride to freeze the area, takes an enzyme or (if his medical attendant has come by some on the black market) has some DMSO slathered on the bruise. If he is a particularly sensitive jock he might even take a sedative or a painkilling pill. All this is done, and even demanded, because such aids are available and the consensus is that it is the smart, scientific, modern thing to use them.

On the other hand, if you fell down the front steps and bruised your ribs, you would not use ethyl chloride, an enzyme or DMSO. Athletes do because they have far more access to drugs than most of us. They do not have to stand around in waiting rooms, at pharmacy counters or on street corners for their fixes. Drugs are brought to them, and usually provided free of charge. The athlete gets free professional advice from physicians and assisting trainers as to what drugs to take, and when and how. Of all vocational groups, athletes are probably under the closest medical supervision. While physicians and trainers will often bridle at the suggestion (drug has become a four-letter word for them as well as others), the general pattern seems to be that the more closely one is associated with the medical profession the larger one's drug consumption is likely to be. Increasingly a major role of athletic medicine men is to keep the athletic Establishment informed about what drugs can be used to what advantage, and to serve as drug dispensers. Most drugs—good and bad, safe and risky, effective and ineffective, legal and illegal—used by athletes are supplied directly by physicians or indirectly by physicians through trainers. If drug usage in sport is a developing scandal, then it is a scandal that involves the medical Establishment as well as the sporting one.

"Exuberance, our own exuberance, is something we physicians in sports have to guard against," says Dr John Finley, a team physician for the Detroit Red Wings. "Most of us work with teams as sort of a labor of love, because we are fans. I know I am. I root hard for the Wings. I'm trying to think of what I can do to help them win. Maybe there is a drug that will help, I try to watch myself, not let my emotions influence my medical judgment, but it is something to keep in mind."

"I obviously don't care to be quoted," says a New York physician close to the sporting scene. "However, as a generality, team physicians tend to be men of action, not scholarly, speculative types. They are interested in immediate problems: making somebody strong, relaxed, mean or quick and in getting a player back in the game as soon as possible. If somebody tells them there is a drug that might do the trick, they are apt to try it They are not likely to wait around for a double-blind control study to find out if the drug is effective or what it will do to the liver three years later They are interested in today."

"Quackery. That is the bane of sports medicine," says Dr Daniel F. Hanley of Bowdoin College, Me., who has been a physician for three U.S. Olympic teams. "We've rid ourselves of some of the worst, but there are still too many people handing out get-good-quick pills, touting machines that send out blue sparks and make big muscles or advising athletes to drink superduper seaweed extracts. There is a time and place for certain drugs in sports, but each situation has to be evaluated individually. For example, I was with the Pan American team in 1967. One of our wrestlers, Wayne Baughman, a middleweight, severely pulled a muscle in his chest during a semifinal bout, which he won. He was in a lot of pain, virtually incapacitated. Before the finals I injected Novocain and taped him, and he won the gold medal. I am normally opposed to this type of treatment. I would never use it in high school or college competition. But this was a special case. The injury did not involve a weight-bearing area, such as a knee or ankle There was little risk of aggravating the injury. And Baughman was a grown man competing for an international gold medal, an opportunity he might never have again. You balance risk against reward."

"Could he have wrestled without the shot?"

"No, he could hardly stand up," recalled Dr. Hanley.

"Sure, you can defend that," says Joe Kuczo, veteran head trainer of the Washington Redskins and Georgetown University, upon being told of the Baughman incident. "You do things in the big game you might not do otherwise. But the catch is that everything is getting to be a big game. The one you win or lose in September is just as important as the one in November. A pro football training camp used to be a fairly relaxed place. Now they are banging a week after they get there. What goes on in July or August is real important to a rookie trying to make the team or to an older fellow struggling to last one more year. The coaches get worked up to the point that it is a life or death matter whether Joe Zilch is ready for a Tuesday practice," says Kuczo.

