Images of (Ab)Users

Introduction

Naturally, being or becoming a fitness doper can have many meanings. It can involve a variety of motives, emotions, and ambitions, which can be expressed and understood in different ways. Statistical studies on doping prevalence and national differences in how use is understood can give us a glimpse into the ways in which men and women engage in doping practices—into how use is dealt with by structural conditions, preventative measures taken by the state, police work, educational campaigns, and more. To understand individual motives and trajectories, however, we need to do more than focus on numbers and discuss the health risks associated with use. We need to consider how the users themselves view the practices, their efforts to develop their bodies, and how they reach the goals they have set up for themselves. We also need to look at the emotional investments made in relation to use, and how they affect personal trajectories and social relations, among other things.

Starting from Part I, in which fitness doping has been contextualized broadly, in Part II we will let the reader become better acquainted with the fitness doping users who have contributed their stories. We present four fitness dopers and describe their efforts to create something extraordinary through drug use practices. We also explore how these case studies represent different experiences of doping, training, family relations, and gender negotiations. When referring to our cases, we use the concepts of narrative and narrative studies (Smith & Sparkes, 2009). This is a way to mark the importance of every single narrative and every individuals’ understanding of fitness doping, as well as a way to show how we have used the different stories we have studied. Although we have limited our use of prolonged case studies to this chapter, this perspective should be understood as representative of the book as a whole. As we see it, narratives constitute human realities and our modes of being; thus, they help guide action and are socioculturally shared resources that give substance and texture to people’s lives (Sparkes & Smith, 2007). Put differently, narratives, or what also could be called storytelling, constitute an important aspect of people’s efforts to make sense of their lives. What we aim to do in this chapter, and the chapters that follow, is to create a mosaic of different voices that can help us say something relevant about fitness doping experiences and understandings (Freeman, 2001).

In our first case, we meet Daniel, whose narrative accentuates the ambition to learn about the drugs, to become a bodybuilder and later a coach for others pursuing their bodily projects. This narrative also touches on relations with other family members. Next follows a case in which we become acquainted with Charlie and his experiences of investing heavily in a subcultural community of people like him and becoming part of a sort of secret society. Included here are also aspects of the physical decay associated with abuse and addiction, as well as a way out of a lifestyle that includes using performance- and image-enhancing drugs (PIEDs). In our third case, we will meet Christine, whose narrative exemplifies how the will to compete in fitness and later in female bodybuilding influences the choices made. Christine’s narrative also exemplifies negotiations concerning fitness doping and gender. Finally, in our fourth case, we meet Julius, who is an occasional user. Julius has no plans of competing, but instead, this narrative gives us a glimpse of the rationale for recreational use that is intended to create a desirable body one can display/show off for others. The chapter ends with some concluding thoughts.

The Coach and Fitness Doper

Daniel is 35 years old and currently lives with his girlfriend in an apartment. The couple have no children, but recently, this issue has come up and they have started talking about raising a family. In their view, Daniel’s lifestyle, including his daily workout routine, is somewhat difficult to combine with family life, so they have not yet decided on the issue. In daily life, Daniel works in an office within the media/IT sector. Almost every day after work, he goes to a nearby gym to work out. Training and muscle-building have been of great interest to him for many years. In his teens, however, he was more into soccer and wrestling, the latter initially getting him to go to a gym. He explains:

I was young. You know, at that time you needed your parents’ permission to train at a gym. But I continued to go there occasionally, to that gym. Then when I was about 19 or so, there was this bodybuilder who asked me if I wanted to go with him to a bodybuilding competition. I had no idea what to expect. I had no idea what bodybuilding was, and really wasn’t into it in that sense. But I thought, ’why not.’

After accompanying the older bodybuilding friend to the competition, Daniel felt excited. He had not been into muscle-building practices for the kind of purposes he witnessed at the competition, and he was intrigued by this new experience. During this period, he lived at home with his parents, who supported him, preparing protein-rich diets and the like. Gradually, his interest in organized sports, i.e., soccer and wrestling, decreased, and by the time he was 20 years old, he was no longer involved in these sports. Instead, he focused on gym practices, and the idea of becoming a bodybuilder was developing. He was impatient, however, and before long he also wanted to know about doping and the possible effects of the drugs. In order to reach his goal, he decided to invest in a course of steroids.

