Recently, a very high profile professional baseball player was suspended for a large chunk of the season because he failed a test and violated Major League Baseball’s substance abuse policy. The media made a big deal about the story, as this dread-locked fan favorite was one of the biggest names in the sport. However, the biggest part of the story, as reported by the oft ill-informed media, wasn’t that the player in question had used drugs. As one of the top players in the league over a decade despite being in his thirties, most people would have suspected that already. What was noteworthy was the drug he was caught using.
Most of the time, when an athlete is caught using a drug, it will either be a potent steroid, or a masking agent. Both are often on the banned substances list, as the presence of a masking agent usually indicates the player was trying to avoid being caught with the actual steroid itself. There is no reason to use a masking agent, aside from hiding the use of another drug. This time, it was not for a steroid that he was caught, nor for a masking agent. This player was caught using a compound known as human chorionic gonadotropin, or HCG. The primary use of this drug is for increasing fertility in women, not for making massive muscle gains.
The media, of course, had a field day with this story. “Why was this player taking a fertility drug?” asked the headlines. What these ill-informed media talking heads failed to realize is that HCG has several legitimate uses in the sporting world that go beyond the first sentence of text they found when doing a simple Google search for “HCG”. HCG is prescribed for low testosterone, low sperm count, as well as some other less common but very real maladies. The baseball player being suspended cited his need for the drug upon these needs, claiming it was embarrassing but something he needed, medically.
Will fans believe this? Perhaps they will, if they don’t do a bit more research and discover one more use of HCG. When a steroid user ends his cycle, his body’s natural hormone levels are in a very tumultuous state. Estrogen is up and down, and testosterone is very much down. The body has been on artificial hormones for several months, and HCG serves as a nice bridging agent, allowing the body’s natural testosterone production to reset.
It’s entirely possible that the ballplayer in question used HCG for legitimate health needs. It’s also possible that following an (untested) off season in another country where steroid use is more common, the player was using HCG for post-cycle therapy. For this reason, the player was suspended. The drug was, after all, on the banned substances list. This serves as a lesson to bodybuilders, ball players, and anyone else facing testing for banned substances. Post-cycle therapy drugs such as as HCG can be just as incriminating as the muscle gaining or masking drugs. Plan your usage accordingly!
