Drug Use in Sports

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Drug Use in Sports

What behavior and performance do people expect from professional athletes? The answer is intense training, dedication to sport, and honesty. Regular spectators and TV viewers expect to see transparent results and fair competition. It is the quintessence of any sport, honesty and rivalry; remove it, and what’s left is not even worth the spectator’s attention. Doping is an illegal way to enhance an athlete’s performance and achieve exemplary heights. It causes athletes to make less of an effort. The use of doping can reduce the quintessence of all sports.

The Problem of the Doping in Professional Sports

Nowadays, there is a serious problem of doping in professional sports. This problem involves a list of questions that must be answered: how to improve doping control, which drugs should be banned, and which measures should be taken for the athletes who have violated the rules. But what do we know about doping, except for the information the mass media presents? When observing doping in modern sports, shattering the myths concerning drug use and describing real facts is important.

The main reasons doping is a problem are lack of fairness to competitors and possible health damages. And the best solution to the problem of doping is to toughen penalties and implement stricter control. Penalties can be a fine, sanctions, a ban from the sport, and revocation of previous medals. It sounds cruel, but it is the only way to stop the distribution of doping and the use of drugs. The second problem involves reducing doping production and encouraging athletes to perform honestly. A lifetime ban would probably eliminate doping, but as long as athletes are determined to win, nothing can stop them.

This decade is noteworthy for the number of athletes who have used pharmacological means as a panacea. Both beginners and highly skilled professionals try to push aside or fully replace purposeful and energetic training with pills and syringes with drugs. There is a search for a miracle drug that can allegedly, in the shortest term, boost performance to a record level. Sports achievements for the last two decades have led the physiological capability of the body to the threshold level (Leigh-Smith, 2003).

Many doctors and scientists have different points of view about the solution to the drug usage problem. Some believe that the athlete must have freedom of choice while being well informed about the harmful effects of the medicines. Others consider the necessity of absolute prohibition of stimulant use and the severe penalty for those who are guilty.

The history of world sports knows many incidents when athletes have been using different drugs with the help of coaches, doctors, and scientists. Athletes forget that even if stimulators provide better physical shape, they also restrain physiological reactions that protect the organism from overexertion. There were over 30 lethal outcomes caused by doping in the 1960s (Schwartz, 2012).

International Olympic Committee Doping Definition

According to the definition of the International Olympic Committee, doping is the injection of pharmacological preparations into the organism of athletes in different ways (with the help of syringes, pills, or inhalations) that artificially enhances working capacity and sports results (WADA, 2014). Besides, doping includes various manipulations of biological fluids for the same purpose. Doping is considered to be a pharmacological drug only if it is detected fully or partially in body fluids such as blood or urine with the help of methods of great accuracy (WADA, 2014). There are five groups of doping:

1. Stimulants (stimulants of the central nerve system, analgesics).
2. Drugs (narcotic analgesics).
3. Anabolic steroids and other hormonal agents.
4. Beta-blockers.
5. Diuretics (2014).

The methods of doping include blood doping and chemical doping, mechanical manipulations such as masking agents, the addition of aromatics to urine samples, and sample substitution. Some compounds should be limited even if they are used for therapeutic purposes: alcohol (tinctures with ethyl alcohol), marijuana, and preparations for local anesthesia (Schwartz, 2012).

Despite all the doping controls and prohibitions, nothing can prevent athletes from using these drugs. The majority of musclemen believe that it is impossible to achieve great results without doping usage. They spread such information to beginners, convincing them that doping is not only innocuous but helps our body to cope with physical and psychic strains. The chemists have done their job “wonderfully well,” nowadays, there are nearly 10 10,000 preparations. All of them have different effects on athletes.

The Stimulants of the Nerve System

The nerve system stimulants can abruptly intensify mental activity and remove physical fatigue. After their usage, athletes experience inertness and sleepiness, and there may be a feeling of courage and cheerfulness. Despite all these effects, there are many side effects. The usage of such drugs leads to sleep disturbance, anxiety, and excessive excitability. It may cause heart attacks and increase blood pressure (Leigh-Smith, 2003).

