2025-2026 vol. 2, no. 3

ABSTRACT: In a world where fitness and wellness has taken center stage in the national media, social media and social circles around the country with GLP1 ads to get you from obese to skinny as fast as possible, obsessions over tracking your steps to maintain a healthy weight, and the glorification of the "fit body" once again; one crowd in particular goes to the extreme unlike anyone else to achieve the body they want, and they'll even risk death to achieve it. When it comes to body builders specifically, I argue that outside influences such as social media, fitness podcasts, other body builder types around the gym having better physiques, and the glorification of enhanced gym-goers and fitness influencers being considered more attractive and living more successful lives, has a greater impact on the reason why people decide to use steroids more than internal factors. With my first academic source, Zhang Wenbo and Zhang Yan contribute an overview of all things steroid use including the positive and negative aspects. Willem de Ronde and Diederik L. Smit provide a detailed breakdown of what typical steroid cycles entail and how to recover from them after you stop taking them, with a lot of this evidence being based on ten years of treating steroid using patients. On one hand you have internal motivating factors such as feeling like you're not good enough, but on the other hand those feelings could be caused by external factors such as not being happy with the way you look and trying to keep up with those around you.