My Turn: Eugene's History With Bodybuilding

kind of megalomaniac pulled toward more more more. Alright, alright, alright, So here you are. It's Azzi Confidential. My name is Eugeneus Robinson, the host. So we're gonna do something special to show you that this is an actual no holes barred, deep dive into stories that are untold, unheard. I'm gonna do something different. Usually I'm getting other people's stories, but for you, special, for you, it's gonna be my story. I'm in a band called ox Bowl. A cursory not

even a cursory glance. Your Internet will tell you that if I'm known for anything, it's a certain kind of volatility which brings me to a friend John Mitchell, to be at the l A Times talking about an article I wanted him to write the guys goading me remembering when I was fourteen and not nearly as adept at handling the reins of volatility as I am now. I remember, you lifted weights when you were fourteen, you were you were making much progress. And I lifted weights as a hobby.

But I competed right then, and my first competition New York was National Gym Association Teenage, uh New York, mr Teenage New York. When I started to go through puberty and you know some guys, oh, I was so horny all the time. That wasn't the issue for me. The issue for me was this really weird kind of sense overpowering, testosterone fueled sense of invulnerability. I think they call it

a hysteria patio standing. I grew up in New York, so standing on the subway platform and as a train started to come in, I started to have this increasing obsession combined with standing on the edge of the platform, that I could throw myself in front of the train and physically stop the train that I had I had through my weightlifting ministrations, and I had developed enough physical power to actually now trains come through the station's express

train speeding. I knew I couldn't stop a speeding subway train, but as it as it cruises to a stop or starts up, I was convinced, and I actually had to force myself to stand back from the edge of the platform, so that it was a very strange, weird like Octave Mirbau and the Torture Guarden talking about these overpowering obsessions compelling.

It was like that, based on what I know now about testosterone, I was probably peaking, and then I started lifting weights harder, and I probably just leveled it out. I didn't have that continued obsession with throwing myself in front of the train beyond my senior year. But of course I left New York and then um I came out to California and I went to Stanford. But I didn't compete at all during Stanford. I started lifting after Stanford seriously and started competing again after I was doing

insane things. I remember I was big into glandular extracts. I don't know where they got them. I don't know what was in those pills. You could get them at health food stores. I remember feeling dizzy a lot. The idea was that you had to you had to make gains. It was, you know, it was a burgeoning supplement industry, and pumping iron had come out late seventies, and you know, nobody had figured out at least two was seventeen or eighteen, like I was, had figured out that probably it wasn't

just supplements that got them there. There hadn't been a lot of high profile, well publicized bust four performance enhancing. I was a purist for so long that um that it always feels kind of strange for me to talk about steroids, which is what we're talking about. I was surrounded by them when I was training in Brooklyn. I was surrounded by them at my gym in California. I

trained down at Venice Golds. It was, I mean, I figured out by the time I'd hit my twenties that Arnold and all the pro body builders were taking stuff. Fell in love with the with the weight training, or with the feeling of being strong and being big and all that, and I wanted to win Mr. Union was I wasn't interested, not at all, not at all interested. And then something strange happened. I competed in the in

the Mr. California. Uh natural right. It was supposed to be a non steroid aided show, which was comically not. I finished last but prior to that, some friends and we're gonna be in San Diego. You're gonna be close to Juanna, go across the border and get us some stuff. So they gave me a bunch of money and they gave me a laundry list because you could legally steroids there, and so the show was drug tested, but it was

a polygraph. So as I'm sitting there in some kind of like Abu Grab type room in San Diego with the Athletic Commission, I have a Fannie pack full of these steroids which I had no intention of taking, and they're asking me if I had ever taken them, and technically I had not taken them, right, so um, I answered and passed the polygraph. Um. But something about coming

in last place, I don't say it unseated me. But I started to think about the long view, and I go, you know, some of these guys, they're gonna be gone tomorrow. You know I'm a lifer. I'll be lifted. I've been lifting weight since I was nine years old. I'll be lifting in when I'm it's gonna be a lifelong thing. So steroids, what seems to be like a quick gain for some people, could be mixed in like a healthier supplement.

