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There are some things a human body can’t do without chemical assistance, a certain physique available only to those willing to climb the rarefied and dangerous heights of steroid use. But, thanks to both the reclassifying of anabolic steroids as a schedule III narcotic and advancements in new pharmaceuticals, juicers have found a whole new world of muscle-expanding drugs. A new generation of hormone therapy that carries its own risks.

My new authority on steroid use and hormone therapy, Joey O, had been juicing for years when he benched 555 pounds at the 190-pound weight class, five years ago. He was ranked 36 in the U.S., making him both freakish and awesome in equal measure. (Joey O would only talk to us on the condition that we only refer to him by his nickname, and that his picture not be taken.)

Joey O is five years out of the gym, 42 years old, a bit softer, a bit older, with a mud-thick New Jersey accent. I ask him about Meatloaf’s famous affliction from the movie Fight Club: “Bitch tits.” Joey O smiles and explains: “Bitch tits, yeah, your nipples get hard, they swell up — they hurt and you take your Nolvadex. Sure, you might lactate a bit, crack and bleed, but you’re ready and you take care of it before you’re needing sports bras and Band-Aids.”

The condition is medically known as gynecomastia and occurs in anabolic steroid users when their bodies go into distress over the amount of testosterone present and begin to manufacture corresponding amounts of estrogen. Nolvadex — Tamoxifin, as it’s now sold after its patent expiration — refuses to allow estrogen to bind or find a home. It’s used in the treatment of breast cancer. A second option is taking birth control, yet another cycle in the steroid user’s regime, though most of these drugs are injected to avoid dilution by the liver, which happens when the drugs are taken orally.

In the movie Meatloaf is undergoing hormone therapy. Joey O just started the same program: weekly doses of testosterone (“test”) and the option of more frequent human growth hormone (HGH) injections.

Even with the image of a cracked and bleeding chest in mind, I can’t stifle a laugh. Joey O’s style is toned down a bit from Suncoast living, but he is still the guido’s guido. He stands about five feet and five inches tall — with coarse black hair starting at his fingers, running up his arms and billowing past the collar of his shirt to his head, where it’s slicked back and just starting to thin. And if you don’t know him, he comes across like he sports a rather sizable chip on his shoulder.

With this in mind I ask him about his balls.

He doesn’t flinch. “Peanuts,” he says, with a laugh of either contempt or disregard. I struggle to get my mind around what he’s saying. Unable to avoid an image, I wrap a fist around the tip of my left pinkie, holding it up between us. “Like this?” I ask.

“Yeah, they shrink up to like peanuts,” he says again, like he’s making it more clear than before, and the girl next to us, at the bar where Joey O works, until now silent and delightfully uninvolved, chimes in: “Like a piece of Double-Bubble!” Joey O nods, sanctioning her reply. “Get it? Double-Bubble…” she says, “Get it?”

Getting it, Joey O smiles and says: “I started juicing after I got out of the Marines in 1992. Everybody was doing it. I saw a guy at the gym, bigger than he had any right to be, and I asked him what was up. We chat a bit; he takes me out to his car. His dad worked on horses and this guy’s trunk was full of steroids. Full. Everything you’d ever need.”

Another Fight Club juicer fact: Steroids are used on racehorses. Winstrol (“Winnie”) is a “cutting agent.” You know those rippling, striated flanks on racehorses? That’s Winnie doing its cutting. Cutting refers to the cut produced in muscle tone in the absence of body fat — the less fat, the more tone and the sharper the cut. Winnie was Joey O’s cutting agent of choice.

Anadrol (oxymetholone 50 — or “A-Bombs”) became Joey O’s bulking agent of choice. Bulking agents are the other half of the steroid equation. You bulk, you cut, you cycle off. Ad nauseum until the side effects become too dramatic to ignore. And the side effects are bigger than a juicer’s bodybuilding trophies. In the case of Anadrol: “It’s just like a bullet, right to your fucking liver,” Joey O tells me from behind the bar, jabbing his left pointer finger into his lower rib cage.

