Wired to the Teeth

He Strides imperiously onto the stage and the crowd at the Olympic hall in Montreal cheers wildly. Vasily Alexeyev, already acclaimed as the world's strongest man and assured of his second Olympic weight-lifting gold medal in the superheavy division, is about to attempt a world record in the clean and jerk.

New weights are added to the metal bar bell that rests on the floor and is the focal point of the weight-lifting competition, raising the total weight to 255 kilograms, or a staggering 562 pounds. But Vasily Alexeyev, his 345-pound frame bulging inside his red weight-lifting suit, remains unperturbed, staring intently at the bar. I can do it, he is saying to himself; I will do it.

Alexeyev approaches the bar slowly, closes his eyes momentarily, grips the bar and then lets out a giant sigh and hoists it to his shoulders, then above his head, staggering backward slightly, his bulbous belly quivering, his teeth locked in fierce determination. Now gaining control, Alexeyev's body tightens in the triumphant motionless position. He releases the bar and it crashes to the floor, but the reverberation is lost in the stomps and screams of an enthralled audience. Bravo! Hail to the champion!

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But where was Vasily Alexeyev the day he was ordered to appear for his precompetition medical test before the International Olympic Committee in Montreal? Was he, as his trainer explained to officials, out of the city, and thus unavailable that day to be tested for anabolic steroids and other banned drugs? Or was he, as most rival competitors and some officials suspect, anticipating the drug test and having his system flushed of traces of body-building hormones by a special diuretic?

For a number of reasons, these questions probably will never be resolved. Alexeyev won the gold medal and passed his medical tests, before and after the competition; no athlete or official from the Soviet Union with an ounce of sanity would risk a trip to Siberia by disclosing Alexeyev's pre-Olympic preparations, and the International Weight-lifting Federation, already embarrassed by the gold-medal disqualifications of a Bulgarian and a Pole, could hardly afford the shattering specter of its most familiar commodity becoming a symbol of medical science rather than of pure sports.

But to George Frenn, a United States Olympic hammer thrower who has watched Vasily Alexeyev, knows the drug culture in sports from amphetamines to Xylocaine and has culled scientific secrets from friends inside the iron curtain, all of the signs that day in Montreal were positive.

"Alexeyev's face was so blown out of proportion it looked like it was going to explode out of his skin," Frenn explained. "That's usually a sign of heavy drugs, especially steroids. And he had these little cholesterol globules that collect under the eyeball from too large a dosage of steroids. You can't tell me that he was missing for three days in Montreal because he was busy competing. I believe nobody could find him because the Russians needed time to clean out his system."

What troubles Frenn is not that a Russian won an Olympic gold medal over an American. To Frenn and other concerned athletes and medical authorities, the drug scene in sports is no longer a simple smoke screen to improve performances but a raging forest fire that officials neither understand nor have the tools to control. And one day, Frenn fears, the timber will begin falling: A world-class shot-putter will keel over in the Olympic stadium or an offensive lineman will collapse during a Super Bowl game from being "overamped."

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It could have happened to Jim Neidhart. Neidhart is a 22-year-old shot-putter from Long Beach, California, who thought that amphetamines and steroids would instantly tack on inches and feet to his throwing distance. It began innocently enough for Neidhart as far back as high school, where teammates would pop two-milligram "white crosses," named because of the symbol on the pill, before a game or a track meet.

As the country's top high school shot-putter in 1973, Neidhart hardly needed medical reassurance; he was consistently putting the shot from 60 to 65 feet. But after enrolling at UCLA, he admittedly began "abusing himself," and it finally came apart at the seams for him during the 1976 Pacific Eight Conference championship in Berkeley. He finished second in the shot-put that day, an event he expected to win, and already had 120 milligrams of Obetrol 20, a high-powered amphetamine, in his system ("enough to raise a building," says Frenn). To that he added tranquilizers and a few martinis.

