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A Death at BUDS, or How Anti-Science Ideologies Trickle Down to Harm Heroes
TLDR: Media bias against drugs leads to people ignoring obvious, medically supported interventions. This creates room for other people to cheat the system, which creates dangers. Kyle Mullen would probably be alive today were he on a medically supervised steroid cycle instead of buying a used car to store his illegal drugs in and learning how to use them from some mix of bros at the base and bros on the internet. I say bring on the Space Marines, or at least provide pure drugs at military expense, it’s only polite.
By any reasonable standard, Kyle Mullen was a Hero in the making, in the classical sense. A muscular 6’4 SEAL candidate, choosing to forego a career out of an Ivy League school to serve his country.
He finished the toughest parts of SEAL training, and died on the beach afterward. NYT article here, all quotes are from that article. The NYT story was a real gut punch, expose and heartbreaker all rolled into one, I recommend reading the whole thing and now it’s circulating through the “Summarize a real journalist’s work, make two generic comments, and pass it off as your own” internet chain. Slate chimed in to probably say the whole thing is to be blamed on Toxic Masculinity, The National Review of course needs to Defend Tradition while blaming the drugs, even some Arab website hopped on to call it an example of American brutality, cheating, and drug culture.
What none of the think pieces suggested was the obvious solution: if steroids make you better at the things we want SEALs to be good at, give them steroids. Why are SEALs buying them independently and taking them secretly, when it would all go much better if the SEALs program offered an option to be put on a mild steroid cycle under doctor’s supervision? At the very least, that’s as upsetting as schoolteachers buying their own school supplies!
Teaching trainee soldiers to cheat goes back to at least the Spartan Agoge, and I doubt Lycurgus was totally innovative on this one. But you can prevent trainees from going off the rails by providing reasonable rails. What killed Limewire et al (or at least made them less prominent), wasn’t suing some random college kids for downloading an album, it was creating a legal framework for listening to music online and paying for it. While testing is suggested as a solution, it hasn't worked in sports so I fail to see how we can be optimistic it will work here.
If cheating is easy and it works, then the only solution is to obviate the need for it by making it legal in a managed form.
The Dead Pool is a real phenomenon, steroids are nothing to play with. But those kinds of results come from out of control drug use without medical supervision by guys who are used to pushing their limits, and are OK with dying in the process. There is no question that overuse of steroids can have negative health impacts, but a light, managed cycle isn’t going to make it any more likely that anyone dies, it would probably reduce the odds of other injuries during BUDS if it were used to manage existing problems and lead to more medical supervision. Steroids are like anything else, they follow the 80/20 rule: the first extra push gets you most of the results, then you can keep adding more and more to get attenuated marginal gains. WADA isn’t going to test SEALs before they kick in doors and disqualify guys that don’t have clean piss. Putting all SEAL candidates who want it on a basic cycle would obviate the desire to go on more, level the playing field, and improve performance.
Instead, the Navy chooses to make the competition ever more fierce, and just hope that guys won't cheat or get themselves into trouble.
Like everything else in American life, the competition at the top is increasingly fierce. The bifurcation of American life into a Barbell Chart of winners and losers doesn’t stop anywhere. SEAL training is particularly brutal, consider this story of a man who was probably tougher and in better shape than anyone on theMotte:
Seriously, I don’t know the whole story, but in what universe is a guy 50/50 between commando and snack counter? There wasn’t a slightly more useful landing spot?
You’re asking these guys to take a gamble between doing their dream job being a certified superhero, with highly paid job opportunities galore in a variety of fields after they serve their country with honor, and obscurity behind the snack counter. Is it any wonder that they’ll do anything to win, especially when you already select for guys willing to risk death?
I’m really just putting this quote here as a laugh line. We ask SEALs to be elite, to be the best, to sacrifice their bodies, their lives, and often parts of their souls; but God forbid they break the rules by taking medicine that makes their lives easier.
Early aughts Rick Reilly really did a number on America, we’re still recovering from it and realizing just what Better Living Through Chemistry can do for us. But our sportswriters and their cousins in the hard news are the main way the public hears about steroids: I would bet that more NYT writers/editors know someone using Test to transition than using Test to hit a PR. They’re pulling their info from SI, not from T Nation. Much of the NYT commentariat and audience views male weightlifting and fitness with vague suspicion of wrong think. That combination gives us a public discourse about steroids soaked in myths about roid rage, tiny testicles, and ignoring all the scientific studies of the health benefits of testosterone supplementation. Much like a recent discussion of plastic surgery, if everyone keeps it a secret you only ever notice the bad work, not all the work that passes.
