When Your Man's A Steroid Junkie

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

‘I’VE ALWAYS TRAINED TO LOOK GOOD – TO PULL WOMEN,’

Tom Powell explains, his eyes steadying on his reflection as he sets up for a deadlift. It’s 9.30pm, the light from the gym the only evidence of life inside an otherwise disused industrial estate. Tom tightens a clasp on a bar. ‘You get good feedback from girls,’ he says. ‘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 with buttery-blonde highlights. A poster behind him reads, ‘Re-rack your weights, bro. Your mother doesn’t work here.’ The soundtrack of metal warring with metal echoes around the gym. I’ve never felt so out of place.

Despite being dealt a genetic royal flush by age 18 – over 1,8m, 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 tattoos, it would be easy to dismiss Tom as a classic ’roid-head. But after 10 minutes in his company, what’s worrying me more than anything else is that he seems entirely normal.

’Roids are all the rage