The liver is hit so hard by Anadrol that renal failure is a real possibility. Because the liver filters all your body’s fluids and this particular fluid is so poisonous, it can overwhelm the organ completely. The drug is prescribed to late-stage cancer and AIDS patients, as well as those suffering from extreme anemia.

It wasn’t the health risks that got Joey O to quit juicing or even the “blowout,” which occurs when a steroid user is so swollen muscularly, so pumped, that his steroid injection site refuses the injection and blows out, pumping out body fluids through the hole created by the needle. “The blowout happened in my bedroom one day: blood and steroids squirting everywhere. What a mess. All over my blankets; I had to throw them all out. I didn’t have any napkins or nothin’ and a little cotton ball wasn’t gonna stop it.”

What finally did stop Joey O from using steroids was the lifestyle that came with them. “I was headed straight to prison,” he says, smiling again. Joey O left New Jersey before that happened.

In Florida, he faced the withdrawal symptoms: mood swings, insomnia, restlessness, reduced libido, decreased appetite and depression, which is known to persist for a year or more. What really depressed Joey O was that he no longer enjoyed going to the gym; what depressed him even further was that in Florida simple possession of a steroid gets you a felony with up to five years in prison. Steroid use is so widespread in Florida that it has trickled down into high schools. Florida is now the third state, along with New Jersey and Texas, to require steroid testing for high school athletes.

Joey O is smiling now, because he’s back. And this time, he’s 100 percent legit.

It started the same way. Joey O saw physician’s assistant Domininc Sorrentino, president of Affinity MedSpa, in the bar where he works and asked where to find something that would get him back to the gym. Sorrentino told him that he, personally, wasn’t on steroids but that he legally prescribed all the drugs that helped him develop his own massive physique. “I thought he was fuckin’ jerking me off,” Joey O says.

Sorrentino, 38, a competitive bodybuilder for almost two decades and a Florida state overall champion, says 20 percent of his business is weightlifters. “I work closely with the trainers over here at Lifestyles on Route 70 and they send their clients in. They see improved muscle tone, weight loss, better definition. Overall, they see dramatic gains,” he says during an interview at his office. (Sorrentino is pictured above.)

He shows me a bottle of testosterone and I ask him how long the bottle should last. “Well,” he says, “this could last up to 12 weeks. But some of my guys will go through this in five weeks.” Patients are given the option of coming in for their injections or taking the drugs home.

I ask Sorrentino if this isn’t perhaps skirting the laws laid out to prevent drugs in the marketplace that induce testosterone development. He says: “Not if there is documentation showing that an individual has low levels of testosterone.”

“And what about the Pill Mill Bill?” I ask, referring to the recently passed Florida law that will regulate how much and how often an individual receives a pharmaceutical drug. Sorrentino says, “I’m not very concerned. The people that make the laws, they’re the ones benefitting most from these drugs.”

And though there are documented benefits, the renowned Mayo Clinic points out many potential risks as well: fluid retention, baldness, sleep apnea, growth of the prostate, prostate cancer, enlarging breasts, testicle shrinkage and low sperm production.

And perhaps there is another risk they don’t mention, but one that Joey O shares with me in a follow-up interview. “I got a problem,” he says. “I had a blowout at the gym.”

Blowout. In this new world, I’m thinking injections, blood, steroids. “No,” he says, “my balls blew out. One is like normal; the other is rock hard and grapefruit-size.” He must have seen a look on my face because he quickly adds, “Well, like a small grapefruit, maybe an orange.”

“It’s an infection,” he continues, “like a head cold that just went down there, ya’ know?”

“You don’t think it’s the testosterone injections?” I ask.

He shakes his head: “No. No way, man. It’s just a cold.”

