‘Natty or not?’: how steroids got big

“Natty or not”—short for “natural or not”—asks whether someone achieved their physique without performance-enhancing drugs. The article explains this question dominates online fitness culture, appearing in countless comments, podcasts, YouTube videos, and forums like Reddit’s 175,000-member “nattyorjuice” board. It matters because the ubiquity of steroid-enhanced influencers has distorted perceptions of what’s naturally achievable. When millions follow influencers whose extreme physiques require pharmaceutical enhancement but who claim to be natural, it creates impossible standards that push people toward steroids. Jesse James West notes he receives hundreds of messages questioning his natural status, with even small weight fluctuations dissected online. The obsession reveals how steroid use has become the elephant in the room of fitness culture—simultaneously everywhere and officially nowhere, since most influencers deny use despite community-wide suspicion.

The demographic shift stems from eliminated access barriers combined with weakened subcultural norms. Harm reduction worker Jon Findlay reports the average steroid user is now ‘younger—in their 20s or even teens—and more naive. Not a bodybuilder who is monitoring his bloodwork and taking care, but a kid who might barely even work out.’ Former users like Steve Gardener disapprove, arguing people under 25 lack the ‘physical maturity, and emotional maturity’ for steroids. But once online dealers replaced gym-based networks requiring initiation and trust, these protective gatekeeping mechanisms vanished. A 20-year-old told Buranyi he started steroids after less than a year of gym attendance, feeling he ‘wasn’t progressing fast enough’—a decision that would have been impossible when you had to ‘know a guy, in a gym.’ The accessibility means young people make consequential pharmaceutical choices before developing the discipline or knowledge older users possessed.

Bordo’s 1999 book The Male Body identified how advertising’s fixation on muscular, athletic male bodies represented a fundamental shift in masculine ideals. Previously, body type correlated with social position (plump office manager versus muscled factory worker), but erosion of these hierarchies meant bodies became representations of identity rather than class. Bordo lamented: ‘I never dreamed that equality would move in the direction of men worrying more about their looks rather than women worrying less.’ Her observation is significant because it predicted the current crisis: once male bodies became sites of identity performance and self-worth, they became vulnerable to the same shame-making consumer culture that had long affected women. The article suggests steroid use represents an extreme manifestation of this shift—men now chemically alter their bodies to achieve ideals that are literally superhuman, driven by the same insecurities about inadequacy that consumer culture deliberately cultivates.

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This article is rated Advanced due to its substantial length (5,500+ words), sophisticated narrative structure weaving personal profiles with technical medical information and cultural analysis, and specialized vocabulary spanning endocrinology (testosterone, atrophied, endocrinologist), pharmacology (metandienone, trenbolone, oxandrolone), and bodybuilding subculture (pinning, gains, hypertrophy, natty). Advanced readers must track multiple interconnected themes—individual user experiences, online marketplace mechanics, influencer culture dynamics, medical research findings, and policy approaches across countries—synthesizing them into a coherent argument about cultural mainstreaming. The article assumes familiarity with concepts like algorithmic content curation, harm reduction philosophy, and the difference between correlation and causation in health studies, while requiring readers to navigate between empathetic portraits of users and stark medical warnings without losing critical analytical distance.

This gap represents the article’s central tension between appearance of knowledge and actual scientific ignorance. While community-compiled resources about steroids are ‘very impressive’ and users discuss compounds with ‘supremely confident’ certainty, endocrinologist Channa Jayasena warns ‘most of these compounds were never approved for people, so scientifically we are very in the dark.’ Trenbolone exemplifies this perfectly: never tested on humans (it’s a livestock drug), its effects are documented through decades of user experimentation rather than controlled studies. Nobody can even explain ‘tren cough’ scientifically. This matters because users mistake community consensus for scientific validation, believing they’ve ‘figured out’ steroids when medical experts emphasize profound uncertainty about long-term effects. The confidence encourages younger users to take compounds whose mechanisms, interactions, and cumulative damage remain largely unknown—making them unwitting participants in an uncontrolled, decades-long experiment whose results (brain damage, cardiac issues) are only now emerging.

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