My Honest PED Story: Results and Side Effects

Performance-enhancing drugs are controversial, and I’m not writing this to tell anybody what to take, how to take it or how to avoid the consequences.

This is just what happened to me.

It’s about why I started, what I noticed and how quickly the results became easier to remember than the side effects.

Why I Started Using PEDs

Before I touched anything, I’d already trained naturally for around six or seven years. I’d built respectable strength and got myself into decent shape without drugs. I wasn’t somebody who trained for six months, got impatient and immediately jumped on steroids.

But years of natural progress didn’t fix my lack of confidence.

I still compared myself with other people. I still looked at better physiques and wondered how much further I could take mine. Maybe I was chasing a particular goal. Maybe I just wanted to improve myself. Whatever explanation I gave it, underneath it was the same feeling: what I’d built naturally still wasn’t enough.

I’ve written before about the question “Without your physique, who are you?” This was the other side of that problem. I had attached so much value to how I looked that improving my body started to feel like improving myself.

What I Actually Took

At around 30, I started using testosterone cypionate.

At the time, I called it TRT. That made it sound controlled and almost medical in my own head. Looking back, it wasn’t prescribed testosterone replacement based on a diagnosis, and it wasn’t being managed by a clinician. It was performance-enhancing drug use that I’d given a safer-sounding name.

I carried on like that for roughly six months.

The gains weren’t ridiculous. My strength didn’t suddenly explode, but my body composition improved. I looked better to myself and, because I looked better, I felt better.

Then the goalposts moved.

Friends around me were using stronger compounds and mixing different drugs together. My cousin had used them and got noticeably bigger. When enough people around you are doing something, it stops looking extreme. What I’d once considered a serious steroid cycle gradually started looking normal.

So I increased the testosterone and added Anavar and Masteron. I ran that combination for about 12 weeks.

Compared with some of the people I knew, it didn’t seem like a massive amount. But that is one of the traps. There is always somebody taking more, so you use their behaviour to make your own look sensible.

“At least I’m not doing what he’s doing” isn’t a health assessment. The NHS specifically notes that practices such as cycling and stacking do not have evidence showing that they reduce steroid-related side effects and harms.^[1]

The Side Effect That Made Me Paranoid

The first major thing I noticed was testicular shrinkage.

I’m not going to dress it up politely: my balls became tiny. I became properly paranoid that they wouldn’t return to normal. I’d go home, check them and think, “Are these ever going to grow back?”

Shrunken testicles, reduced sperm count and infertility are recognised physical effects associated with anabolic steroid misuse in men.^[1]

There is something almost ridiculous about taking drugs partly because you lack confidence, only for those drugs to hand you a completely new insecurity.

That was the first moment when the difference between looking better and actually feeling secure became impossible to ignore.

Then Came the Painful Spots

About six weeks into the stack, small spots began appearing across my skin. It wasn’t the dramatic back acne I’d seen in photographs online. They were tiny and scattered, but trying to squeeze one was unbelievably sore.

A friend told me Masteron was causing them, so I removed it.

That was his theory, not a medical diagnosis. I’d also decided it wasn’t acne by comparing it with pictures online, which obviously didn’t prove anything. It could have been acne, folliculitis or another skin reaction.

All I can say for certain is that the spots appeared while I was using the stack and took roughly two months to disappear. Severe acne is one of the recognised effects associated with anabolic steroid misuse, but that does not prove what my individual skin reaction was.^[1]

When Three Hours of Sleep Felt Normal

Sleep was probably the strangest part.

At first, I thought I was sleeping better. Then, as time went on, it became worse. I already struggled with sleep, but this felt different.

I could stay awake until four in the morning, sleep for about three hours and get up at seven without feeling tired. It wasn’t just lying there exhausted and unable to switch off. I genuinely felt as though I didn’t need much sleep.

That is what made it so easy to dismiss. If I’d felt destroyed every morning, I might have recognised the problem sooner. Instead, I felt fine, so I treated it as though it must be fine.

Meanwhile, the mirror kept giving me what I wanted. My strength wasn’t improving much, but my body composition was. That was enough positive feedback to push everything else into the background.

What Happened When I Stopped

After the cycle, I stopped everything completely for around three months. I went cold turkey and didn’t use PCT.

I kept training and didn’t lose a massive amount of muscle or strength. My sleep improved quickly and the spots eventually cleared. Because I still looked all right from the outside, part of me assumed I must have come through it all right.

But I didn’t have blood tests proving that my hormones or anything else had recovered. Looking normal cannot tell you what is happening with your blood pressure, cholesterol, fertility, liver health or natural hormone production. Anabolic steroid misuse is associated with potentially serious effects including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, liver or kidney problems, heart attack and stroke.^[1]

My experience isn’t evidence that somebody can copy what I did, stop without medical support and expect the same outcome. It only describes what I could see and feel.

The strength I had built before PEDs didn’t disappear either. That mattered, because the foundation came from years of consistent training. My training had changed repeatedly over the years, but the work underneath it was always real.

I Remembered the Results and Forgot the Side Effects

This is the part that stays with me most.

While I was using steroids, the side effects bothered me. The spots hurt. My sleep became abnormal. The testicular shrinkage made me genuinely paranoid.

Then I stopped. My sleep improved, my skin cleared and the fear gradually faded. The uncomfortable parts became memories, but I could still see the improvement in my physique.

I remembered the results more clearly than I remembered the cost.

When a side effect is happening, you tell yourself the drugs aren’t worth it. Once it disappears, your mind softens the experience. You remember looking leaner, fuller or more muscular, but you forget how worried you felt at two in the morning.

That is how another cycle starts sounding reasonable.

I’ve seen people become enormous while also developing skin problems, losing their hair or looking much older. I can’t pretend to know what they saw in the mirror. But it made me wonder whether muscle had become the only part of the picture they could still see.

The mirror can become selective. It rewards the change you wanted while your mind learns to overlook the price around it.

Where I Am Now

I’m now in my mid-to-late thirties, and my relationship with performance-enhancing drugs is different from when I began.

I use them less frequently now, generally around one 12-week period in a year, with occasional lower-dose use or cruising. I’m not going to claim I walked away permanently, because that would make this a cleaner story, not a truthful one.

Being less obsessive doesn’t make my current use medically safe. Calling something a cruise, a low dose or microdosing can soften how it sounds without removing the risks.

I’m not writing this as a confession or an endorsement. I’m writing it because insecurity, comparison and ambition convinced me that improving my body would improve how I felt about myself.

For a while, it did.

But the gym has also given me benefits that go far beyond appearance. That is why I now care much more about what exercise can do beyond building muscle than I did when I was only chasing changes in the mirror.

PEDs improved the thing I was looking at while creating problems I gradually learned not to see.

The results remained in the mirror.

The cost became easier to forget.

A health note: This article describes my personal experience and is not medical advice. Anabolic steroid misuse can cause serious physical and psychological effects and can be addictive. If you’re using PEDs, considering stopping or experiencing side effects, speak honestly with a qualified medical professional.^[1]

Research & Sources

1. NHS — Anabolic steroid misuse. Current UK guidance on recognised physical and psychological effects, addiction, cycling/stacking and getting medical help.