When Your Man's A Steroid Junkie

’Roid use among young men is so widespread, gyms are now installing needle exchanges. But how does ‘juicing’ affect your relationship? Alex Harris racks up with Tom Powell (left) to find out

- Alex Harris

“ I’VE ALWAYS TRAINED SO I LOOK GOOD TO PULL...”

…Tom Powell explains, his eyes steadying on his reflection as he sets up for a deadlift. It’s half-past nine at night, the residual light from the warehouse gym the only evidence of life inside an otherwise disused industrial estate in South Wales. Tom tightens a clasp on a bar. “You get good feedback from girls,” he smiles. “Then you get addicted.”

So he goes about his body business. He clanks through sets, racking up 210kg for squats, 270kg for deadlifts – a modern-day Adonis, but with buttery blonde highlights. A poster behind him reads, ‘Re-rack your weights, bro. Your mother doesn’t work here.’ The staccato soundtrack of metal warring with metal echoes around the gym. I have never felt so out of place.

Despite being dealt a genetic royal flush by age 18 – well over 6ft, with the kind of body that would leave a pro athlete prodding his fat bits – Tom, now 26, chose to gamble it all last year. He broke the shackles of human physiology and injected himself with a potent, body-transforming, life-changing concoction of anabolic steroids.

With his big guns and extensive tattoos, it would be easy to dismiss Tom as your classic ’roid-head. But after just 10 minutes in his company, what’s worrying me more than anything else is that he seems entirely normal.

’Roids are all the rage