And on the drive back from San Diego started to have these thoughts, and I and because I'm a hopeless and researcher, keep in mind, this is well in advance of any Internet. I worked at a defense company then and went into the Lexus Nexus network, which was part of the Darker Thing, and did all this research on steroids,

and I developed like you talked about mid Romney. I developed a folder binders full of women, a steroid research folder, which I still have to this day, And and made what I thought was informed decision that I was going to take steroids. I had been a purist for so long that I didn't want to be publicly identified as a guy who used. I was initially I wasn't ready for that yet. It's weird. Well, I could like like

why who would care? I was surrounded by but that became my thing, Like I was the guy, like a guy who wouldn't. And in the punk rock community, straight edge was a thing, not drugs. Straight clear mind that I was going to do this thing. You know. Part of one wanting to be kind of sold vot about it was that I would I would do it myself. And keep in mind, it's not the needles that you use for steroids or entry. I am needles intromuscular there

eighteen to gauge. They're really giant needles. There's a catch, right, and the catches that you have to inject it into a muscle, So it has to be a large muscle grouping. Now, I know guys who shot themselves in the quadra set and but these are guys who had already used and were big and had lots of muscle around the knee um or the thigh, and somehow couldn't do that. Um. But the most common was the buttocks. But it's hard

to turn and do and see if you're alone. But I just decided that was going to be the best place. And um, I remember a girlfriend at the time saying, uh, this blood in your underwear. Why go oh, eyes must just scraped against the nail. But you know, I mean, at that point, I still was in denial sort of about wanting to publicly be identified as a steroid user.

And we're talking now eighties eight eight. And I know this because I was in the worst movie of eight seven, Leonard Part six, with a bunch of bodybuilders who were using and wouldn't talk to me about it because they knew it's a kid. Don't do what I did. Do what I say to fly the straight and narrow, And those guys, all to varying degrees, ended up having not all of them, some of them ended up having serious problems connected to what some would say we're personality deformations

that came as a result of steroids. You're walking along, you see a guy in the hole. You go, oh my god, how did you get in that hole? And the guy goes, well, I put my hand on that branch there, and you go, what branch? This branch and you put your hand on that branch, goes yeah, And I put my other foot on that other branch. You what this foot? Yeah? And I jumped up and down really hard, really and then what you know, and then you fall and you're in the hole next to the guy,

you know, and that's you. Just you have to realize that there's certain things. And I've recognized the cycle now with younger people have come up to me and start talking to me about, yeah, boy, I would. I don't think I would ever do steroids, And that's always that's always a poker tell I don't think. You don't think you would ever? Really that means you think you would ever.

So I went through the same you know, it's probably the life cycle of a story user denial and uh, knowing it's not good and then figuring, you know, if the science were faster on this, this would just be another supplement in the rational and then of course taking it. And once you take it, your advantage point is no

longer reasonably trustworthy. Because one thing that nobody ever talks about when they talk about steroids, about how fucking great they make you feel, they don't want to talk about the fact that one of the things that was so compelling about it was that on the at least on the upward portion of your cycle, you feel like superman

mental acuity through the roof. I mean, if you're prone to being creative, super creative, um, four hours of sleep at night, no refractory period, you could you know lots, I mean, and you just good natured. And people said, well, what about the royal rage. I personally think it's like alcohol. It magnifies you know they're bad drunks, but these are kind of bad people. It magnifies who it is that you are. It's on the down portion of your cycle where you start to have weirdness, but on the up

portion it was it was absolutely fantastic. First week. You would have a regime of half a c C maybe some orals pills that would go with it. You would decide. My personal favorite was one called Sustana, which was a mix of four testosteronies, approprianate and mathate, and I can't

