Testosterone vs. steroids: Comparing the disciplined bodywork projects of performance and image enhancing drug users in Australia.

Abstract

In response to Australian media coverage that attributed violent attacks to steroids, a new law targeting androgenic anabolic steroids was introduced in 2014, reclassifying steroids as a narcotic and punishing illicit users with lengthy jail terms. Stereotypes about the users were imputed to be the drug's effects: when used by young men, steroids achieved symbolic status as a substance symptomatic of pathological masculinity, but when used by ageing men, steroids were portrayed as a benign medication helping those deficient in testosterone to achieve normality. While drug historians have shown how public images and policy around particular drugs have changed over time depending on the social locus of use, the case of steroids in Australia demonstrates how dual public images and policies can simultaneously coexist around a single drug, such that people use different nomenclature-'steroids' and 'testosterone'-to describe identical substances. This article reports on ethnographic research conducted amongst Australian steroid users in 2013-2014, when laws were changing. While the new law symbolically marked steroid users in terms of excessive masculinity, both legal and illegal steroid users sought to distance themselves from the media's caricatures. Even as different people using the same set of drugs faced radically differing levels of access and legal risk, all used steroids for carefully designed projects of self-improvement and self-realization, not only to build high-performing bodies but also as elements in the crafting of disciplined, responsible, moral selves. Both legal and illegal users were connoisseurs of biomedical knowledge but while legal users of testosterone replacement therapy recruited biomedical authorities to their goals, illegal steroid users evaded biomedical authority and produced their own ethnopharmacological knowledge through self-experimentation. None of the users, regardless of the legality of their steroid use, believed that the new law targeted them.