While his own exuberance or ignorance may cause a physician to recommend or permit questionable drug practices, he is by and large immune from outside pressures in the matter. An obvious reason is that most team physicians are not financially dependent upon their sports medicine practice-Therefore, short of withdrawing his complimentary passes, there is not much leverage a player, a coach or even an owner can exert on a physician to give, say, Benzedrine if he doesn't want to. But the situation with trainers is quite different. They are full-time employees of the club and usually paid less than the lowest-salaried player or coach. They lack a physician's authority and status. They are with athletes and coaches every day, all day, while physicians are not. They have, or are thought to have, the keys to the drug cupboard. For most physicians the problem of ethical drug use is an academic one, like that of virtue in a nunnery, their principles never being seriously challenged. Trainers, on the other hand, work in the athletic streets, and they are frequently tested

"I know of a case," says Gene Donnelly, trainer for the Anaheim ( Calif.) High School athletic department, "where a coach came to his trainer with Novocain and a needle. He had this hotshot halfback, a high school kid, with a real bad ankle. The coach did not have guts enough to ask the doc to give the shot, but he wanted the trainer to stick a needle in that ankle. The kid could really have been hurt, it was that bad. He might have been finished for good in sports."

"And what did the trainer do?"

"In that case," says Donnelly, "he told the coach to go to hell. He said he didn't need any job that bad,"

Not so long ago a trainer for a large, athletically prestigious university quit or was fired, depending upon who is telling the story off the record. The trainer's version is that a new football coach coming to the institution brought along with assistants and playbooks a contraband supply of DMSO. The trainer was not consulted or informed about the drug. The coach simply administered it himself. By and by, the trainer was looking for a new job.

"I had this kook who coaches or does something with a girls' track club come up to me," says a West Coast trainer. "He's got these kids—grade school and high school girls—running in little two-bit AAU meets. He wants to see if I can get him Benzedrine. Can you believe it? I told him if I had a daughter I'd punch him in the mouth. Maybe I should have anyway."

An example of how athletic pressure, ambition or maybe just ignorance at a sub-medical level can result in what charitably can be called dubious drug practices occurred a few years ago at the training camp of the San Diego Chargers. The story was told by Dave Kocourek, now an offensive end for the Oakland Raiders, but then a member of the Charger team.

"I guess this anabolic steroid business must have started on the Chargers around 1963 or right in there somewhere. One guy I can remember who got involved was Howard Kindig. He came to us as a highly touted center and linebacker from Los Angeles State. He was long and lean and very quick, and they wanted to put weight on him, so in addition to using the weight program run by our weight coach, Alvin Roy, they started pumping him full of Dianabol [a popular anabolic steroid], and sure enough he gained about 30 pounds.

"They were also passing out the stuff to the rest of us. They called it just 'pink pills.' We started taking it as a matter of course, but I wasn't too keen on the idea because I've never been much for this sort of thing—even the weight program. But, since I was the player representative, one day I asked Alvin and Sid Gillman, our coach, if the team physician had okayed these pills. They gave me sort of a vague answer. I don't remember what the answer was, but I do remember that it didn't satisfy me. As it happened, I lived next door to a physician and I asked him about anabolic steroids.

"The doctor told me, 'Listen, Dave, I don't think these things were intended for people who do the kind of work you people do. I think they were made for Milquetoast-type guys, people who sit in chairs all day long and never get a chance to build any healthy muscular tissue.'

"I told the other guys this and a lot of them quit taking them. Don't get me wrong. It wasn't ever any great big deal, or any cause for rebellion or mutiny. But a lot of the fellows just started throwing them away."

Kindig says he was still a student at Los Angeles State when the Chargers gave him Dianabol. He took the pills until his own doctor advised him that they might be dangerous.

"I didn't take them regularly," says Kindig, "but some other Chargers were taking them; Earl Faison and Ron Mix, I remember."

The hassle in the Chargers' camp might be viewed as an example of innocent athletes resisting the advances of higher-up drug pushers, but such situations are rare. Generally, as Dr. Dooley says, modern athletes know a lot about drugs, or at least have a lot of opinions about them, and are willing to experiment with drugs about which no one knows very much. There are probably as many cases of athletes demanding drugs from trainers and physicians as physicians and trainers ordering athletes to take them.