remember the other two. And the pills I decided were not only worthless but bad for you because your liver attempts to metabolize them all at once, whereas the objectible it pass just a liver several times, so it's not as hard on your liver, which is one of the big problems. We too would be like one c C

right and no pills. There's sometimes people would combine it with bills if you had good ones, like Anna Bar was a good strength pill I remember, and I was taking this one called Deck of the Roblin, which was supposed to be one of the healthiest, safest as these things go. Steroids ever but again, nobody tells you about the head game. They don't mention that ever, ever, ever, ever, unless they're talking about it in the negative. I mean, the thing is, it's like, if you've ever watched a

movie the Invisible Man. The chemical makes them invisible, but it also makes them crazy. I realized the part to make the world corp, you'll know who the invisible man.

So all of a sudden, I hearkened back to that subway thing, and I remember that I had written an article about a bodybuilder out in Sheep's at Bay who, in the midst of this kind of meglomaniacal steroid thing, had convinced himself that he could stop a car like me with a train, except he had a bunch of enablers, and all these guys were all taking steroids in the

common parlance juicing, and they follow him. He goes, I'm I can stop a car, and they go out to whatever that is, the highway that sneaks through Sheeps had Babe b Qui or something like that, and they sat on the guardrail and he waited, and he jumped out into the lane in front of a car. And technically, if you want to be philosophically consistent. He did stop. The car broke both arms and broke a leg and was hospitalized. But that car did stop, not the way

he thought, you know. And uh, so I remember that there had been stories about guys who had gotten ill, but most of the people who got badly hurt on steroids were from other things. It was like from diuretics to lose water weight during the contest. Uh I uh, and I figured these guys were just doing it wrong. Stitch Fix is an online personal styling service that finds and deliver her his clothes, shoes, and accessories to fit

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anything you keep from your shipment. Get started now at stitch fix dot com slash o z y and you'll get an extra off when you keep all five items in your box that stitch fix dot com slash azzi to get started today's stitch fix dot com slash oh a z A Y. I had one Royd rage moment where I had in these multiple cans of protein powder because you're taking tons of protein, and I had this old fashioned can openers, so it left a really jagged

line on the inside of a can. And the dog, had had a big master at the time, had shouldered his way into the house and I just started screaming him, and I threw the can at him and and they cut through all four of my fingers, and which was a real problem one I didn't like abusing my dog too. Now that I had my fingers almost cut to the bone, it was gonna it was gonna bite into my lifting time.

Would you become pathological about your lifting time? Because if you're taking steroids and not lifting, it's like money out the window in your in the steroid adult state. And uh so, I said, look, I need to control myself. I can't be one of those guys, you know, I knew guys like that that that I couldn't be one of those guys, and so um, but what was happening is, um, well, what's happening is but what was that thing that Tyson says about everybody's got a plan until they get punched

in the face. I literally got punched in the face by steroids. I didn't account on the fact, and there was nothing in the source material that says, once you take half a c C and one c C and to CC, your ability to cap it at two and a half CC is gonna be non existent. Moreover, you're gonna want to go, well, if two and a half CEC is to maybe three and a half CC, what about four? What about five? What about six? I mean,

you know this. I don't want to even say this is a worldwide phenomena, but it seems to me a particularly Western thing of just more, bigger, more, And so I ended up. I remember trying to crazy glue together too. I am the bodies of the syringes of tubes so that I could fit more rather than take two separate shots, which I'd have to sacrifice the actual needle part I was trying to craze. He glued together two stems so I could have a super long needle and get six

ccs UM. I didn't have enough insight at that time to realize that UM deviating from the plan was going to be problematical for me. But he used to be a TV show called a six million Dollar Man, and he had like a bionic leg and a bionic arm, and he would do all these amazing things, like he could run sixty miles an hour. But they never dealt with the issue of what happens to the non bionic leg if the bionic leg is running sixty miles an hour. Right,