Actually, the first time, I bought the wrong stuff. I was young and I didn’t know any better. The guy I bought the stuff from told me it was a certain kind of steroid, but it turned out to be something completely different. It was kind of a dangerous one, it was known to be dangerous. And I took it in really high dosages, but luckily, I didn’t suffer from any side effects. Nothing. I had no idea what I took, until afterwards. I mean its ignorance and as I said I was still young and learning.

During the years that followed, Daniel focused on learning more and more about how the body works and about the effects of doping. He also studied physiology and tried to find out, and understand, how the body is affected by different amino acids, peptides, steroids, diuretic, human growth hormones, insulin, and more. He read medical articles discussing muscular development and physiological possibilities and limitations. First and foremost, however, he tried to learn about steroids. In this process of learning and gaining experience, he also found new friends at the gym with whom he discussed courses, side effects, post-cycle therapy (PCT), and more. Adding to the contacts he had at the gym, he also became aware that he could get information from an unexpected person, namely his own mother, who was a medical doctor. The situation below is preceded by Daniel’s mother finding steroids in his room.

I remember it really well. She had placed it all on a silver plate in the kitchen, on the dining table. It’s dead quiet in the room, when I come home, and usually it’s like very cheerful and lively at home when we have dinner and so on. So, I come into the kitchen and see all my steroids there, on the table. I’m like ‘okay’. My dad is dead quiet. He doesn’t say anything. But my mother, she’s like, ‘what’s this?’ And I’m like, ‘you know what that is.’ ‘Yes I do’ she replies, ‘but why haven’t you talked to me about this.’ I said ‘nah I wanted to deal with that by myself.’ Then she goes on, ‘but I don’t think you should take these’…….‘I think you should take these other substances instead.’ So, she actually recommended something that was less dangerous for me, healthier. Following that route, we developed a really good relationship and I kind of thought that I could ask my mom about anything. But I’ve also exploited her trust. She’s a doctor and I’ve forged prescriptions for steroids so I could get them from pharmacies. I’ve exploited her trust and done some stupid shit too.

Daniel’s mother obviously got upset when she found steroids in his room, but she also wanted to share her expertise in the area, not least to make sure her son did not take any unnecessary risks, and that he understood the possible consequences of being involved in this kind of drug use practice. The confrontation seems to have changed their relationship, in what Daniel describes as ‘kind of a twisted way.’ They began talking about PIED use, both in theory and in practice, and to this end, his mother has both discouraged and advised him. Following this situation, Daniel wanted to ‘try everything’ for a couple of years, and he used his body as a canvas for experimentation. He was not totally honest with his mother about the magnitude of his use, but still, he tried to keep her informed, especially so he could get ‘inside information’ on choice of steroids, risks, and more. He explains that he has experienced few serious side effects, but mentions nerve twitches, acne, and a completely torn breast muscle. He has also been arrested and convicted for selling steroids, which can be seen as an unwanted side effect of his involvement in doping.

Owing to his more than fifteen years of involvement in the business, Daniel has also become quite notorious in the social circles of bodybuilding and body fitness. Today, he is a well-known and respected person in the steroid business world in Sweden. Although he initially had plans to compete as a bodybuilder, he now coaches others, both bodybuilders and fitness competitors. Currently, he is trying to decide whether or not he should quit his work at the office and go for this new career. He says:

So, I’ve started thinking about this, as a possible future career. And I’m like this grey zone coach. I make all kinds of schedules you know, as I have become quite knowledgeable in medicine as well. And this is something I struggle with every day. Yeah if someone comes up and asks me if I could make them a program. He pays me for that, and then comes the question about doping, which makes me a bit hesitant. I mean it’s illegal, right. It feels contradictory. Should I help them and share my knowledge? What if they misuse this knowledge and do something stupid? And I meet these young guys who lack experience and have never used before, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend that they start.

Daniel’s approach to doping has changed over time. Initially, he wanted to be competitive in wrestling, and later this developed into a desire to become a bodybuilder. He invested heavily in drug use practices to reach the latter goal. Today, however, he mostly looks at himself as a coach and muscle-building guide. He still talks about competing now and then, but it seems he is not really dedicated to following this career path at present. Instead, he enjoys the attention and respect he receives from others as a coach.

One thing that worries him, however, is the increasing trafficking of steroids and other kinds of drugs over the Internet. He suggests that discussing and dealing with doping over the Internet creates a dangerous distance between the person who knows the products and has the knowledge and the person who is buying them with the intent to use. To deal with this development, he explains that he always makes a great effort to get to know his trainees, trying to take some degree of responsibility for their health and well-being. Currently, his own goals concerning training are to stay fit and have a ‘representable’ body that corresponds with his coaching skills; achieving these goals includes occasional use of steroids and human growth hormones.

