ALL Steroid Stereotypes Are WRONG (Should You Do Steroids ep.18)

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🎓 ABOUT THIS VIDEO 
Not all steroid users are the same, and lumping them into one stereotype misses what actually drives outcomes. In this episode of "Should You Do Steroids," I break down why anabolic steroids don't create a personality, they amplify the one you already have. From the builder chasing a physique vision, to the athlete optimizing performance, to the person using steroids to fill a gap in self-worth, the same compounds produce wildly different results depending on mindset, identity, and motivation. If you're considering steroid use, already in a cycle, or just want to understand the psychology behind PED use and hormone optimization, this breakdown will change how you think about steroids, mental health, and identity.

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🧠 TIMESTAMPS
00:00 - Debunking steroid user stereotypes
02:00 - Steroids amplify existing traits
04:00 - The builder: steroids for physique
06:00 - The athlete: steroids for performance
08:00 - The optimizer: testosterone and health
10:00 - The access seeker: steroids and belonging
12:00 - The insecure user: steroids and self-worth
14:00 - Identity shapes steroid outcomes
16:00 - Internal identity vs external validation
18:00 - Self-worth tied to physique: the risk
20:00 - Collaborative vs controlling hormone health
22:00 - Same steroids, different mindset, different results
24:00 - Steroid pharmacology vs psychology

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So there's this picture that people have in their head who uh you have people who use steroids, like it's it's one guy, it's one type, it's the meathead, it's the insecure dude who's always overcompensating, it's the fucking cheater, like whatever the lazy version is that like whoever's talking, it's already pointed on. And it's it's just wrong. People who use steroids is not one kind of person, it's not even close. It's this is just a lazy fucking bullshit way of looking at this. So, last episode of the series, should I do steroids? We talked about the terrain. We talked about the body that you're bringing to this, right? Like how it changes as you age, all of that. So, this episode is about the other half of that equation, right? Not the body, but the person inside of it. Because the the thing that people don't really say it out loud is that the compound doesn't decide what this does to you. You decide who already, like who you are, decides your steroid experience. And and that's what what I want to get into today. So let me give you the framework first, and then we're gonna we're gonna break it down. So, steroids, as you know in the series, they don't install a new personality on you, they don't make you somebody else. That's like what they actually do, and this is the whole like episode right here, is that they take who you already are and then they turn the volume up on that. That's it, they amplify whatever is basically driving you underneath, whatever's the real reason that you pick this up, that thing is gonna get louder. So, if you want to know what steroids you're going to do to a person, you don't look at the gear that they're about to take, you look at the person, right? You look at what they're actually chasing because the gear just gives them more of it. So that's the whole fucking secret right there. And then when I when I coach guys, right, the first thing that I'm really trying to read is not their blood work or their training age or any of that. It's this what kind of user is this? Because there are different uh people, right? There's a handful of types, and they actually go in a really different direction once you add enhancements. So let me walk you through the types of people that I coach and that I deal with in consults that go through enhancement. So the first type of person who gets enhanced is going to be our builder, right? So this is the guy who's gonna look at his own body like a project, right? Like something that he's making. He's got this uh picture in his head of what he actually wants to look like, this internalized version of himself, and the whole game for him is basically dragging the outside closer to this inside picture. This guy is a sculptor, that's just how he sees the world, right? The body is clay, and he's the one working that. So for a builder, steroids are going to be a tool, right? Like a better chisel. They they let him actually do the building that he's been seeing in his head for years. And there's uh there's something genuinely great about this type of people. These people were very creative, they're very good, self-directed, right? He's not uh he's not doing it for anybody else, he's doing it because he's got a vision and he wants to close the gap between where he is and where that vision is. Now, watch what enhancement does to the to this person, right? It doesn't turn him into a completely different person, he becomes more of a builder, right? The vision gets sharper, he gets more obsessed with the details, like borderline crazy about it, honestly. The little refinements, the bringing off of this body part or that one, he starts sweating shit that nobody else would even notice. Like the thing he already was, it becomes harder, right? That's the amplification. It's a builder on gear, it's literally just a louder builder. Now, the second type of people who search for anabolic steroids are going to be the athletes, right? So this is a completely different animal. People conflate it to you, but that dude, this guy, he doesn't care about the mirror in the same way. He cares about what the body can do. Can it move more weight? Can it run faster? Can it recover quickly so that he can train again sooner? Can it outlast the guy across from him, right? The body's not a sculpture to him. It's literally a weapon. The body is not a sculpture to him, it is a machine, and he wants the machine to perform. So for the athlete, the steroids, they're not about looking a certain way. They're all about function, they're all about strength, speed, endurance, recovery, the neural drive, the ability to just keep pushing, right? Those are the things that the athlete values. He is a competitor, he wants capability, he doesn't care about aesthetics, right? Or it's secondary. And he'll basically take a body that looks worse if it performs better. And honestly, a lot of the best ones do exactly that. They do not give a shit about the mirror. And enhancement makes him more of that. He gets more capable and then he wants even more