CORRECTION

Last Thurs., Oct. 15, I received the following email from Dominic Sorrentino, whom Contributing Writer Robert Johnson profiled in the above story:

To whom it may concern,

I am writing this letter in response to your current creative loafing publication from 10/9/2009 and titled: Juiced: How local steroid users are finding a new fix.

I am the owner / medical practitioner at Affinity Wellness Center Inc and agreed to have an interview by Mr. Robert Johnson at my facility approx 3 weeks ago. It was to my understanding that Mr. Johnson was to interview me at my office and learn more about what i do at center. I was completely unaware that Mr.Johnson was to use me in an article that pertained exclusively to “steroid abuser(s) like “Mr.Joey O” I was not given an option to sign any documentation / consents to the fact and was told that i would have an “informative” spot in your upcoming magazine.

Furthermore, i was not given an option to review any of this interview before publication. Mr. Johnson proceeded to question me about testosterone replacement in men and what may be the benefits and / or side effects of this medication. Again, i was given the indication that this was to be an “informative” interview and never at any given time was given impression that my facility was to coincide with a previous steroid abuser “looking” for an alternative place to get his “drugs” to keep his muscle mass and get “bigger”.

First of all, my facility and what i do as a professional here at Affinity should not and will not be affiliated with prior steroid abusers and have a strict policy here not to treat individuals who do “steroids” or men looking for increased muscular gains. Affinity Wellness is a medical based practice that provides supervised bio-identical hormone replacement therapy to both MEN AND WOMEN whom have clinically documented (via laboratory) low levels of functioning hormones (ie. testosterone, estrogen, thyroid, progesterone etc..) and symptomatic.  The majority of my patients are very symptomatic (post menopausal, depression, fatigue, fat gain, anxiety, fatigue etc..) and have documented medical conditions and/or diseases that hormones may benefit. Hormones are given as a preventative measure to help reverse disease states (ie diabetes, cholesterol, heart disease , bone etc, control symptoms, and are given at a very precise and low-dose. They are followed closely every 3-4 months with laboratory analysis, physical exam and prescription refills.

With all of this said and explained, i believe Mr. Johnson had other ideas in mind for his article. No where in here does Mr. Johnson explain what my facility does on a factual medical basis. Instead this article portrays my company as a facility that pushes testosterone (ie steroids in your world) to “steroid abusers” to get “bigger biceps (ie. cover shot) and “dramatic muscular gains” by coming to individuals and no where does mention the positive benefits of testosterone replacement in men, dosages, and other aspects of disease prevention in men etc.. instead he places a bogus and quote from the Mayo clinic that has absolutely nothing to do with low-dose testosterone replacement therapy which in fact helps prostate health and numerous other disease states.

Secondly, and more importantly, Mr. Johnson has written several misleading and untrue quotes from this interview including:

1. ist para: “Sorrentino told him that he, personally wasn’t on steroids but was legally prescribed all the “drugs” that helped him develop his own “ massive” physique– this is totally untrue, bogus, and never stated..

2. Overall, they see “dramatic gains” – again reference to muscular growth and not what i prescribe testosterone for. Yes, they may see improved muscular endurance, strength and fat loss but in such low dosage they will not get “massive” nor make “dramatic gains like ie. “steroid abusers”.

3. 3rd para: Yes, some of my patients do keep testosterone prescription here at facility but in such a low prescribed dose all my patients will not need refills for approx 3 months or 12 weeks if taking intramuscular injections, not “ 5 weeks” as was stated. I would have never said that and furthermore my patients are fully educated, and sign consent forms to take medication home to self-inject if needed.

4. 4th para- “skirting the laws” ? There is no such law in he state of Florida that does not allow physician on staff to prescribe testosterone in a controlled, low dosage for clinically documented hypogonad (low T) patient. Mr. Johnson needs to do his research.

5. 5th para- Pill Mill Bill?? completely unaware nor do i recall Mr. Johnson mentioning such a nonfictional entity. What does this supposed “pill Mill Bill” have to do with what i do and prescribe here?? Mis quote- “the people that make the laws, they re the ones benefiting most from these drugs?  I don’t recall ever saying that?