The potent mixture helped send him on a rampage at the Marina Marriott Inn. Light fixtures were torn down in rooms, fire extinguishers pulled off walls, doors kicked in. The uncontrollable 320-pounder then tied four bed sheets together, hopped off a fourth-floor balcony with a fire extinguisher on his back and crashed into a first-floor room.

The display resulted in an embarrassing $5500 bill for UCLA and disciplinary action for Neidhart, who subsequently transferred to Cal State University at Long Beach. Fortunately, he is alive to recall what he terms "the low point of my life," and the thoughts of that night remain disturbingly fresh in his mind.

"This is what we've got to stop," Neidhart says today, willing to discuss his ordeal as a guide for other misdirected athletes. "I might have croaked that day, O.D.'d. But there's no valid counseling around today on drugs, except for someone like George. Doctors don't know what they're talking about and won't tell you the truth. The drug companies try to pretend nothing is happening and the athletes in this country are confused."

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The Physician's Desk Reference is an integral part of every doctor's office. It is supposed to contain everything he needs to know about today's drugs, their dangers, potency and implementation. But does it? For example, Dianabol is an anabolic steroid that Doug Young, a world power-lifting champion, calls "the king of the road" for building muscle tissue and improving athletic performance. Dianabol comes in pill form and can be used, according to the P.D.R., "as adjunctive therapy in senile and post-menopausal osteoporosis." The only mention of Dianabol's relationship to sports in the P.D.R. is the following warning, added within the past few years: "Anabolic steroids do not enhance athletic ability." Similar warnings have been attached to other steroids.

Dr. Irving Dardik, a vascular surgeon from Tenafly, New Jersey, is chairman of the newly formed United States Olympic Sports Medicine Committee. Dr. Dardik phoned medical personnel at CIBA, which makes Dianabol, to inquire about the warning reference. He was told that it had been included more because they had so many inquiries from athletes than because of any pure scientific data on the relationship of steroids to athletic success.

Most medical authorities in the United States, including Dr. John Anderson, head of the U. S. Olympic medical team at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, try to downgrade the muscle-building, performance hype of steroids. Dardik wants more information on both sides and plans extensive testing.

"Many athletes have told me that steroids very likely do have a positive effect on them," Dardik says. "Is that positive effect because they are training and thus motivated, or does it really put on a lot of bulk and thereby make them stronger? That's what we've got to find out. I've yet to meet an Olympic or world-class weight lifter who hasn't felt it has been beneficial to his performance. Athletes would like not to take steroids. They don't feel good or right about it, but they're afraid not to, because they're concerned about what the next athlete might be doing."

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Drugs used by athletes generally are designed to stimulate performance or restore skill to what would be considered normal. At the top of the list in terms of instant kicks are amphetamines. Most are banned by the international sports federations and many have been ordered off the market by the Food and Drug Administration. But that does not stop the athletes from finding them. Amphetamines have been associated with almost every sport, from auto racing to wrestling. They suppress hunger (enticing to hockey players, boxers, jockeys, wrestlers), speed up the breathing and heart rates and stimulate the brain.

Some amphetamines are more powerful than others. Five milligrams of methamphetamine hydrochloride, a white pill sold under the trade name Desoxyn and popularly known as speed, can increase the heart rate, alleviate fatigue, provide a strength turn-on and, according to some athletes, even give off a brief hallucinogenic quality. Most important to the athlete, it can create a sense of confidence and improved concentration in times of self-doubt. For the discus thrower or weight lifter who wonders whether or not he can get it all together, the pill becomes a competitive crutch. For the basketball player, it might be what keeps him moving on the fast break, when tired legs tell him to quit. For the football player, there is that physical feeling of being on top of the world. But speed can also get away from you.

One pro-basketball player reportedly was so freaked out and uncontrollable from an overdose of speed during a game in the 1976 N.B.A. play-off series between the Philadelphia 76ers and the Houston Rockets that his coach continually counseled him during time-outs.

Some athletes prefer speed, the same kick that was designed to assist fighter pilots during World War Two, to other amphetamines.

"Methedrine is cleaner and gives a purer high," says one pro-football player. "Your concentration is much better than with Benzedrine or Dexedrine."