And this is where I was. My body was used to get in these chemicals that was making it do phenomenal things. I was deadlifting over six pounds. I had gone from a body weight of one to sixty five. I was bench pressing three fifteen that's three forty five pound reps and a forty five pound bar in the middle, close grip, benching for eight to ten as a warm up, squatting almost five pounds. I was a really big, strong guy. But of course they you've heard about it. They talked

about a weird dysmorphia. I had no sense of how big I was really. I just knew I wanted to get to three hundred pounds. That's what I wanted to do. And if it was four ccs or five ccs or six c cs at that point, that's what I was gonna do. And then I have a weird relationship with my father. We only talked once since I turned nineteen, and he came out to talk to me. Maybe I was thirty at that point, twenty nine or something, and he I said, look, I'm not breaking my schedule for you.

I got stuff to do, because well, what do you want to So I'm going to the gym. Come with me to the gym. We can talk while we're at the gym. He was flying through or something, and we're gonna work out together. And it was just this great moment where I had a completely soured on the prospect of having a father, but even though we had had problems. And so we go to the bench press and uh, I put one fifteen pounds and he's like, I said, he goes, I can't do I said, yeah, I know

you can't do it. It's for me he goes, well, I can't spy you. I got just standing here. Just I don't I don't need you. So you measure your hands out from the ends of the plates. And usually when you do a bench press, you hold your arms like you're doing a push up, so your arms are shoulder with the fart. They're pretty wide. But I measure it out, and then I measured it again so that now my thumbs are touching in the middle, and I'm

doing what you call a close script bench press. Most people can't bench press three d and fifteen pounds anyway close grip where your your wrist ben at the middle and your your your hands are only thumbs with apart. It's incredibly hard. And I loaded it to my chest and I can and I'm watching him from the bench. He's looking down at me, and I'm watching him and where eye contact. And as I get down to my chest, I pause, and then I knock out eight to nine

rips and just looking at him. And as I finished, I hold it at the top and I go, you can just guide it back in, and so he pulls it back to two inches into the into the upright struts that hold it and uh, he goes, I stand up, and I'm still looking at him. I stand up and he goes, I can't do this. I got I know, let's take off some weight for you. And it was a great kind of inversion inversion moment. Uh. And then of course we went back to never speaking to each

other again. So that was the last time I spoke to him. You know, if if you grew up on ABC after school specials, you might think that that was a good moment, But that was that was a steroid fuel moment of rage, you know. And what I was hoping was transmitted in that moment was old man, you'd don't have a chance, you know, or like the line from Cape Fear, you know, I can outthink you. I cannot fight you. I can out you know, lift you, and outrage you. I can out thank you, and I

can out philosophy. I have exceeded you in every way. It wasn't a general good sign of mental health, but it was in terms of my personal development probably a really good sign. I was getting over wanting to be a son. Uh God, this is the part where I'm supposed to be really candid to encourage others to be candid. But I remember the girlfriend I had at the time. There was a resistance to telling her because not only was your athletic performance through the roof, but sexual performance

also through the roof. It's so cheesy, it's you know. I asked one of my body build a friends. I go, hey, do you let people know that you're on it? Do you just let them think you're this way always? He was like, I'm this way always because I'm always on, And I go, I'm not always on, but I feel like I should totally disclose, and he's like, I don't do that. So there there were well, there were reasons why people were not really looking too hard, like, gee,

you've gained ten pounds. I mean, everybody saw me taking protein. And there was a guy who I knew who was on a similar thing, and he asked him once. And the weird thing is this is all completely illegal, but a large number of people doing it that we worked

out with we're all cops. So it was a very interesting way of I mean, this is prior to Barry Bonds and Mark McGuire and the home of the steroid era of baseball, and these guys would take a growth horm and all this other stuff allegedly, but you had this weird detente with cops. So you know this guy you know, was a cop, and he goes, you look at pretty good. I go, yeah, because game about fifteen pounds in the last month and a half. Yeah about that.