Again, Mr Johnson needs to do a lot more research before interviewing and seems to know nothing about bio-identical hormone replacement, medicine, and published studies showing benefits of testosterone replacement or BHRT, All in all he is really just trying to get off on writing blasphemous, and illogical stories for own benefit.

Next time try to publish something sound and concrete. I would have never allowed myself to be interviewed if knew what was going to be published here. Again, i was not given option to review this article before publication, when in fact “Joey O” was. I feel that this article has damaged my integrity, business, and what i do professionally for a living.

I would ask that this article be taken completely off of website and go as far as taking off of distribution shelves. I would personally like to receive a call from publisher (Nadiene) on this and discuss further options before i seek legal advice.

Dominic
Affinity MedSpa and Wellness Center
Dominic Sorrentino PA-C, AAARM
President , Board Certified Anti-Aging Medicine
Live Younger and Healthier…Longer!
941-739-7900
fax: 941-739-7999
www.affinitymedspa.com

I would like to first respond to Mr. Sorrentino’s specific allegations of misconduct by Robert:

Point 1. The paragraph Mr. Sorrentino refers to was based on information provided by Joey O, not by Mr. Sorrentino. I have placed calls to Joey O to verify the information, and will update this post when I receive an answer from him. UPDATE Joey O confirmed to me over the phone the anecdote he told Robert about meeting Mr. Sorrentino at the bar where he works.

2. I have reviewed Robert’s notes from the initial interview he conducted with Mr. Sorrentino, and while they are in general a rough guide to the conversation the two had, they do contain the specific phrase he is contesting: “dramatic gains.”

3. Again, while Robert’s notes do not reflect the quote in question word-for-word, it is clear from them that Mr. Sorrentino did suggest a five- to 12-week window for how long a prescription of testosterone might last for one of his patients.

4. We never indicated that it was against the law for Mr. Sorrentino to prescribe testosterone.

5. The reference to Florida’s Pill Mill Bill came in a question Robert posed to Mr. Sorrentino. We never claimed that Mr. Sorrentino was violating said law. His response was given to Robert during a short follow-up meeting. Robert stands by the quote, but did not take notes while asking the questions. An Affinity receptionist who was present during the follow-up told me she could not say with 100-percent accuracy whether or not Mr. Sorrentino said what we quoted him as saying.

Robert violated CL policy by allowing Joey O to review the article before publication — we never allow interview subjects to look over pieces before they are published — and he made a mistake in not more clearly recording his interview with Mr. Sorrentino. We apologize for both errors, but we nevertheless stand firmly behind Robert’s reporting, and the accuracy of his portrait of Mr. Sorrentino.

As for Mr. Sorrentino’s contention that he did not know the subject of the story before agreeing to be interviewed, Joey O — who made the initial call to Mr. Sorrentino on behalf of Robert — told Robert he made the steroid angle clear from the beginning. Again, I have attempted to contact Joey O to discover the specific way in which he approached Mr. Sorrentino, and will update this post when I receive a response. UPDATE Joey O confirmed with me that he did indeed make the bent of the story clear to Mr. Sorrentino when he first mentioned Robert’s desire to interview him. This is what Joey O told me he told Mr. Sorrentino about the story: “He wants to write an article on the legal way for steroids, and it could promote your business.”

And addressing Mr. Sorrentino’s more general concerns: We never intended to imply — and I believe we did not imply — that there are not legitimate medical reasons for prescribing testosterone, or that the majority of Mr. Sorrentino’s patients are using testosterone for the wrong reasons. UPDATE Joey O, for his part, feels as if we did give readers the wrong impression of Mr. Sorrentino: “When we started all this I just said what he said. It was supposed to be an article that was a good thing about it … not making his place look like a juice place.” If we did give that impression to our readers our readers also received that impression from our reporting, we apologize. —Cooper Levey-Baker

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