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A Startling Discovery
Lori Lewis never set out to be a crusader. All she wanted that day in September 2004, rummaging through her son Bryan's closet, was to locate a pair of jeans to return to the mall. Instead, she spotted an unfamiliar travel bag. Curious, Lewis opened it and found a vial of liquid and syringes. It felt like someone punched her in the stomach. She thought her son was doing heroin.Calling a local Walgreens, Lewis was relieved to learn that the drug was an anabolic steroid. Then she got mad. Why would Bryan be taking steroids?
"Dude, your mom's looking for you." Bryan Dyer, emerging from afternoon classes at Colleyville Heritage High School in the affluent Dallas, Texas, suburbs, looked over to where a friend was pointing. There at the curb, behind the wheel of her white Navigator, sat his mother. She looked furious.
"Get home now," she said.
Bryan, almost 17, a lanky six-footer who had played quarterback on the junior varsity football team the year before, was an outgoing kid who made A's and B's. Like most boys in Colleyville, he favored jeans, sneakers, T-shirt and a ball cap pulled down over his face. His parents divorced when he was an infant, and he lived with his mother, stepfather, older brother and younger sister. Still, his dad, a former high school football star in nearby Arlington, had remained a presence in Bryan's life as he went through T-ball, Little League, peewee football, and on into high school sports. As for his mother, she and Bryan had been close since the divorce. But at that moment, he would have chosen to face a wall of linemen rather than her rage.
When he walked into the family room of their spacious home, his mom was waiting, vial and syringes in hand.
"Why are you taking steroids?" she demanded.
Bryan stared, unable to speak. "Mom," he said finally, "the majority of the team is on them." Bryan explained that he had hoped to make varsity. His coaches and his father urged him to bulk up. Creatine and protein shakes didn't help. So using money he had earned working at Applebee's, he purchased a $200 vial of "Deca" -- nandrolone decanoate -- from a senior on the team. For five weeks he injected himself in the hip.
Lewis broke in. "What were you thinking?"
"Mom," he said, "coaches tell us to get bigger, stronger, faster. They don't tell us how. They just tell us to do it."
Like many parents of teenagers, Lewis was well-versed in the dangers of alcohol, inhalants, pot -- even Ecstasy. All she knew about anabolic steroids was that they were illegal. Later, she went online, quickly learning that regular use can lead to liver damage, cancer, heart disease and other physical problems, plus emotional effects like depression and "roid rage."
Bryan stopped the injections when his back broke out in acne, another common side effect. By the time his mother found the vial, he had been steroid-free for months. But, Lewis wondered, how many other kids out there were taking the stuff?
"I'm calling the school!" she said.
"You can't!" Bryan insisted. "I'll be screwed!"
"Don't worry," his mother assured him. "Nobody will know it's you."
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