But speed has its share of problems. Although none will admit it publicly, wives of some pro-football players have been abused, verbally and physically, as a result of their husbands' game-day highs. They are powerless to stop their mates from popping pills, because they realize that jobs may ride on how well these men perform.

Some of the wives of Philadelphia and Dallas players say the coaches don't like them to be around their husbands the night before a game. But there are a lot of wives who don't want to be around their husbands the night after their games. They're not sure how their husbands will react, especially if they're still high from taking pills earlier in the day.

The Biphetamine 20, another popular amphetamine capsule, is known as Black Beauty because of its color. An 18-hour kicker, it found initial popularity with truck drivers trying to combat fatigue and now shows up in the bags of cross-country cyclists and skiers. Many pro-football players who feel uncertain about the instant take-off from speed use Black Beauties. They pop them early on game day and sense a gradual build-up of strength and power that will sustain itself throughout the afternoon combat.

The most frequent amphetamine abusers in pro football, according to sources around the National Football League, are the offensive and defensive linemen, who feel a specific need to play with "something extra" in the one-on-one warfare that takes place in the trenches. "If you want to play first string here, you have to take amphetamines," one of the Buffalo Bills' linemen said.

The N.F.L. has intensified its surveillance of team physicians and trainers and fined the San Diego Chargers $40,000 as a result of a 1973 drug investigation. There followed a major shake-up in personnel and management, along with private bitching from San Diego players that the team was being used as a scapegoat by the league to cover the ills of other clubs with similar abuses.

Tighter screening of drug supplies by leagues and sports federations has forced many athletes to move from the locker room to the streets to replenish supplies. It is risky business, according to those in the know.

"Anyone who buys minibennies or white crosses on the street is looking for trouble," says Frenn, who is continually besieged by athletes searching for the latest information on new drugs and their sources. "The stuff is not dean, it's made in some of those small factories, and it's the quickest way to wind up getting sick."

The minibennies lack the potency of speed or some of the high-powered amphetamines such as Obetrol 20 and Biphetamine 20. Most are chunks of Benzedrine made into pills. The white crosses usually contain Dexedrine.

Besides the difference in potency, the price of amphetamines varies widely. Street pills are the cheapest--a dollar a roll--because of their availability. The wholesale price for 100 Desoxyn, which must be obtained with a prescription, is $12.10; the retail price could be double that figure.

Medical researchers feel that the negative effects of amphetamines far outweigh their usefulness. Besides the behavioral inconsistencies they can cause, frequent use and addiction can result in medical complications ranging from cerebral hemorrhage to nutritional problems. There is also a tendency among jocks to figure that if you feel good with one, you will feel great with two. And coming down from a large dose of stimulants often leads to the use of tranquilizers, trapping an athlete into a never-ending cycle.

One nationally ranked power lifter in pursuit of a world record took an injection of Adrenalin and three amphetamines 20 minutes before a competition several years ago. Although claiming he never felt stronger, he passed out during the lift and only emergency chest massage and oxygen kept him alive.

Amphetamines are not the only drug in the athlete's bag. Cocaine has become the current big hit. Part of the joy in snorting coke before a competition is its "smoother ride," like going in a Lincoln Continental as opposed to a Gremlin. A heightened sense of awareness and the absence of pain are other big pluses.

Some baseball players who got their first kicks from chewing tobacco believe cocaine helps them "see through pitches," sharpens concentration and makes them more perceptive hitters. Those pitchers who occasionally snort coke on game days say it keeps their arms from tightening up and delays pain and soreness. But cocaine is much more expensive than other stimulants, so only the high-priced pros can afford it.

On the other end of the spectrum, the high-energy athlete who is given to nerves or hyperactivity before a match may smoke grass as a form of mental preparation. Some tennis players say marijuana puts them in a cozy comfort zone before a match. Gone is the anxiety. The delicate frame of mind that often comes apart in a match crisis seems more stable after a joint. And because of its tendency to relax them and make them serene, many athletes use marijuana to unwind after an event.

