Steroid testing should happen in high schools

They told him that he was too small.

In 2003, Taylor Hooton was guaranteed to be in the starting rotation for Texas’s Plano West Senior High School’s baseball team. Yet, when his coaches started pressuring him to gain weight, Hooton made a decision that ultimately changed his life.

To gain weight, Hooton, at age 16, started injecting Deca 300 and orally taking Anadrol in the spring of 2003 to bulk up for next season. Within a few months, Hooton had grown about 30 pounds of muscle. 

However, he also experienced the negative effects of steroids, including violent mood swings called “roid rages.” He stole money from his parents, hurled a phone through a wall and sent his girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend to the hospital.

On July 15, 2003, after several months of experiencing the physical and psychological effects of steroids, Hooton hung himself in his room.

The stories of Hooton and other victims of steroid abuse raise the question: Why aren’t we steroid testing in all high schools? It’s common practice to test for drugs in Major League baseball, so why aren’t we doing the same thing to teens, who are far more vulnerable to the enticing drug? 

According to a study by the University of Minnesota, 5 percent of middle schoolers and high schoolers admitted that they used steroids to improve their athletic ability. That’s about 900,000 students who knowingly use steroids.

Steroid side effects include an increase in cholesterol and blood levels, the appearance of severe acne in unusual parts of the body, premature balding and accelerated puberty. Hooton was shown to have developed massive amounts of acne on his back.

Prolongated use of steroids, costing about a few hundred dollars per month, will greatly increase the chances of being afflicted with cancer and joint injuries.

Fatal effects can include the shutdown of the heart, leading to death caused by cardiac effect. There is also the possibility of contracting HIV by sharing needles used to inject steroids.

Steroids can also cause the brain to decrease the output of chemicals that determine the sense of well-being, leading to permanent increase in depression and aggression.

Hooton, for example, exhibited sudden changes in personality.

“He went from a calm person … to these rages, … totally un-Taylor like,” his mom said during an interview. “And then … he’d come in and sit down. ‘Oh, I’m sorry I acted like that. I promise I won’t do that again.’” 

In order to secure the best chances of preventing the symptoms mentioned above and further teenage deaths, steroid testing should be implemented to teach and prevent students from inflicting further harm on themselves.

Anti-testing critics might ask: Is steroid testing really worth the money spent? Would having 1 percent of high schoolers tested positive and informing thousands of others actually be worth the loss of money that could be used for funding perhaps a new football field or modernizing a library? Perhaps just by announcing that there will be random tests, schools can prevent many from trying steroids, they might say. 

However, steroid testing has effectively deterred many students from trying steroids. A 2007 Monitoring the Future study confirmed that with steroid testing, drug use had declined in high schools by 24 percent since 2001.

Dionne Roberts, who used Winstrol at 17 in 2004, to try to get a six-pack, says that if she had been informed by adults about how harmful steroids were, she might have chosen a different path.

“I was the last person in the world you’d think would use anabolic steroids,” Roberts said during an interview. “It’s not uncommon to strive for that four-pack or six-pack, even in girls.”

However, after five weeks of injecting Winstrol, Roberts found out that the results were not what she wanted.

“I never had a breakdown or used anti-depressants before starting steroids,” Roberts said. “I was so upset the smallest thing would set me off … That was not what I wanted.”

One day, Roberts had a sudden moment of clarity about the effects steroids had on her, and after a week of rehabilitation, started living a normal life again.

Roberts, now 24, says that she is still haunted by her brief period as a steroid user.

“I didn’t realize how dangerous [anabolic steroids] were or any of the side effects,” Roberts said. “It’s horrible, the physical and psychological side effects, for guys and girls. I just pray that it won’t affect me in the future.” 

Taylor Hooton died of steroid abuse because no one, including his coaches and parents, knew that he was taking steroids. If there had been steroid testing at his school, perhaps he might still be alive today, playing baseball to his heart’s content.