Charlie and the Secret Society

Another fitness doper we met during the research process is Charlie. He is currently 49 years old and became involved in bodybuilding as a teenager. In 1987, he qualified to compete in bodybuilding, so it is fair to say that he, like Daniel, invested highly in muscle-building practices during adolescence. In his twenties, he moved from a small city in southern Sweden, where he lived with his parents and two sisters, to the capital of Sweden, Stockholm. Soon he was spending more or less all his free time at the gym. He describes his training schedules and lifestyle in vivid detail and also talks about his fascination with muscles, symmetry, and bodybuilding. Charlie describes himself as something of a restless adventurer, who wants to travel and experience things. Before long, his adventure-seeking behavior also came to involve PIED use. When talking about his first experiences of the drugs, he is excited and describes discovering a ‘new world.’

It was really exciting as well, really. So, I think, partly, you’ll get a pretty big placebo effect too. You know, ‘wow, now I’m taking these pills, and I’m going to become really huge,’ which makes you work out even harder. I gained weight, became stronger and also recovered faster. It was a bit like that. I had my own box with the stuff, it was my treasure. It was the same when you visited someone, and he had his own box, and you looked in the box. It was like small treasure boxes. Your secret treasure!

Charlie explains how he gradually became part of gym culture and the bodybuilding subculture. He spent enormous amounts of time at the gym, among other bodybuilders. He also describes this as a learning process; he learned more and more about training schedules, methods, and, of course, steroids. This is thus a process of ‘becoming,’ a process through which a certain lifestyle develops. It is also a process of identity formation, finding oneself, establishing a self, creating a body, and so on. Charlie continues:

At this time, there were lots of things going on. I’m especially thinking about what you asked about before, concerning my motivation to work out, but it becomes your identity, really, a lifestyle. I followed a tight time schedule, and weighed the food and yes, I worked a couple of years, selling food supplements and so on. I travelled to different gyms and so on. Competitions were also something, it was also big, yes. I met that guy from Gothenburg, and it was really such a community feeling, a world of its own.

For a couple of years, Charlie was completely involved in bodybuilding. He had some success, and he also felt a sense of belonging to a community, a brotherhood. He describes this as becoming part of a very special, secluded world.

But as you put it, it’s this classic feeling, you get stuck, and you also develop a sense of belonging to something, to the gym. Also, at the gym there was this tight, small group, doing drugs. Yes, it’s interesting, you understand each other much better; someone might be annoyed that day, and then you knew that it could be really shaky when you’re on a course of steroids or something. You knew, yes, shit he’s into it a lot now, then we just knew, don’t disturb him. It was a signal that you learned to understand, it was all part of the game. It’s kind of funny.

Charlie describes how he was drawn into a subcultural space, where specific rules and social regulations applied. Everything soon revolves around courses, steroids, and training schedules. In this particular space, a certain language, style, and habits develop, and members of the group make great efforts to maintain solidarity through non-verbal, mutual understanding.

After a couple of intensive years, where Charlie put all his efforts and aspirations into bodybuilding, he became painfully aware of the negative aspects of his lifestyle. His relationship with his girlfriend, Sarah, broke down. Suddenly, he was alone, and he started feeling bad about his self-consuming lifestyle. In this process, he also turned his interest to other drugs and, as he describes it, he developed an addiction. To him, the step from taking steroids to including other drugs was not very great. Trying to deal with his life situation, he used amphetamines, cocaine, and also consumed quite a bit of alcohol. Soon, however, he realized that something needed to be done and that he had to veer off this established path/trajectory. He moved away from Stockholm and stopped going to the gym for a while, deciding not to touch drugs of any kind. Reflecting on this, he says:

I met some of my old friends, afterwards. My whole world fell apart. I didn’t visit the gym again for a while, because I felt I didn’t want to get into it all again. We sat down and had a meal, I told him that I was really in trouble two years ago, and he told me that he understood that something had happened. But I got back on track again. He said it’s too bad this. Then he told me he couldn’t stop taking the steroids. He didn’t want to lose weight, like the withdrawal. One can get stuck that way too.

