The other drugs were supposed to help him readjust to life without steroids. What he didn't realize, is that Nubain and Percocet could also lead to addiction. The drugs have similarities to morphine, though Nubain is considered to have less addictive potential. "I'm not using them now, but I do crave them,"

He is getting treatment from Dr. Harrison G. Pope, chief

of the Biological Psychiatry Laboratory at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital in Boston, In a letter in to The New England Journal of Medicine Pope wrote :"Steroids may serve as 'gateway' drugs to opiod dependence,"He and Drew Arvary, a substance abuse counselor at Sunrise House, an in-patient dependence treatment facility in Lafayette, N.J. looked at 227 men admitted for dependence on heroin or similar drugs in 1999. They found 9.3 percent had a history of steroid use.

The men indicated they were introduced to the harder drugs and use the drugs to deal with steroid-related problems such as irritability

while on steroids or depression after they gave up steroids. Steroids themselves are not physically addicting but, when users go off the drugs, the shrinkage of muscle can be hard to handle, They don't feel pumped; they don't feel their muscles are full. The only way they can go out to function is some kind of narcotic mainly heroin, in this case.
Former steroid and opiod users are even harder to treat than opiod-only users, Arvary said. The findings cannot prove that steroid use in itself led to use of the harder drugs. However, although the drugs are not similar, other studies have indicated the two drugs might effect the brain in similar ways. | | |