He goes, what do you? What do you? I would say cyber genics, and so that became that would became yeah, me too, cyber genics too. And there was a thing called Cybergenics and that was pretty powerful, but it wasn't doing pounds of raw weight game. No, that's not cyber genics. But I never competed again. And after I took them because the purest in me didn't want to, I still at a certain level thought it was cheating and didn't want to do it. I didn't want to do it.

So but also something else happened when I started taking steroids. Bodybuildings seemed to be aspiration really seemed to be too small. This is this is the key to kind of the mental deformations. It seemed to be. It seemed to be kind of a parochial greatness. And I was I was I was looking for Master four life greatness like things. You know, I was gonna be the best singer and the best writer, the best not just good, the best,

the best anybody had ever seen. I mean it was a kind of madness, right and um kind of madness. But I look back and I was super productive during that period. Published a lot of magazines, did a lot of interviews, did a lot of work one awards. Not just athletic, was that anything but athletic? Was you know? Um? And I don't know that I make a one to one connection, but if you're being productive, then some of

that stuff is good. That might happen. And we were all I mean it was Nobody ever talks about the euphoria. I mean, look, you might get feeling, are you certain euphoria on angel dust, but you're not able to really physically back it up. But this was just we were euphoric. And but it was a cyclical euphoria, right you for that up portion of your cycle, and U the down

portion was routinely terrible. So all the heaven that we had all been enjoying these bodybuilders, bouncers, uh you know barbell boys that I knew when we would cycle at the same time on the downtop, I mean I remember going over pulling guns out of people's mouths because they was suicidal. Myself. Remember sitting watching some commercial for Scrooge was it Bill Murray movie, And at one point they're talking about putting a little love in your life. I'm

sitting there sobbing like a baby. And it wasn't even the movie. It was a commercial for the movie worse Right, and I'm like, my God, loving your life. And then at that point I realized, I think I may have mismanaged the down portion of the cycle. But that was a very dangerous couple of weeks because I was having like and they say in the Apocalypse now, I was having ideas that were increasingly unsound. Idea it became cha and uh. I was involved in the relationship then that

was probably not the best of all relationships. And I always thinking, I gotta I gotta settle down, I gotta get serious about life. We me and her, we could get all tied in. And of course, about two weeks, twelve or fourteen days afterward, when your body starts producing testospode again, your perspective comes back. But you know, during that two weeks, I could have said and done a lot of dage. I could have asked three or four people to marry me. You know who knows it was.

It was a cavalier attitude about things that I wasn't prepared and wasn't in the source material. The thing is, this community also included women and women bodybuilders who take steroids very frequently. The changes that they encounter through or irreversible. And there was this one friend of mine and she had gone out with a friend of mine and they broke up, and she was in the gym and we're training together, and she had this very kind of effective way,

this kind of breathy thing. I remember at the time, I mean its in my twenties. I think this is kind of sexiest kind of breathy thing she's doing. But we were actually training together, so it was annoying. After a certain point, I couldn't hear her, and I just said, I'm sorry, what you say? What did you want me

to put on? We were changing the weights on the day, and she was put on early five, and I realized that it was an accommodation that she had made because her voice had dropped an ox, so as long as she kind of whispered, she could maintain a higher voice, but when she raised the volume of her voice. It was, and that's like forever. I'm sure if I were to

find it today, she sounds. So it was. So I was surrounded by examples of people who I mean mostly the women who had physical changes that they were never going to be able to come back from UM. And and indeed, you know, I got paranoid enough about some of those changes that I actually sought out a doctor. I went through several so I could find a doctor who, in my mind was good enough some might say crazy enough to do the surgery that I had wanted done,

which was UM. When you have men who have too much estrogen in their system, get this thing called kind of camacity of fat starts to form behind the nipple in the chest, and you know, you start to develop kind of secondary female sexual characteristics. It's a it's a common thing that happens naturally, but it happens a lot when you see people who are abused steroids. So I said, I'm gonna get around this because once I started steroids.