capability. The competition in him gets louder. He starts chasing performance, uh, you know, because uh now he can actually feel like he's responding. So it's the same guy turned all the way up. You you see the pattern already, right? It's the same move every time. The person never changes, the person just intensifies. The third type is going to be the optimizer. So this one's a little bit like quieter, so to speak, it's like hard to catch and honestly, like a lot of people don't even know that this type exists. So the optimizer is not trying to be huge. These guys get a lot of flack, but I love working with them, right? He's uh he's not trying to do a to be a beast on a single platform, right? He wants to feel good, he wants his hormones to be dialed in, he wants a stable mood, he wants a libido that works on command, he wants energy that shows up every single day, and he wants a clear head so he actually gets his work done and be more present in his life. So for this guy, in uh enhancement is super fucking subtle, right? It's almost invisible to the outside. You you walk past this guy and you have no idea that this guy's enhanced. Like he doesn't want to be physically remarkable. That's not the point for him. He wants to feel steady, he's literally curating his own biology, he's taking care of it, he's treating himself like something worth maintaining. So he's uh a self-steward, so to speak. That's the identity. Somebody looking after their own machine with a little bit of care instead of just running into the ground. What happens when you enhance this guy? Well, in general, he becomes more attuned to his own biology, so he gets more dialed into how he feels, more precise about it, more interested in the whole fine-tuning. So the optimizer gets more optimizer-e, right? It's a louder version of the same thing. And honestly, this is one of the healthiest ways to run this stuff, but nobody talks about it because I mean, it's just like, oh, steroids is for performance or it is for bodybuilding, right? I'm a mix of them, right? Now, now the fourth type, this one is more emotional. So this guy is the access seeker. I I guarantee you haven't thought about it this way. So this is gonna be somebody who's walked around their whole life feeling like they were locked out of something. Like there's a version of uh physical existence, a way of being in the body that other people got to have, and this guy never did. And these people, they're gonna carry this sense that without help, that door is gonna stay shut on them forever. So for this person, steroids, they feel like a key, dude. Like they could finally be able to walk into a room that they always felt like they belonged, but they couldn't get to. So there's real emotion behind this one. It's about alignment, it's about becoming the version of themselves they always pictured, but they can never reach on their own. So when it works for this type of guy, it can almost feel like relief, like, oh shit, this is what it was supposed to feel like to be in my own body. And I don't want to be dismissive of that, right? Because there's a for a lot of people, this is very real, very meaningful, right? The danger is just that it's gonna be the same as others. Enhancement makes them more of what they are. So they that the access that they feel, they want more of it now. And you gotta watch that that pursuit of the door doesn't eat the whole rest of it of your life because it can't, and I literally seen it happen. This one I saved it for last on purpose because this is the one that worries me. So the fifth user is going to be the insecure user. So this is the person who's hopping on steroids and hoping that it will fix how they feel about themselves. It's not about their body, it's not about their performance, it's not about access, it's about their worth. They're not trying to express who they are, they're trying to escape who they are. That's a big difference, right? It matters a lot. So the builder is saying, hey, here's who I am. Let's make this guy fucking real. The insecure user is saying, I fucking hate who I am. Like, get me the fuck out of here. And they're hoping that the gear is gonna be the exit. I'm not gonna soften this, but steroids cannot do that. They literally cannot do that. They will not fix your self-worth. What they will do is postpone the reckoning. So you get bigger, you get some size, you feel a little bumped for a minute, and the voice in your head, you know, that's been sitting, you know, uh uh really, really loud, it's gonna basically start to shift into being more quiet, right? And then it comes back though, because it was never about the size, it was never about the body. The body was just where you were pointing the problem at, and you can't fix a self-worth problem with the fucking needle. I'm sorry. The the amplification hits this one the hardest, and it's the shit that keeps me up, honestly, because what gets turned up is his dependence. So the insecure user, he's gonna become more dependent on external validation, not less. So more hooked on how people look at him, more shaken when the drug doesn't cooperate. He's basically chasing a feeling that the drug literally can't give him, and every cycle just digs that hole even deeper. So that's a bad fucking place to run from, right? And if that's you, I'd rather you hear it from me now than learn it in the hard way over the next 10 years. So then it's five people. You got the builder, the athlete, the optimizer, the access seeker, and the insecure. And I want you to notice the thing that they all share because that is the point of presenting all of these to you. So every single one of these becomes more of themselves under enhancement, not less, more. So the builder builds harder, the athlete chases more capability, the optimizer gets more dialed in, the access seeker wants more of the door, the insecure guy gets more dependent. The gear didn't decide any of that, the gear just found what was already running and just cranked that bitch up. That's why I don't buy the whole like steroids change people thing. They don't change you, they reveal you. That's it. They they show you what was actually underneath because now it's loud enough that you can't ignore. If if somebody turns your hole into uh, you know, uh you you into a fucking asshole on gear, dude, I like the asshole was already there. The gear just turned it up so like more people could finally see who you truly are. And if somebody gets sharper and more disciplined and more themselves in a good way, same fucking deal that was already there. Now, here's