The Anabolic Steroids

Steroids can be injected intramuscularly or orally in the form of pills. They facilitate the quick growth of muscular mass. Anabolic steroids improve blood circulation and increase blood supply to the muscles. Such effects are considered to be positive by sportsmen. It shortens recreation time after traumas and difficult training. In addition to this, the duration of training is considerably increasing, allowing athletes to spend more time in gyms. They get more power, good mood, exercise tolerance, and desire to train and win. Only one detail changes everything: the therapeutic dose will not provide the necessary effects. Athletes usually increase the dose 10-20 times which causes complications (Leigh-Smith, 2003).

The thing is, doping is like a narcotic that may cause habituation. If the athletes start using it, they will find it difficult to forgo their customs. Moreover, more than half of all athletes try to cheat. Some of them manage to do that, while others are caught by the testers at the competitions. The best-known athletes were asked the following question: “Would you use performance-enhancing drugs to win if you would not be caught?” and only 2 percent answered, “No” (Baron, 118).

Lance Armstrong

Among the sportsmen caught for doping cheating was Lance Armstrong. This cyclist was a hero in people’s eyes for a long time unless the blood test made in 2001 before the Tour de Suisse revealed a sign of drug usage. The athlete and his coach had a well-thought-out plan. Armstrong frequently donated to anti-doping campaigns and participated in a limited number of competitions. He oriented himself mainly on the victory in the Tour de France and, therefore, could avoid repetitive testing (Spiegel, 2013).

Marion Jones

The list of famous dopers can be very long. Another notorious former Olympic star is Marion Jones. The female athlete won five medals at the Summer Olympics in Sydney, but she admitted that she had been using steroids called “the clear” before her preparations for the Games. Marion was deprived of all her medals and had one of the most shameful outings in sports history.

Rafael Palmeiro

A well-known baseball player, Rafael Palmeiro, had also been accused of the usage of steroids. Despite all the accusations, he continued to dismiss the fact of the usage of banned substances. Nevertheless, the bad fame of the athlete cannot vanish and attract the attention of the mass media and all the fans who adored him (Zaldivar, 2013).

Ben Johnson

The news that shocked Canadians was the tarnished reputation of sprinter Ben Johnson who had used to run 100 m distances in the 1980s. The athlete set up a record during the Olympic Games, but his glory was not long-term. Several days after the competitions, he had a positive test for anabolic “stanozolol”. As a result, Johnson’s career was destroyed as he lost his gold medal, but far more important was the loss of Canadians’ belief in their hero (Zaldivar, 2013).

WADA (the World Anti-Doping Agency)

The facts show that many athletes can not succumb to the temptation of drug-taking. The fear of penalties and fines will hardly stop them. The leader of the World Anti-Doping Agency informed that those who try to cheat will be excluded from the competitions for four years. Furthermore, it was emphasized that all the coaches, doctors, and officials who promote doping will be punished. The only way to reduce punishment is to give information about doping addict athletes or about those who assisted the drug trafficking. Most examples show that the end does not justify the means (Harris, 2013).

Performance-enhancing substances are not new at present. They had been used for millenniums by gladiators and soldiers during the wars to relieve pain and increase adrenalin. A great number of doping substances are created in no time. In 2006 WADA issued a list of banned substances used in professional sports. They are anabolic steroids, hormones, diuretics, masking agents, stimulants, narcotics, or gene doping (Nikolopoulos, 2010).

A great challenge concerning the testing is the lack of technical support. Moreover, it is very expensive to carry out the checkout in the laboratories. Many distinguished athletes abuse this fact and don’t miss the opportunity to become winners in different sports thanks to these magic pills. Inspired by the astonishing records, they neglect that it hurts their health.