The whole matter has been succinctly summarized by Hal Connolly, a veteran of four U.S. Olympic teams.

"My experience," says Connolly, "tells me that an athlete will use any aid to improve his performance short of killing himself."

Information about new drugs for athletics, new athletic uses for old drugs and where to get and how to use exotic pills and shots, flows into the sports world from above, from medical meetings and publications, as a result of shop-talk between coaches, trainers and physicians and because drug men are actively pushing their preparations. However, it also wells up from below, because there is an athletic communications network of sorts that connects the locker rooms of the world.

While no sport has a monopoly on drug use or curiosity about drugs, in this country weight lifters and trackmen seem to be natural, eager couriers for information about get big, well, fast or mean pills and shots. There are several reasons for this. Trackmen and weight lifters compete in individual sports. They are among the most introspective of athletes, figuratively spending a lot of time watching their navels and literally watching their weight, muscle tone, respiration, pulse, bruises, strains, aches and psyches. Therefore, they tend to be especially susceptible to any suggestion that there may be some secret aid—animal, vegetable or mineral—that will jazz up their vital functions. In addition, they are cosmopolitan, competing all over the world, and thus able to trade more inside dope, so to speak, than stay-at-home football and baseball players can.

The case history of the anabolic steroids, drugs that 10 years ago were almost unknown to American athletes but now are used and/or gossiped about in virtually every sport, serves as a classic example of how drug fads spread. By his own account, the anabolic steroid pioneer in the U.S. sports world was Dr. John Ziegler, an Olney, Md. physician. In 1960, after hearing that Russian athletes were using hormones to "bulk up," Ziegler, in cooperation with the Ciba Pharmaceutical Company (the maker of Dianabol) began giving these drugs to weight lifters at the York (Pa.) Barbell Club. Dr. Ziegler eventually became concerned about anabolic steroid use. "The trouble was that the York men went crazy about steroids," says the Maryland physician. "They figured if one pill was good, three or four would be better, and they were eating them like candy. I began seeing prostate trouble, and a couple of cases of atrophied testes."

The weight lifters themselves were quickly convinced that anabolic steroids made them bigger and stronger and began to tout the drugs. (Some doctors were—and are—far less sure about their strength-building characteristics.) Track weight men were early converts. By the mid-1960s most of the top-ranking weight men had tried anabolic steroids, including Randy Matson (who used them while preparing for the 1964 Olympics), Dallas Long, Hal Connolly, Bill Toomey and Russ Hodge. Footballers, many of whom are as interested in trying to make themselves as big and strong as any weight lifter or shotputter, were also obvious anabolic steroid candidates. Though the Chargers' experiment may have been a bit abortive, the drug has since caught on in football. It is an assumption, based on reasonably good but unverifiable reports, that some players on almost every NFL and AFL team have used anabolic steroids. It is a fact, according to physicians or players, that, in addition to the Chargers, members of the Kansas City Chiefs, Atlanta Falcons and Cleveland Browns have taken the drug. Ken Ferguson of Utah State University, who went on to play professional football in Canada, has said that 90% of college linemen have used steroids. "I'd say anybody who has graduated from college to professional football in the last four years has used them," said Ferguson in 1968. So widespread is the faith in hormones that there are verified incidents where pro scouts have supplied the drug to college draftees, and college recruiters have given it to high school players.

In this matter of how and why drug habits get started, the case of the anabolic steroids is far from unique. There are many other drugs—amphetamines, strychnine, cocaine, morphine, DMSO, tranquilizers, barbiturates, vasodilators, painkillers, anti-inflammants, enzymes, muscle relaxers—that have enjoyed sudden athletic popularity and whose use has spread quickly through the sporting world, despite official dampening admonishments.

Medicine and science aside, an underlying reason for this is that athletes and their attendants are flaming faddists. The sports world is full of fetishists, gamesmen who swear by the efficacy of nuts, raisins, pancakes, dirty undershirts, voodoo rituals, numbers, words, coins and medals. There is a rational explanation for this irrational belief in magic. More than perhaps any other group, the reputation and salary of an athlete depends on luck, a puddle of water, a gust of wind, a bounce of a ball. It is therefore understandable that athletes should be quick to experiment with any available magic potions.

