Using Testosterone Is NOT Cheating

It’s Not “Cheating”

By now, you know I loved sports growing up and continue to love sports. Sports were everything to me as a child. All I cared about was getting home from school, finishing my homework, and going to football practice or spending hours shooting hoops in my driveway until the sun went down. Once I was introduced to the weight room at the age of 12, I was also immediately hooked on chasing a pump in the gym.  

As an athlete, I was brought up with the mindset that performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) are the cardinal sin of competition. From an early age, I would also hear the chatter about steroid use in Major League Baseball and the occasional NFL player who got popped for PEDs.

Also, growing up in an evangelical Christian household, anything which was “against the rules” was also deemed morally hazardous or a sin. As I progressed through my high school and college years, I became rooted in the firm belief that PEDs were not only dangerous, but an absolute moral heresy.  

Additionally, once I arrived at college, the football coaches would scare us with tales of guys who lost their eligibility for simply taking the wrong pre-workout supplement they bought from GNC.

With all of this indoctrination, I unsurprisingly developed the aforementioned righteous indignation towards any sort of performance enhancing drug use. Ironically enough, in my pursuit of athletic excellence, I became obsessed with finding “natural” vitamins and supplements that would give me any edge possible when it came to performance or recovery.  

At the same time, I always had this fear I would fail a drug test for something I unknowingly used in a supplement I purchased from Vitamin Shoppe or GNC. To give you an idea of how ludicrous the NCAA’s drug testing policy is, too much caffeine in your urine is considered a banned substance and can cost you a full year of eligibility should you test positive for drinking too many espresso shots before your drug test. Unbelievable. 

Due to this societal brainwashing around PEDs, I developed an entrenched belief against the use of any compound which wasn’t considered natural. It became almost a religious adherence. I frowned upon anyone who would ever use steroids to improve their performance.  

As I transitioned out of my athletic career into the work world, I continued to pursue my passion for fitness and performance. I became much more involved in researching the biohacking world and understanding how to get the most out of my training, diet, and supplementation. 

But it seemed the more I worked hard at the gym, the more I adhered to a strict diet, and the more I scraped up funds to buy every supplement advertised on all my favorite podcasts, the further away I was from getting the physique I wanted.

How did so many other guys with inferior genetics to me train and diet half as hard as I did, yet still have better physiques and higher energy levels than me?  It was almost like going to the gym only made me feel worse. I progressively lost strength from year to year, and also made virtually zero improvements in my physique despite following all the cutting-edge diet and training protocols to a tee.  

Fortunately, I came across the work of Jay Campbell. Before Jay, no one had explained in a concise fashion how men could use testosterone therapeutically to optimize their life. The first time I heard Jay on a podcast talking about testosterone, I thought, “That’s cool, but it’s not for me. I do all the natural stuff to optimize testosterone, so I don’t need help.”  

But as the years went by in my twenties, it became more and more apparent I was suffering from a deficiency in testosterone. I finally got my bloodwork done and discovered my testosterone levels mirrored that of an 80-year-old man (88 ng/dl total testosterone, and my free testosterone was so low it did not register on the lab test).

I had to come to grips with the reality that I would never be able to achieve higher levels of testosterone naturally because of my background with traumatic brain injury (TBI). At the time, I thought if my mind was powerful enough, I could certainly use the mind to heal my testosterone levels. 

However, I began to wonder what takes more metaphysical energy to do—using my mind to overcome a deficiency, or simply using God-given tools like therapeutic testosterone to optimize my physical vessel in order to come in closer contact with my spiritual higher self? I choose the latter.

Despite my inner knowing that testosterone could be my way to a more optimal life, I had deeply embedded brainwashing beneath my psyche telling me the use of testosterone was cheating. If I began using testosterone, even just therapeutically to get my body to be in a healthy range, I would no longer be natty. I would be a cheater. I would have to admit to everyone around me that I use a PED (gasp!).  

What would people say when they found out I used “steroids?” Would they call me a juicehead? How would my three younger brothers trust me any longer? How would I tell younger kids to just work harder when I was using a drug that would get them banned from their sport? 

Through all of these thoughts in my head, I came to the following conclusion – nobody actually cares. So what if people think I’m cheating? At least I will escape the anxiety, despair, depression, and fatigue I was dealing with on a daily basis.  

If the only consequence of me upgrading my life was being considered a “cheater” by the world’s standards, then so be it. I was no longer part of a sport which considered testosterone a PED. I was not getting drug tested. And overall, my health was dramatically suffering because of my testosterone deficiency. 

I had to come to the realization that if using therapeutic testosterone was cheating, it was fine by me.  I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. Once I made the decision to begin using exogenous testosterone, my life did a complete 180. As I have previously stated, I look at my life as before starting testosterone therapy and after starting testosterone therapy.

Now I see how silly it was to think of testosterone as cheating. If we are low in Vitamin B12, we don’t think twice about ordering a supplement from Amazon or going to get a B12 injection. If we are deficient in Vitamin C, we simply buy a Vitamin C supplement. 

Why would it be any different if our body is deficient in testosterone? Would it not be smarter to supplement with real testosterone to optimize our hormones instead of taking some exotic herb? An herb a Stanford professor claims will increases your testosterone levels by 1200% without knowing the potential side effects?  

Once I crossed the chasm and reached the other side, I realized testosterone therapy is not cheating. It’s simply using God-given resources to bring us better health. Therapeutic testosterone also offers the downstream effect of improving every other area of our lives.  

If you are reading this and still cling to the belief that PEDs are cheating, I implore you to think about it from a neutral perspective. Ask yourself why the mainstream media hammers natural therapies like testosterone yet consistently praises the merits of dangerous therapies like vaccines. What do they not want you to truly know?

You may finish this book and still think using testosterone is cheating and an immoral decision. I will not fault you, as I once believed the very same thing. But maybe, just maybe, I have been able to show you testosterone is THE most critical hormone for optimizing your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health.  

Simply using this hormone to optimize your health is not cheating; it is just a means to help you become the most self-actualized version of YOU.