Athletes involved in individual sports seem to feel a stronger desire to solve insecurities through drugs than do those in team sports. Their rationale is personal: I'm doing it for myself, it won't hurt the team, it's my decision.

Also, grass no longer carries the social stigma and penalties attached to cocaine and speed. Some members of one major-league team have been known to relax during a game by rolling joints in the clubhouse and then turning on a giant fan in a private men's room to remove any lingering odors.

Marijuana can be smoked in a car, before a competition, at a party and around teammates without incurring the same disapproval as amphetamines or cocaine. It also is tolerated by most league security personnel and law-enforcement agencies.

Sometimes, however, the drug schemes of athletes backfire in embarrassing ways. There was the case several years ago of a Greek soccer player bearing gifts in the form of pills for his teammates to help them in their championship game against a local rival. Instead of handing out the usual uppers, however, he mistakenly passed out tranquilizers. His teammates almost passed out, lost the match and he wound up being sued by the president of the club for doping.

The use of sedatives, barbiturates, tranquilizers and muscle relaxers is less secretive but can be equally dangerous. To the public, these drugs lack the negative connotations of amphetamines, because they're thought to produce softer, less aggressive tendencies.

Golf is a sport in which the athlete often battles his own mental condition. A golfer who is too nervous or overanxious is more apt to muff a two-foot putt on the 18th hole than one who is overconfident. The difficulty of learning to unwind has sent many golfers in pursuit of Zen, TM and tranquilizers. They are not looking to stimulate their performance on the fairways as much as to relax their playing style.

There are also less esoteric uses of these drugs. Professional basketball players travel more extensively since the merger of the two leagues. The frantic one-night stands make for intense highs and lows, often resolved only by speed and sleeping pills. Tom Meschery, the poet laureate of pro basketball, once offered this observation of the basketball drug scene in a poem titled The Pill, from his highly acclaimed book of poetry, Over the Rim:

There's a little

bag of tricks

And in that

little bag of tricks

is a little yellow

bottle

There are red ones

and blue ones

and multicolored ones....

Painkillers such as Percodan, Demerol and Novocaine have achieved almost heroic proportions in the minds of the public. An athlete receiving a pain-killing injection from a team physician during a football game is considered courageous because the relationship between sports and pain is tied to notions about the price one pays for success. "Shooting" an athlete provides no stimulus. But the injection will anesthetize an injured area and allow the athlete to continue uninhibited by the pain.

Physicians and coaches justify the use of painkillers and muscle relaxers on the grounds that no long-term health hazard is at stake. But gimpy-kneed athletes do not agree and the threat of losing a competition or their spot to another player forces them to accept the shot, like it or not.

The latest to find a home alongside bee pollen, vitamins and other magic potions among athletes is Quaalude, a hypnotic drug originally meant for use in sleeping pills but now classified as a (continued on page 206)Wired to the Teeth(continued from page 82) narcotic. Some world-class track-and-field athletes regularly come down from competitive highs with 'Ludes, using beer to cover their tracks. It feels good, they say, and relaxes better than marijuana. But Quaaludes helped along the undoing of Freddie Prinze, the young actor, and they can be almost as habit-forming as the need for speed or steroids before a. competition.

Banned by the International Olympic Committee but still used extensively by athletes and researchers, anabolic steroids have become the biggest source of debate in international sports medicine. Uwe Beyer, a 31-year-old West German hammer thrower, won the European championship in 1971 and broke the world record that same year. According to newspaper reports, he said he became so reliant on anabolic steroids during his training program for the Montreal Olympics that when he stopped taking the pills, "I was listless, depressed and despaired of winning anything.... I suffered withdrawal symptoms like a drug addict."

The use of steroids is not limited to track and field. "Two out of every front-four defensive linemen or offensive linemen in the N.F.L. are definitely on steroids," one reliable source said.