Charlie’s exit process from steroids and bodybuilding, as well as other drugs, was successful, although it came at a high price. He lost the woman he still describes as the love of his life. And he repeatedly talks about this previous relationship and what could have been. Sarah now has a family with kids and a new man, and he is by himself. He also struggles with anxiety and worries about falling back into addiction. Leaving the comradeship and the bodybuilding scene was also painful. Today, Charlie has returned to the gym, and he works out regularly two or three times a week. He is not involved in competitions, and he is drug-free.

Christine and the Gender Balance

Christine is 28 years old. She comes from a family that she describes as having a more laid-back and sedentary way of life, and thus, she has no sporting background. In her late teens, however, she started occasionally visiting a nearby gym in the small village in which she lived and had grown up. At that time, there were not that many women in the gym environment, except for a few group training activities. Christine initially focused on aerobics, but gradually, she became interested in body fitness and weight-training. She describes how she felt at home in the gym. Having, or rather making, a muscular body was seen as something ‘natural’ there, whereas muscles and femininity, according to her, were regarded as opposite things in everyday life outside the gym. She started competing in body fitness in 2012, and some years later she had advanced to bodybuilding. Since then, Christine has switched between body fitness and bodybuilding, depending on how she has related to her body. She also describes the transition from being in competitive mode and returning to everyday life as quite problematic.

I have one body when competing, and another when it’s time for off-season training. Most of the competitors start eating after their competitions. Therefore, after a few weeks, you look like someone else, and then you return to your normal state, you know, so you get a little more meat on your bones, fatter, and so on. Sure, it’s like that. You have two different bodies. I usually say that you have two different wardrobes, you know, one for the off-season and one for getting in shape for the competitions again.

Christine talks a lot about how she perceives her body. On the one hand, working out and lifting the weights are understood as liberating, a way to construct a competent and admirable body. She struggles hard to gain muscle mass and change her body in accordance with the demands of the judges and the body fitness culture. On the other hand, she also relates to other ideals and the desire to fit into what she describes as a ‘normal life.’ Although she has a certain distance to gym and fitness culture and its masculinized body ideals, she also finds that she is part of this world. Negotiating gender and the meaning of muscular bodies is understood as quite complex and dependent on the particularities of the socio-spatial environment. Christine explains:

I mean most people have told me that when I competed in bodybuilding, after fitness, and to this day, that I still have a feminine face. Most women doing bodybuilding don’t have that. When they gain lots of muscle mass they usually do it because they’ve used certain drugs you know, making them muscular and look manly. But to me, building muscles is fairly easy, and therefore I can also be fairly modest concerning the drugs. Also, you can accomplish things through training hard alone. Therefore, I can keep this female thing, femininity. /…/ I can imagine doing other types of operations also, beauty surgery. I cannot imagine what I will think about this in say ten years’ time. If I would think, ‘I should not have made my breast that huge’ or ‘I should not have used Botox,’ for example. Therefore, clearly it’s not that good for your self-image, entering into this fake world. Still, it’s the surface you are molding and shaping.

Although she invests a great deal in muscle-building practices and fitness doping, Christine does not want to look like a bodybuilder, or maybe more correctly, she has occasionally wanted to be perceived as a bodybuilder, but she is also aware of the cultural association between muscles and masculinity. Lately, she has chosen to compete in body fitness. Just as in the case of Charlie’s secret society, she talks about two different worlds: one muscle-building community and one ordinary or mainstream world, which is mainly, but not exclusively, understood as situated outside the fitness context/culture. She suggests that many female bodybuilders have chosen the gym setting, as their place of belonging. Crafting an ‘edgier’ and rougher muscular appearance, however, is not one of her goals. Instead, she pursues a perspective on the body that makes ‘dual citizenship’ possible. Concerning female bodybuilders:

I think it’s a bit of an exaggeration. They’ve ended up in this world (Read: Bodybuilding), and they’ve left the other world. They’re only in this world now and they don’t care what others think. That’s also wrong. I want to have the kind of look that I can be like a chameleon; you can fit in in the normal world, but you can also fit in in this world.

Christine is not particularly happy about talking about doping and drugs. When bringing the subject up, she tries to explain it as a more or less ‘natural’ part of gym and fitness culture, not least as concerns the more competitive aspects of muscle-building. She also compares doping with alcohol and brings up the notion of an individual choice. In line with neoliberal values, and the cult of the individual, norms concerning doping are challenged and the possible consequences of use are simultaneously placed on the individual. She tries to explain how things can get out of hand, but not if you are prepared to take responsibility for your actions.

