Athlete Junkies

Seems like any more you have to do drugs to stay competitive. Not the same kinds of drugs your parents did in the sixties. There is a new breed of drug addict and I think the message they are sending to our youth is almost just as bad. I'm talking about athletic and fitness competitors. There are two schools of thought on this. The first is: What is the Harm? You do what needs to be done to stay at the top of your field. Performance enhancing drugs, steroids, they are just training tools. The second school of thought is, well, the first school of thought is a bunch of crap. We tell our children to look to the athletes and fitness competitors as the superstars. We tell them to follow in the athletes footsteps with the hope that keeping our kids involved in sports will keep them off of drugs. Yet today it looks like no matter which way you go your going to wind up doing drugs. You either a regular junkie or a sports junkie. The current athlete is setting unreachable standards. Look at bodybuilders, fitness competitor, even actors preparing for a movie (Brad Pitt in Troy) who use steroids. Awesome specimens of human flesh that no matter how hard you ever work you will never be able to look like that unless you use drugs. I wonder where is the line? People, especially need to be aware, in order to set obtainable and reasonable expectations for themselves. Should there be a disclaimer on every ad, this person used performance enhancing drugs in preparation for this event? How do we make our kids aware that images are photo shopped? An asterisk, is that the answer?*