The result is that someone like Kyle, who should have been serving his country with distinction, or at least living the probably pleasant life of a former Yale football captain, instead chose to buy a used car to hide his drugs in, inject himself with God-only-knows-what, and died before he ever saw an enemy combatant. What a waste. Let’s at least consider the possibility that the problem wasn’t drug use as such, but using illegal drugs dosed by an amateur, with the obvious preventative being legal drugs dosed by medical professionals under regular observation for results. Recognize that bad results come from homebrew experimentation, not from the substance itself. Let's give Justice to Kyle, not by weakening SEAL training or introducing an ever expanding and expensive team of nannies to keep an eye on everyone, but by doing something that might actually have saved his life.
I've fought some amateur Mixed martial arts and I was on Testosterone, human growth hormone, Stanozolol, and Erythropoietin. My doctor was extremely tight with regulating my use of these substances and it was probably quite dangerous.
However when on them I felt superhuman, I could run for days without feeling any effect, I could lift weight I've never dreamed of lifting and I recovered from things at an inhuman rate. EPO made me able to run for hours on end, and the Stanozolol made my strength insane, the HGH apparently significantly improved my recovery, and I don't remember what the doctor said the test actually did. I was focused on maintaining discipline with taking some PED's rather than making sure I understood what it all did, my doctor had to make sure I wasn't gonna get hurt from that.
I straight up don't understand why anyone would expect any army division to consist of natty's. Isn't the whole idea of fighting a war the idea that you are going sacrifice young able bodied men for your country? I'm shocked at the idea that members of the US army are not cycling on Stanozolol/EPO at least, What kind of self-respecting army doesn't use wonder chemicals to turn its soldiers into super soldiers. I would have expected the army to have its own research division that researches new powerful PED's to feed soldiers. If athletes in the underground can make wonderdrugs that are this strong, imagine what a government research team can do to an Army. Unrestricted by things like "pissing hot" you could build Stanozolol that lets soldiers carry 200 pounds of armor/weapons to the battlefield, while running 8 miles on their new super EPO. Staying awake and alert for 45 hours thanks to their new modafanil.
Yeah these drugs probably will kill the health of soldiers long term, but by the time that happens they aren't in the army anymore. Having a bad time when you're 70 is much better than not living to see 35 due to dying to a Klashnikov.
If Google required every employee to take adderall, would it actually improve their productivity? Or would it just lead to the best candidates leaving google for an employer that wouldn’t force them to take adderall?
Google is an employer and has to stick to rules like "you can quit" which the US army is unconstrained by. Google also can't control the other medications its employees take .
The Google version would be closer to having a company doctor that prescribes most Software engineers with Adderall, telling them the exact dosage to take and how to use it.
In the military meanwhile they can do things like put the meds directly on your breakfast platter, and give intense physical training that basically mandates you take this stuff to survive them. Social conformity is a powerful thing, if people were encouraged to take such drugs to remain in the special forces I suspect most people who are dedicated enough to enlist in the first place would take them. If the Army doctor regulates your PED use then it is a heck of a lot less dangerous than the normal PED regimen that everyone in American Kickboxing Academy uses.
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I think that's a great point, but the difference is that steroids are much more effective than adderall at their respective jobs. Steroids can essentially take people in the bottom quintile of muscle building potential and take them to the level of the top 0.1% natural athletes, and they take people in the top quintile and make them completely superhuman, they are freakishly effective. If something of this magnitude existed in the realm of productivity, it wouldn't matter that the best people left google, because the drug is doing so much of the work that those who take it become the best because of it.
Since loss of muscle mass is a major problem for the elderly, should people in their 50s take steroids to build up muscle mass?
Stanozolol can cause liver problems, also there is some evidence that it can cause heart problems, I would in general not reccomend PED's unless you have a doctor regulating your dosage, there's way too many variables that can fuck you over.
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I'm not sure if that is supposed to be an argument against my position, but yes, elderly men in particular should definitely be taking TRT (I'm not a doctor, just my opinion), I think the overall quality of life calculation is completely unambiguous in favor of taking low to moderate doses of steroids.
I was asking to see if I should be taking steroids.
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As a guy that did steroids, I gotta say you're overselling them. They will make you a better athlete, but they will not make a bad athlete into a good athlete. Not really.
I think adderall is more effective based on my own experiences with both.
I went from benching 260 to 230 after going off of stanozolol, and my 5k time went from 18 minutes to 20 after I was weaned off EPO. That's a pretty dramatic difference in strength/speed.
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