It is a known fact that drugs are sometimes abused by people with untreated mental illnesses. The mental illness in this case would be dysmorphia, a behavioral syndrome. This syndrome causes the affected to have a distorted and skewed perspective of their bodies. They think their bodies are too thin, less muscular than they desire. In turn, they take steroids to help fix this problem they think they have with themselves. As it is a mental illness, the cycle is continuous as they always seem to find a flaw with their body as it is never enough. Thus, they take more of the drug, leading to addiction and fatal psychological and physical effects. Other users of this drug are sufferers from physical and/or sexual abuse as a younger child or even recently. It is common that the reason people think they are physically and/or sexually abused is because they were physically weak. For this reason, many abuse survivors take steroids to increase their physical strength. The increase of physical strength would ward off attackers as the user’s physical appearance would either be intimidating, unappealing to a rapist’s eyes, or even …show more content…
To start off, the minimal damage anabolic steroids are in the following list: High blood pressure, severe acne, hair thinning, balding, fluid retention, liver damage, fetal development during pregnancy, and HIV from the sharing of needles. The sexual reproductive system is affected as well from abusive use of steroids. In males, the symptoms are the following: Atrophy, low sex drive, low or halted sperm production, breast and/or prostate enlargement, and decreased levels of hormones. As for women, the symptoms are as follows: Irregularities in menstruation, infertility, and masculine features not typically found in a western society. Psychological effects of steroid abuse are also present. Most of the effects happen during and after withdrawal, but few are present while addicted to the medication as well. These symptoms include the following: Mood swings, manic episodes, impaired judgment, depression, anxiety, irritability, delusions, and hostility as well as extreme aggression. With the psychological symptoms of lone use of steroids, some users take other drugs to help alleviate the symptoms. This leads to more addiction, more psychological problem as well as worsened