The steroids form a group of chemical compounds that resemble cholesterol. They are naturally produced by many plants and animals and are divided into three broad categories--estrogens, androgens and corticosteroids. Anabolic steroids are hormones derived from androgens--male hormones. The party line on steroids is that they increase the size of muscle fiber. But they have also been linked with thickness of skin, beard growth, development of male organs and lowered voice pitch. One of the most frequently recounted episodes of the 1976 Olympics was the question put to an East German coach about the deep voices among many East German women swimmers.

"We have come here to swim, not to sing," the coach replied.

Steroids have a body-building effect on tissues and tendons, promote weight gain and assimilate protein. It is this improvement of muscle mass that lures athletes into believing these drugs will make them bigger, stronger and faster.

Unfortunately for many athletes, the steroid process evolves through trial and error. Little clinical information is available from the various drug companies on the exact dosage that the body can utilize for athletic performance. Experimentation with unusually large dosages of steroids over a short period of time can lead to nausea, loss of appetite, a feeling of fullness and acne. Several years ago, an embarrassing problem with nymphomania reportedly developed among a group of Bulgarian women athletes being administered heavy steroid dosages. Many Western observers found it difficult to believe that the muscular Bulgarian women would be capable of any sex drives. But apparently the effect of large doses of androgens is much different for women and men. Female athletes taking steroids have, in fact, been known to develop stronger relationships than usual with male coaches.

The question of sex drive is a major source of the steroid debate. Male athletes are warned about shrinking testicles, impotency or dwindling urges, but one weight man in track and field says flatly, "I get better erections than ever when I'm on steroids." Since steroids appeared on the international scene only within the past 15 years, it may be that long again before an accurate measurement is available for their sexual impact.

Don Reinhoudt, Jr., of Fredonia, New York, the four-time world power-lifting champion who set 20 world records, is 32 years old, weighs 365 pounds and believes that he, not Vasily Alexeyev, is the world's strongest man. He has challenged the Russian to a lift-off, has written him letters (never answered) and is annoyed that people perceive Alexeyev as Mr. Clean. Yet Reinhoudt does not believe that steroids, properly supervised, will shorten a man's penis or his life expectancy. "Just because a guy uses Dianabol to get strong doesn't mean he's a pill-head," Reinhoudt says.

Until the Montreal Olympics, anabolic steroids received little more than yellow caution flags from international sports bodies. Then elaborate testing procedures were developed to determine if an athlete was using them and they were banned by the International Olympic Committee. But birth-control pills are not banned, and any number of women athletes appear to be following Loretta Lynn's advice and turning to the pill in pursuit of world records and gold medals.

Eva Wilms is a West German student who competes in the pentathlon, the five-event women's equivalent of the decathlon. Last spring, she set the world record; the secret, according to her trainer, Christian Gehrmann, is the pill. "The contraceptive pill can achieve fantastic results with women athletes," Gehrmann says. Working with a gynecologist to determine Wilms's hormone count, the pair selected one of the 55 to 60 brands of contraceptive pills marketed in West Germany that would provide a balance of hormones, maximize muscle mass and keep Wilms from becoming pregnant. The result was a bigger, stronger body, better performances and, most important, no threat of penalties that might accrue under a program of anabolic steroids.

Wilms's success has prompted several American coaches to start their athletes on a program of weights and birth-control pills. But unless there is close medical supervision to maintain an athlete's hormonal balance, undesirable psychological side effects could nullify the physical gains.

Pill popping is not the only way to a gold medal. Another recent source of controversy and experimentation is the process of blood packing, or "blood doping," as it has become popularly known. An athlete gives up a pint or a quart of whole blood during a peak training period. He continues training and then receives the blood back into his system weeks later, shortly before a major competition. The reinfusion theoretically increases the athlete's strength and endurance and is thought to be a significant training aid for distance runners, mountain climbers and weight lifters.

Before leaving West Germany to join the New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League, Franz Beckenbauer, the captain of the national team, admitted undergoing blood doping. And Finland's Lasse Viren, the Olympic gold medalist at 5000 and 10,000 meters in Montreal, has been accused of it.

Most of the early research in blood doping began in Scandinavia. A Swedish runner, Bjorn Eckblom, used the technique on himself in the early Seventies and concluded that it had a beneficial effect. However, recent studies have produced more questions than answers.

