Adults - fully grown men and women - were shocked (not in the Casablanca sense of shocked; but really, truly, actually shocked) to learn that professional baseball players used steroids. How very sad. Not that athletes are using steroids; but that this was a surprise.
By the way, pro golfers use steroids (well, a broad glass of performance-enhancing drugs, including human growth hormone), too:
NEW YORK -- A Canadian doctor who has treated golfer Tiger Woods, swimmer Dara Torres and NFL players is suspected of providing athletes with performance-enhancing drugs, according to a newspaper report.
The New York Times reported on its Web site Monday night that Dr. Anthony Galea was found with human growth hormone and Actovegin, a drug extracted from calf's blood, in his bag at the U.S.-Canada border in late September. He was arrested Oct. 15 in Toronto by Canadian police.
When does one stop believing the lies? Do you need these lies for psychological comfort? Does it make the game seem less pure to know that athletes use drugs? If so, there is some salve for your souls.
Athletes do not use drugs to "cheat," or to "take short cuts." Athletes take performance enhancing drugs so that they may work harder. Read that again. They are not looking for the easy way out: They want to work harder.
Sure, you don't need large muscles to hit a gold club. You most certainly need smooth, lubricated, comforted joints.
If you have some tennis (or golf elbow), you take a few weeks off. A golfer wants to work through the injury. What to do? Take human growth hormone.
In fact, everyone over 40 reading this post should be on human growth hormone. Probably, though, your doctor will tell you that you don't need it. That's a lie, of course. You do need it - at least if you want to mitigate the decay attendant to aging.
Your doctor will also tell you that human growth hormone is not performance enhancing. Ten years ago, your same doctor would have told you that anabolic steroids don't work. Now the lie has changed: Steroids are dangerous. Once HGH becomes more mainstream (and, it's way more mainstream than you know), doctors will begin telling you how dangerous it is. I guarantee it.
The question one must ask himself is, as always, the same: Will I continue to believe the lies? Eventually, you need to grow up.
It's OK to believe mom and dad and the teachers and doctors when you're a child. Once a person achieves consciousness and is capable of reasoning, then it's time to take responsibility for one's own mind. Do the heavy lifting. The latest sitcom isn't going anywhere. TiVo it.
Oddly, though, you were probably more skeptical of adults when you were a child. "Wine and children," as Socrates said, "speak the truth." So perhaps it is insulting to children to claim that adults are the ones who need to grow up. It's the children, after all, who continually asks, "Why?" It's adults who bow their heads as slaves.