where this gets interesting, and this is the part that I really want you to reflect today. So there is a difference between the body becoming part of your identity, which is fine, and the body swallowing your identity, which is a trap. And enhancement is gonna push people towards the trap without them even noticing. So let me show you the good version of this first, right? A ton of guys who enhance, they they uh they they describe feeling more like themselves, they don't describe feeling like fake or like you know, plastic. They say stuff like, oh, my body finally matches how I feel inside. It's literally gender-affirming therapy, right? They they walk differently, they take up space in a room differently, they carry themselves with more agency, and that is real, right? That's the person becoming a truer expression of that person, and that is a good outcome. There's nothing wrong with that at all. The trap sits right next to it. You now become the big guy or the jacked one or the girl with delts that everybody notices, right? And people start reflecting that back at you. So that's who you are to them now. And slowly, without you even deciding it, you start to feel like you have to be more of that because that's where you found acceptance and you found your place. So, like the physique isn't something you have anymore. Now it's something that you owe. You are bound to the physique. Your identity moved to the outside of your body and it got handed over to the people to how they see you. And you know when this shows up the loudest? When somebody thinks about coming off or has to for health or for life or for whatever reason, it's not the physical drop that wrecks them. Like their body coming down a bit, that is very manageable. What wrecks them is the role feeling threatened, right? Because if they're the big guy and you stop being the big guy, then who the fuck are you? So that's where it creates that misalignment and the panic, right? So it's not about muscle at all, it's about an identity that got stuck to the outside of you, and now some of your worth is literally sitting in other people's eyeballs, and that's a fragile fucking place to keep it. So, what is the healthy version of this? Because I don't want you walking away thinking that the answer is that I don't care about your body. That is not it. The healthy version of this has an internal anchor. So the body's part of your identity is just not the core of your identity. So there's a sentence that I want you to uh that that that I want you to be able to say in this physique is an is an expression of my choices, okay? So that is the healthy version versus the trap, which is what you've been saying, which is the physique is the basis of my worth. So the physique is an expression of my choices versus the basis of your worth. They look very similar on the surface, but they're completely different. So the first guy, the guy who's uh, you know, who uh if he has to come off tomorrow, he would be annoyed, sure, but he would be fine because the physique is an expression of his choices, because his worth was never sitting on his boulder shoulders. Now the second guy, whose physique is the basis of his worth, he's gonna come off and it's good, he's gonna enter a fucking crisis because he's built his entire self on top of a thing that was always temporary shit. So one of these is stable, the other one is literally a house built on rented ground, and the landlord is your own biology and it will ask for the ground back eventually. And this identity thing, it doesn't just mess with how you handle coming off, it actually runs the whole long game philosophy on this stuff. So watch this. Two guys, right? The first guy sees himself as sovereign over his own body. Like this is mine, I'm in charge of it, I'm gonna work with my body. So he treats enhancement as an act of collaboration. He respects the machine, he pushes it, but he also listens to it. So that guy, he's gonna tend to have longevity in this, right? Because he's not at war with his own physiology. This is how we work at Oftalab. Now, the second guy, he feels entitled to the results and very, very fast ones. Now, this is uh, you know, the guy who normally works with a bodybuilding coach, right? He he treats his body like a slave that owes him a transformation on his fucking timeline. So he doesn't listen to the body, he forces it, he beats it, he overrides every signal that it sends because it's got a deadline on his head. And that guy burns out every single time. It's not a maybe, it's literally a win because you cannot build a biological system into submission forever. You are against you versus biology, you're always going to fucking lose eventually. It just doesn't work like that. It never has, and it always sends the fucking bill anyway. So, same compounds, completely different outcome. And the thing that decided was not the pharmacology. We didn't even talk about compounds, it was the identity of the person holding this syringe. So, let me give you uh an objection here to everything that I've been saying, and I want to present it in the strongest possible way because when I when I wrote the book uh that the series is based on, I had this presented to me in some of the cohorts that we had with the clients reading this stuff together. So the objection goes something like this yo, Nate, I hate when people call me Nate, by the way. Uh, Nathan, this is way too fucking much. It's uh it's a drug, right, dude? You just take it, your muscle grows, that's the whole story. So, all this identity talk, the builder, the access seeker, the trap of the role, that's just navel gazing, right? It's me making a hormone into a personality test. People take gear for one simple fucking reason, dog. They want to be bigger. Just stop overthinking a chemical, bro. I get it. Sounds like a no bullshit take, right? It sounds like very much something that I would say. And on the pharmacology side, it is dead simple. The compound is gonna bind to the receptor, protein synthesis is gonna go up, and you're gonna grow. That part is not mysterious. Here's what the objection misses, right? The pharmacology being simple doesn't mean your decision to decide to hop on or not is simple. So, two guys they can take the identical compounds at the identical dose, and one of them is gonna build something he's proud of for the next 30 years, and the other one is gonna wreck his relationship with his body, and he can't even come off without falling apart. Same fucking drug, same fucking dose, totally different outcome. And one of them is a fucking wreck. And if