Of course, the thing I told me about, that told myself about that first cycle was I just did it wrong. Next time, I'll do it right. So as a as A as A prophylactic measure. I want all that stuff, all those all those glands taken out. The doctor said, well, we can't do it if if after it happens, because then technically it'll be cosmetic. So why don't What if you would have a biopsy, dumb, we could say maybe it's possible be preconcerous and we could pull it out.

That way, go cool, let's do it. So insurance pays for it. So I had to burst into the laboratory and it was like to get my mammogram. But at least now when women talking about mammograms, I know what it's like. It's unpleasant and uh. And they did the surgery and they cut open my chest and uh, like use those those claws that they have an amusement parks to get stuffed animal toys to reach and pull out

all the glandular matter and cut it off. Took my nipples, put them back on and sewed them back on, and put drainage tubes in my chest, which I wore for three weeks. So that was I mean, if you smoke a joint three weeks later, you're probably not remembering that joint you smoke three weeks later, when I have tubes in my chest. I kind of remembered that this happened because I want to take steroids, so I was I was in at this point. I was committed to the

lifestyle you see now sitting here like this. It makes me sound crazy. It made you feel good enough that it was an actual effort to stop. And I have to say the circumstances under which I finally decided to stop or what you know, alcoholics call you have these moments of clarity, and it was a pretty potent one. We were all racing the three hundred, and I say we I'm talking about me and maybe nine other guys, ten twelve, maybe twelve tops, and I got a call.

One day. A couple of things happened simultaneous. One of the guys, who was one of the dealers, would get his big shipment and he would come to the gym and announced that he had had it, and then he, like Johnny Appleseed, would go from house to house to deliver it um And one day he got into the post office, got the shipment, went from house to house and the d e A followed him and busted every

single person that he delivered to. Lastly him somebody had gone over to his house to pick up a shipment was sitting there as a guy this in the Blue blazers kicked through his door. They come back to the gym and they say so and so got busted, and everybody who had purchased from him or used from him interrupted their workouts. It was literally like a like a run on the bank to opposite everybody gribbage in bags and you could tell exactly who was using because they

were all just out to go home. It's not like like coke where you know, I'm gonna flush it down to No. This stuff is hard to get, mostly to hide, give it to your girlfriend, put it at her house, or do whatever. So there was a massive bust. Right. People were looking at real people, friends were looking at jail time. And that was a pretty potent call. You know, if ever there were signs, that was probably a pretty good sign. You know, that was a good time to stop.

But um, but people do start to know that you're the guy who knows guys. So I didn't buy again, but I made introductions again to people who would I mean guys I knew who were hardcore users and they were not going to stop. I remember asking one guy. I go he was like an elder statesman, and I was like, I'm gonna ask him, like, how do when I was up to six c seeds? Like, how do I know? I haven't read in many cases of overdose?

How do I know if I've taken too much? And I asked him and he goes, well, I know I've taken too much when I and he pulls his shirt up and yeah, he's got there, you know, the ripped abs and stuff. And he pulls his shirt up and he goes, when I feel my liver and he points, and I for the first time notice something poking out of right under his rib cage, and he just when I feel it, when I see it start to swell

through my shirt, I back off. That was another sign there's never any why you never asked somebody, well, why would you smoke a joint? Why would you drink glass of wine? Sometimes you just do these things just to doom. You know, it's life on planet human, you know, why would you? Why would you do that to yourself? You don't. I'm many times I've actually heard that, you know, regards the tattoos or people do strange things sometimes and there was nothing quite as strange as this. Now you made

it through that one, all right? Next up, next week, we've got a Swedish royal, former beauty queen, speaker of three languages, world renowned nietzsche scholar PhD holder, and in a weird, unfortunate twist of fate, maybe Crackhore. Welcome to one Miss Josephine knock Off on the next edition of Ozzy Confidential. Ozzy Confidential is produced by who Else Made Eugenez Robinson, an executive produced by Robert Coolos, and this episode was sound designed, edited and mixed by Jamie con

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