"Some people are always looking for a magic ingredient to increase their performance, but training remains the surest way," said Dr. Robert Ruhling, the director of the Human Performance Research Laboratory at the University of Utah, who, with A. J. Frye, experimented with 16 students in a single blind study. "We haven't found any evidence that blood reinfusion is the answer."

Blood doping, though forbidden, is impossible to detect, and Viren has denied any involvement in experiments. Still, jokes about distance runners and Dracula having the same objectives are no longer treated lightly.

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East Germany is considered one of the big three alongside the Soviet Union and the United States in international sports. The East Germans have been the source of continued speculation over their use of scientific testing and drugs to increase the strength and speed of their athletes, particularly their women.

Dr. Alois Mader was a member of East Germany's closely guarded medical sports program until he defected to the West several years ago. During meetings earlier last year with top American sports-medicine officials, Dr. Mader explained the secret of the East German success: It was not the amount of drugs administered, he said, nor the type of drugs, but the scientific controls placed over the program. Relatively small dosages of anabolic steroids are used, so that there is no suppression of their own natural hormone production. Athletes are encouraged to start steroid intake or birth-control pills during their maturing years, between 14 and 15, to provide more muscular strength and allow for changes to other hormones. There is continued monitoring of athletes at all levels of their maturation, especially before, during and after competition. Adjustments are made in their drug intake to correspond to specific stress levels.

The East German approach has created jealousy and a divided atmosphere among many athletes, coaches and officials in the West, who wonder whether or not success is worth the price of such scientific intensity. There are almost as many unconfirmed reports as confirmed ones about how far some Eastern countries will go.

One American doctor stated that some East German women swimmers competed in Montreal with plastic inserts in their vaginas that could be squeezed to provide pure urine samples for postcompetition medical tests.

That experiment hardly seemed as painful as the reputed attempt by West German swimming officials to improve the buoyancy and speed of their athletes before Montreal by using syringelike pumps to inject one half gallon of compressed air into the swimmers' large intestine through the anal aperture.

"The method was suitable for crawl and backstroke specialists," Walter Kusch, a swimmer, told the Bonn newspaper Rundschau. "But for a breast-stroker like myself, the result was that my feet often stuck out of the water."

"The whole thing was unpleasant," acknowledged Peter Nocke, an Olympic bronze medalist in the 100-meter free style, who said he took part in the experiments but won his medal "honorably."

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Although drugs have been identified with sports for decades, the public still remains more interested in the final won--lost record of their team than in the amount of cortisone, Quaalude or Dianabol taken by the stars.

Imagery is an important element in sports today, amateur and professional. The National Football League could not afford a large-scale drug scandal; in fact, drugs and point shaving are the two areas that send the most shivers through the league's Park Avenue offices.

Bill Toomey, the 1968 Olympic gold medalist in the decathlon, once threatened to sue Jack Scott, the sports activist, over an article Scott wrote on drugs for The New York Times Magazine in 1971. Toomey phoned me several times before and after the article appeared, because we knew each other and I worked for the Times. He claimed that any disclosure would affect certain contracts he had signed with companies. He was concerned with the impact the story, which he claimed was false, might have on his career. Scott stuck to his sources.

A drug habit may have killed Joe Gilliam's pro-football career; the New Orleans Saints gave the former Pittsburgh Steeler quarterback a tryout last summer, on the condition that he stay clean, but cut him before the season began. Heroin addiction unquestionably squelched the N.B.A. dreams of Cyril Baptiste, a 6'7" forward, who had signed a six-figure contract with the Golden State Warriors after an impressive collegiate career at Creighton University. Baptiste's drug problems began as curiosity during his sophomore year at Creighton and became so intense "that's all I thought about--when my next shot was coming and how I could get it." Even after Baptiste was rehabilitated and returned to competition in the Eastern League, no N.B.A. team was willing to sign him.