As I always say, it’s your own body, and some people choose to use alcohol and destroy their homes and stuff. Certainly, you harm the public, because we, the taxpayers, have to pay for it. However, I believe that it’s still my body, and I’ll do it if I want to. As long as I don’t kill someone. In the media, everyone using doping substances is described as crazy. This is simply not true, but some people who consume alcohol become addicts, of course. Therefore, everything has two sides. I don’t believe in creating a moral panic around this. In that case, things are merely escalating.

This discussion on moral panic and the media understanding of doping users as ‘crazy’ should probably be understood within a Swedish context, where strong preventative measures have been aimed at fitness dopers. As argued in Chapter 3, internationally there are ‘good’ examples of more forgiving attitudes, even cultural acceptance, in other countries, such as the USA. Nevertheless, Christine is deeply involved in fitness doping, but at the same time, she is trying to uphold what she thinks is a more ‘normal’ lifestyle. She does not want to become a bodybuilder fully, not in the sense that she understands this position anyway. She does not want to invest in drug use practices and bodybuilding to such an extent that she ‘risks’ losing what she understands as her femininity or a body that connotes femininity. She also describes how certain women become masculine and ‘lose’ their (feminine) appearances. She is clearly balancing between being a successful competitor in body fitness, molding her body and using an adequate amount of drugs, and living an ‘ordinary’ life with work, family, and friends outside the cultural sphere of the gym and fitness.

Side Effects and Youth Prevention

Julius is 25 years old and has always been into sport, living an active lifestyle. When he was about 18 years old, he visited a gym for the first time and did not particularly care for the training done there. Nevertheless, he and some friends started working out a couple of days a week, mainly using different machines, but they also did circuit training and spinning. After two years of going to the gym, however, upon turning 20, he could not see any results or not good enough results anyway. Among his peers, there had been talk about and use of different supplements for quite some time, and Julius always had a protein shake with him when he went for a workout. But he felt that something more was needed and, therefore, decided to initiate a course of PIEDs. He explains:

And to me it was not about competing in bodybuilding or something like that, not at all. It was more, I think, about boosting my self-esteem, you know, to get a nice body for the upcoming beach season. I wanted to be better looking, so to speak. And there were also these guys who took it as a kind of a sex drug, because they’d heard that you could get bloody horny.

Julius had no ambition to become a competitive bodybuilder. Instead, he did lots of circuit training and spent hours on the treadmill. Moreover, he ‘only’ used PIEDs occasionally, most often in the springtime to ensure a more attractive, fitter body for the beach. Good looks were important to him, and seemingly, there were also other motives for drug use among Julius’ friends. However, Julius explains that he felt somewhat hesitant about his drug use practices. He found it difficult to square his thoughts about living a healthy and ordinary life with the courses of illicit drugs he had at home.

You train to be healthy and then you do this. You take all these substances that kind of work in the opposite direction, in a way. But you don’t realize that, there and then. These side effects. You know, anything can happen, but I kind of thought ‘Nah, that won’t happen to me.’ Still, it was always there, that feeling. And only to give an example, the first thing I did when I got off the steroids was to book an appointment to check my sperm count, to see that everything was alright down there. Why did I do that? Of course because I had been worried about not being able to become a father one day. Still I kind of told myself, ‘Nah, it won’t happen to me.’ You kind of suppress it.

Although he often felt worried about his doping practices, Julius continued to take occasional courses of PIED. When he turned 23, however, he told his friends that he wanted to stop using. They were mostly supportive of his decision, because he had explained that he no longer felt at ease with it. And they had their own training to focus on. Julius had also experienced some side effects:

I kind of wanted out of the whole situation, and then I got these bitch tits. You know gynecomastia, and had to have surgery for that later. That was another thing your mates told you, ‘It’s not gonna be a problem, there are things for that too.’ ‘You only need to take this and that.’ But it didn’t work for me so I had to operate. And all this stuff you take, I had no idea. I only got it and kind of thought ‘excellent and perfect.’ Now, looking back at it everything seems strange. I kept one of the blister packs with pills and called the anti-doping hot line to ask about it. It turned out to be this breast cancer medicine that you give to women with breast cancer, and I kind of took that. Supposedly it works for some. But it did not work for me.