Vitamin B-12 injections are an example of the athletes' craving to have magic worked on them. Professional football players are among the most devout B-12 believers, and there is many a Sunday hero who would no more go out to battle without having his shot than he would without his cleats. Athletes (football players are not alone, B-12 shots being fancied by baseball, basketball, track, swimming, hockey and weight lifting performers) believe that the shots prevent cramps, muscle pulls and general fatigue, cure hangovers and give you the jollies. The opinion among medical professionals is almost unanimous that the only real therapeutic use of B-12 is as a corrective for pernicious anemia. Otherwise it has little if any effect, since excess B-12 is quickly eliminated from the system. "American athletes have the most expensive urine in the world," says Ray Baldwin, trainer at Xavier University and formerly with the Cincinnati Royals.

By bringing together athletes from all over the world and dumping them into the most formidable sporting pressure cooker yet devised, the quadrennial Olympic Games have traditionally (it took four physicians to revive the marathon winner of the 1904 St. Louis Olympics, an American, Tom Hicks, who proved to be loaded on strychnine and brandy) served as an exchange for drugs and drug recipes. This was particularly true in 1968, when everyone's attention was forcibly fixed on drug usage by the new anti-doping regulations and dope-detection tests instituted by the International Olympic Committee.

Shoe money and drugs were the two hottest conversational topics in the Olympic Village. A West German super steroid was much discussed. Olympic scuttlebutt also had it that African runners chewed kat, an anciently used herb from the Red Sea coast which supposedly masks fatigue, increases endurance and turns on the libido. An extract from the Tree of Life (a Korean bush) was rumored as being used for the same purposes. Bill Toomey believes one of his chief rivals in the decathlon had a shot of anti-inflammant (illegal according to Olympic drug rules) in his elbow prior to making a mighty javelin heave. "I did not see it, but a British coach said he saw it," says Toomey. The Russians, according to Americans, had a new wonder, anti-tension, pro-concentration pill. Some East Europeans were said to be taking a caffeine concentrate as a pick-me-up before competition. This was done presumably because amphetamines, which are traditionally used for this purpose, were illegal, and also presumably because they had not found the undetectable amphetamine that certain weight lifters boasted about having discovered.

An almost universal article of athletic faith is that the other side (the Humpty-Dumps, the Russians, the Jones Junior Highs) is 1) using drugs and 2) getting drugs that are better than our drugs. The oftentimes bitter confrontation between the United States and Communist teams has understandably produced a lot of such feelings. "We are usually a long way behind the Russians in drug use," says U.S. Weight Lifter Bill Starr. "They make a scientific study of it. If they come up with something good, their teams all get it. Here it is a hit or miss thing."

But East Europeans believe the same thing about Americans. Foreign athletes find it inconceivable that American athletes, coming from the land of towering pill factories, are not the most thoroughly doped competitors in the world.

The notion that someplace there is a compound, a formula or a food that will automatically convert bronze medals into gold is a general one confined to no one nation, sport or class of competitors. This conviction that there is the athletic equivalent of the philosopher's stone sought by ancient alchemists, and the terrible fear that somebody else may have already found it, is the rationale—or irrationale—behind many of the current athletic drug practices. It is used as a justification by physicians and trainers for prescribing drugs that cannot be justified on conventional medical grounds. It is the excuse used by coaches and trainers ("There might be something in it") for pushing pills the effectiveness and safety of which are unknown. It is the reason athletes carry their own little black drug bags, endanger their health, risk their reputations and break oaths and laws to get and use bizarre pharmaceuticals. It explains the ever-multiplying rumors about records being set and games being won by doped competitors. Finally, the belief in the existence of the ultimate pill, and the unrelenting search for it, is why many doctors share Dr. Kerlan's fear that athletic drug practices are leading to a sports scandal of major proportions.

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