Roid Rave: Steroids, They Do A Body Good?

In 1995, when Bob Clapp entered the supermax federal prison in Florence, Colorado, he possessed the body of an athletic 30-year-old. With striated quads, robust biceps, and six-pack abs, he was in peak physical shape. Just 24 months later, the Arizona native left the Alcatraz of the Rockies a shell of his former self. Forty pounds lighter, four inches wider in the waistline, and with 14 percent more body fat, Clapp reentered society a flabby, withered old man. There was no hunger strike, no physical illness or abuse by guards, no crippling depression that left him sedentary while doing his time. In fact, Clapp had spent nearly every waking hour of his incarceration lifting weights and exercising; he paid close, meticulous attention to his diet, and even had friends from the outside regularly ply him with vitamin and mineral supplements. Clapp’s physical decline, as it happens, was simply a matter of returning to normal—normal, that is, for a 61-year-old man.

You see, Mr. Clapp was incarcerated for the federal crimes of smuggling, dealing, and illegally possessing anabolic steroids. As a byproduct of his jail time, he had to do without the synthetic testosterones that were helping to reverse the negative effects of aging.

“I can’t see why someone would want to cave into the idea of, ‘We get old and we should just accept it and age gracefully,’” says the now–72-year-old Clapp, who, excepting his time in prison, has been taking anabolic steroids for 50 years. Since his release, he’s been obtaining his steroids legally, via a prescription from an anti-aging physician, and claims to maintain the biological age of a 36-year-old. Without his “tools,” as he calls them, Clapp says he would run the risk of osteoarthritis, cardiovascular issues, muscle wasting, depression, fatigue, a lessened mental capacity, and zero sex drive—in other words, Mr. Clapp contends he would suffer the ravages of being old.

“If you can take something that allows you to continue to wake up and smell the roses,” says Clapp, a retired educator and self-described philosopher about human existence, “why wouldn’t you?”

To buttress his argument, he offers his own body as evidence: At just over six-feet-one, the septuagenarian weighs 190 pounds and has a 32-inch waist and 11 percent body fat.

What’s lost in the noise of the steroids debate is the example of Bob Clapp, who, after a half century of steroid use, has ostensibly suffered no irreparable negative side effects. Some would argue that Clapp is an outlier, the exception that proves the rule. But to do so would be to misunderstand how steroids work.

Read more . . .