The usage of doping may cause serious health problems or even death. Some performance-enhancing drugs are taken as medicines and should be prescribed only by doctors. Despite this, they are sold illegally to ill-informed people. Besides, the combination of different drugs or overdoses may lead to a lethal end. Doping creates a kind of addiction, so when athletes stop using them, they quickly lose their physical form and feel side effects.

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Hormonal Changes in Athletes’ Bodies

Prohibited usage of substances may cause hormonal changes in athletes’ bodies.

• First of all, it leads to liver diseases and the risk of cardiovascular inefficiency.
• Second, the long-term usage of steroids has a negative influence on the genital system. Drugs reduce the possibility of impregnation. Women, in turn, have problems with mammary glands.
• Third, performance-enhancing substances may influence a psyche. A great concentration of testosterone in the body can cause aggressiveness, increased libido, euphoria, excitability, sleep disturbance, agitation, paranoia, and hallucinations.
• Fourth, the dose of drugs may lead to cosmetic defects such as acne, the development of male features in female athletes, and hair growth on the body and face. Probably the most dangerous thing is the great likelihood of oncologic diseases (Nikolopoulos, 2010).

The temptation to use banned doping and to get supernatural force or speed is extremely great, but before doing that, athletes should think if they want to risk their career, reputation and health.

Rebuttal or Disapproving of Doping

Every sportsman and sportswoman joins sporting activities with a common goal of winning. The desire to win motivates all sportsmen to put effort into training and show good results during matches. In addition, it stimulates many athletes to consume drugs that can empower them during competitions. As a result, it is not an easy task to compete against an athlete who has already been using doping for a long time. The use of drugs that boost the strength of athletes offers unhealthy competition in sports.

Therefore, it is time that all world sports federations devise a strategy for dealing with doping cases. In the past, rebuttal, which is, in this case, a method of disproving that one used doping using medical tests, has been the only strategy. Many sportsmen have been banned from participating in sports, and others were fined large sums of money if they could not prove they did not use doping. However, the strategy has not worked since the cases of consuming drugs have not stopped.

The rebuttal, or disapproving of doping, has not been effective and has not stopped sportsmen from using drugs. Therefore, such practices still result in unfair competition, winning of the wrong people, and fame concealed behind drugs. Medical experts have proved that doping has a negative medical impact on the lives of human beings. However, instead of campaigning for rebuttal, it is time that the world took a different route and legalized doping. That way, all sportsmen will be equal in the field, preventing some competitors from being better than others. It will also promote quality play since no players will have an advantage over the others.

Legalizing doping will also promote sports and make them more exciting due to the equality of play on the field. People should have faith in modern medicine and allow athletes to exercise self-control when they have the freedom to choose whether to use steroids or not. Eliminating blood tests and rebuttal will also allow less harmful drugs that can serve as energy boosters.

Doping in Sports Essay Summary

To sum up, in sports, the most important thing is determination. It enables competitors to train and become honest and dedicated to sports. Equality in the field ensures that sportsmen acquire fair results and entertain spectators. However, it cannot happen without transparency and fair competition. Doping has been used illegally to enhance the performance of sportsmen in different games. Various world sports federations have tried out different strategies to stop doping, such as banning sportsmen from participating in any sport or fining those who are caught under the influence of steroids. Many do not consider the negative side effects of doping but only aim at winning.

Doping brings about negative medical effects on the lives of sportsmen. A lifetime ban has been practiced to eliminate doping in sports. However, it has not given positive results. Although not all cases have been discovered, many athletes use energy boosters during contests. Doctors discourage athletes from using steroids, but due to a lack of ample knowledge, they ignore this advice and only focus on winning. For this reason, researchers and sportsmen are advocating the legalization of doping in professional sports. They argue that it will make spectators more excited and promote fair competition.

In addition, it may be one of the best solutions since experts will develop drugs that are less harmful to the health of those who consume them. The solution to the problem will be to educate sportsmen on the possible side effects of doping and then give them the freedom of choice.