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Anabolic steroids work as advertised. They enhance athletic performance.
Anabolic steroids work as advertised. They enhance athletic performance. Norman "Rocky" Rauch, a onetime champion weightlifter and bodybuilder, is living proof. Or, perhaps more accurately, barely living proof. Rauch abused steroids for years and got the results he desired and a whole lot for which he did not bargain. He is still an imposing figure at 63, a 6-foot-3, 240-pound man. But when Rauch limps into Rocky's Gym, the small health club he owns with his wife, Trudy, he looks nothing like the figure in the faded photos on the wall, the ones that depict him as a younger man, bronzed and ripped. Steroids did that for Rauch, turned him into a Greek god. Like Icarus, however, he flew too close to the sun. And, boy, did he get burned. There's the cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. It first reared its ugly head in 1986 and came back in '89 and again, with a vengeance, in '90. Rauch has been in remission since his bone marrow transplant, 15 years, knock on wood. There's the deterioration of his joints. Left shoulder, replaced. Left hip, replaced. Right knee, bone on bone; he wears a brace and doesn't even want to think about another replacement surgery. There are the staph infections, one of which shut down Rauch's kidneys two years ago. Three days a week, he goes to the Zablocki Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Milwaukee for dialysis. There are the basil cell carcinomas, the arthritis, the heart murmur, the bouts with depression. Steroids, he is convinced, did all that, too. On the plus side of the ledger, Rauch once won the over-40 division in the Mr. America bodybuilding contest and owns a roomful of dust-gathering trophies. "I think about all I went through since I took that stuff," Rauch says, spitting out the last word. "I have boxes of trophies, over 200 of them. I look at that and say, 'Was it really all worth it?' Would I take all of that and melt it down and cash out a clean bill of health, swap it out? "I mean, if I could I would. But I can't." Rauch worries that the message isn't getting out about the danger of steroid abuse. He worries that children see performance-enhancing drugs as the ticket to buffed bodies and improved self-esteem. Steroids are easily available, Rauch says, in high schools and health clubs, in small towns and big cities. Rauch lost his career in sales because of his health problems. Trudy Rauch lost her job because she took so much time off to care for her husband. They've downsized from their five-bedroom home, with its huge lot and swimming pool, because Trudy was overwhelmed trying to maintain it alone. The Rauchs live on Rocky's Social Security disability and the modest income they make at their fledgling gym, which has fewer than 25 members. "It's been hard," Trudy says. "It's not been an easy road because you start resenting. Sometimes I feel like his caretaker instead of his wife, and why do I have to go through all this? "We've had our ups and downs in our marriage. If I had to do it all over again, I can't tell you that I would. I really can't." Rauch first started using steroids in the late 1960s, when he was in the U.S. Air Force and training to try to make the 1968 U.S. Olympic weightlifting team. The team physician handed out pills and told the lifters to take two a day for eight weeks. "We didn't know what they were," Rauch says. "They were little blue pills; dianabol. Oh, yeah, they worked. I got stronger. My best clean-and-jerk was 365 pounds, and within four weeks, I did 400. All my lifts came up." Rauch cycled on and off dianabol for three years. He got stronger and stronger. But in 1971 he broke out in boils all over his body. He went to his family doctor, who lanced the boils and sent him to a specialist in Madison. "They took blood tests and found out my liver was severely deteriorated and my immune system was low," Rauch says. "I had a staph infection, and they put me on antibiotics. The doctor said, 'You must drink a lot.' I said I didn't and he said, 'Well, why is your liver damaged?' "I told him I was taking this little blue pill, dianabol, two a day. He didn't know what it was. He got out his medical journal and looked it up. Oh, anabolic steroid. Side effects: liver damage, heart damage, immune system, causes cancer. I mean, it went on and on." All the other lifters were taking dianabol. Rauch felt he couldn't compete without it, and no one was tested for steroids. "I asked the doctor what my choice was," he says. "He said, 'Quit and live or take them and die.'" Rauch quit and tried to make the 1976 Olympic team without the help of steroids. He never was able to duplicate his best lifts when he was on dianabol, however, and a torn quadriceps muscle effectively ended his days as a competitive weightlifter. Rauch turned to bodybuilding and by 1980 was having success at the local level. Eventually, he won a Mr. Wisconsin title. "I was going into a national meet in Chicago, and the guys in the gym were telling me I had to get on the sauce," Rauch says. "I said, 'What's that?' They said the sauce is orals and injectables. Testosterone, dianabol, anavar." Rauch began the extremely risky practice of "stacking," or combining two or more drugs. He eventually increased his dosage to 20 pills a day and "five or six" shots a week. He packed on 10 more pounds of muscle. To support his habit, he sold vitamins and supplements, telling customers that's how he got so big. "Then I turned around and used the money to buy my junk," he says. "If that ain't a hypocrite, I don't know what is." While he was using, he became irritable and moody and developed a hair-trigger temper. He had three episodes of "roid rage," taking out his aggression, thankfully, on inanimate objects. He dented the roof of his car and put his hand through a garage door. But when Rauch stepped onto the stage at the 1983 Mr. America competition in Los Angeles, the other contestants in the over-40 division didn't have a chance. All seven judges, he says, gave him first-place votes. Rauch had achieved his goal but was racked by guilt. When he found Trudy in the crowd after the competition, he confessed that he had been using steroids and promised he was through with them. Three years later, he started using again. One night, Trudy walked in on Rocky shooting up. One week later, Rauch says, he awoke with a lump in his neck "the size of a golf ball." A biopsy confirmed his worst fear: It was a malignant lymph node. Over the next few years, Rauch would become very familiar with hospitals. He was in and out for cancer treatments and eventually had a bone-marrow transplant. His joints deteriorated and after shoulder surgery in 2003, he developed a staph infection that damaged his kidneys. "My kidneys failed in September of 2003," he says. "I went on dialysis in April of '04. I'm on a (transplant) waiting list." The Rauchs opened their new gym a few weeks ago. Trudy runs the business, and Rocky helps out on days he feels up to it. A new client asked if he was licensed as a personal trainer, and he pointed to his trophies. That's my license, he told her. Forty-six years in the business. And what if a man walked into his gym someday with a bag full of goodies? "I'd say, 'There's the door. Please exit fast or I'm going to call the police,' " Rauch says. "I really don't want to see anyone else go through what I did. I could have avoided all that. It's unbelievable." He doesn't want people to feel sorry for him. He chose to use steroids to get where he wanted to go. He knew the risks. As Trudy says, "if you play you're going to pay, somewhere down the road." Rauch is paying, with interest. "You just take it one day at a time," he says. "I just thank God I'm still here." http://www.bnd.com/living/story/204923.html |
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