George Frenn says he knows a couple of track-and-field athletes who are trafficking in heroin on the West Coast. "I've stopped preachin now," he says. "I used to try to tell guys, 'Don't get loaded, it won't do you any good.' But we're past that stage. Now I tell them, 'If you need something, don't use as much; go easy.' The trouble is nobody listens anymore. It's like a pendulum. Guys are getting really high to compete. Then they stalk the room in need of something to help them sleep. The cycle is vicious and the pressure to stay on top won't let them off."

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Doug Young, the three-time world power-lifting champion from Brownwood, Texas, has been studying the drug scene in sports for more than ten years, with particular emphasis on anabolic steroids. He says he has spent "a lot of money and a lot of trial and error to find out what is right and wrong on steroids" and was suspended briefly several years ago by a state federation, as much for his outspoken views as anything.

Young believes any man dedicated enough to run 40 miles a day is no less foolish than a man willing to take steroids in a controlled program. Steroids should be legalized, he says, to protect the athlete, "because they're going to use them anyway."

Even more ludicrous to Young is the fact that international federations develop testing procedures and pass new rules to penalize athletes for taking steroids while the athletes and the researchers find new methods to beat the system.

Young knows of at least two ways to beat the current test for steroids, aside from having your body flushed in the 11th hour by a powerful diuretic. The first is to stop taking the pills or injections several days before a competition. "You won't lose more than two percent of your potential," he says. The second method is to shift the intake to a natural form that can be absorbed through the tissues and will not show up in tests as anything other than normal hormones. This method is likely to become the escape valve of athletes by 1980, and any competitor who is disqualified for steroids at Moscow, according to Young, "isn't smart enough to win a gold medal, anyway."

The International Weight-lifting Federation, embarrassed by the disqualifications for steroids in Montreal and by reports of pill popping at national championships, has voted in new regulations: No world records will be recognized unless doping control procedures are included at major events; and regular teams of investigators will be assigned to police championships.

Unfortunately, new crackdowns by federations and leagues and tighter restrictions on the distribution of amphetamines by the FDA and physicians have only sent athletes underground. Regular trips across the border to Mexico and Canada are now made to stock up.

"Athletes aren't going to quit just because there's no factory stuff available," says Frenn. "But what's bad is that the stuff on the street is cheap and dirty. It's anything goes in some of those factories, and you're likely to get rat poison instead of Dexedrine."

But can athletes stop? And can the sports federations endure major drug scandals? The International Cycling Union's modest $300 fine and month-long suspension of Freddy Maertens, Eddy Merckx and four others last May for using a banned drug to combat fatigue were a mere slap on the wrist. Yet what else could the union do? It needs the stars for the survival of the sport, so drugs are an annoyance to be tolerated.

Even attempts by the International Olympic Committee to find solutions wind up creating greater problems. In 1972, the I.O.C. disqualified an asthmatic United States gold-medal swimmer, Rick DeMont, after his urinalysis showed traces of ephedrine, a drug it had banned. DeMont had used a prescription compound, Marax, to curb his wheezing and coughing. Ephedrine is a component of Marax. As a concession for 1976, the I.O.C. approved the use of terbutaline sulphate as a remedy for athletes afflicted with asthma.

"The I.O.C. felt terbutaline was not a stimulant," says Dr. Anderson, who works at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. "But from my own clinical experience with the drug, it does seem to be a fairly significant stimulant and could well be dangerous, or even fatal, if you took it in significantly high dosages."

Where will it end? More money and prestige are being pumped into the Super Bowl and the Olympics, but no two sports can agree on how to police their drug problems effectively, and no national agencies have been set up to bridge the gap between the athletes and the officials.

George Frenn made his first national team at the age of 21. He never touched a drug until he was 25. He has watched his own physician's attitude change from one of "How many do you want?" to a monthly quota.

"It's time we confront the problem," Frenn says. "Let's sit down and figure where we're at and where we're going. The athletes need to know, and they want to know, but they won't beg for the information until it's too late. By then, they're crawling, and anything you tell them won't help."

"Two out of every front-four defensive linemen or offensive linemen in the N.F.L. are on steroids."