Being a fairly modest user, Julius has experienced some troubles and side effects with his fitness doping practices. Some of his friends have been more heavily involved, but according to him, they have experienced far less side effects. To this end, Julius views his 3-year-long period as a fitness doper as having been very unfortunate. After deciding to stop doping, he also tried to understand what had happened to him, his body, and why he had engaged in the practice in the first place. Once he visited a seminar on doping, organized by the municipality he lived in. This seminar was part of an anti-doping campaign, and there was a great deal of information on youth at risk and how doping had become a health problem for young people. Julius could identify with much of what was said. He talked with police officers in attendance and two nurses from the anti-doping hotline. In a way, this occasion seems to have been the starting point for a career choice. Julius felt he had some important experiences he wanted to share, in some way. So he applied to a university and was recently accepted by the department of education, focusing on physical education. Teacher training allows him to interact with pupils, not so much younger than he was when he got involved with doping. He explains what these interactions have brought:

So, I spend a lot of time at the university, but there are also these parts of my education when you go out to a school, with this supervisor, and kind of follow him in his daily work, meeting the pupils. You know acting like a teacher or trying to be one. I’m at this school, and we have this information on doping. My supervisor tells the pupils about doping and unhealthy lifestyles, and there is this silence in the room. The pupils listen, and I realize that they really have no idea. But still there are many young people who take steroids you know. And particularly those who are about to become physical education teachers will meet these youngsters, mostly boys, because I guess there are not that many girls who do this. But I think one big problem today is the body ideals.

Today, Julius has stopped using steroids. He talks about his previous experiences in terms of both social inclusion/camaraderie and solidarity and risks and unwanted side effects. He still trains regularly, but is now more interested in his educational career and the process of becoming a physical education teacher. As a teacher, he hopes to make some contribution to young people’s lives. His previous experiences have thus been transformed, for example, the stigma carved into his body in the form of scaring tissue after the gynecomastia surgery has turned into sort of a capital that can be used for doping prevention.

Variations in Fitness Doping

The case studies presented and discussed in this chapter were selected to represent some of the variety found in the narratives this book is based on. Our ambition was to bring the reader into the book’s focus on fitness dopers’ narratives on doping, the body, gender, social relations, and sense of subcultural belonging. We also wanted to present an extended illustration of the complexity of the narratives and fitness doping trajectories that we have gathered through interviews and observations. As shown, there are many different ways to approach and possibly leave a lifestyle that includes the use of PIEDs. This is partly a consequence of our limited material, but it also reflects actual structural differences in how doping is understood in relation to normative gender configurations, national legislation, and subcultural affiliations. Departing from such structural conditions, scholars have often aimed at constructing typologies that can identify illicit drug users and their motives. Although this research is highly valuable, here we have tried to instead present our narratives on a more subjective level, aiming to capture some of the complexities and continuous movements that these four narratives represent. At the same time, some core similarities also emerge, and we will return to them in the chapters that follow.

In the first part of the book, we painted a broad picture of the historical development of gym and fitness culture, in general, and fitness doping, in particular. These developments and cultural transformations are also non-linear to a certain extent and characterized by constant backlashes. Neither normative gender patterns in society nor the development of legislative measures is enough to change how women and men understand doping and how their doping practices are incorporated into their everyday lives, which consist of training and drug using practices, but also family life, work, social relations, and more. Instead, a great variety of circumstances influence an individual’s doping trajectory: a new job, new friends, inclusion in or exclusion from a particular sociocultural context or a specific event in a person’s life, changing gender ideals, health issues, and so on. To this end, the relationship between social structures and the individual and his/her doped body is dialectical and complex, and it needs to be understood in relation to the particularities of the temporospatial context.

In presenting these four cases, we have tried to incorporate some of this dialectic into our narrative approach, not least to show how understandings of the self and the body change over time and take place on a social arena, formed in relation to social encounters, cultural contexts, and feelings of belonging. A body in transition, owing to drug use practices, can in a sense be understood almost linguistically. Bodies talk. They express things, such as cultural affiliations, gender, identities, and lifestyle choices; they are performative, they learn, and they have directions and intents, although this is not always explicitly experienced or thought of by the ‘bearer.’ In the chapters that follow, we will further develop our line of reasoning concerning these issues, focusing on our understanding of fitness doping trajectories, gender and health. Although staying true to our narrative approach to the data, we will not present additional extended case studies. Instead, we will let the many voices and experiences of the fitness dopers we have interviewed be heard.

4. Images of (Ab)Users

Introduction

The Coach and Fitness Doper

Charlie and the Secret Society

Christine and the Gender Balance

Side Effects and Youth Prevention

Variations in Fitness Doping