There’s been a lot of talk out there lately, since Alex Rodriguez’ failed 2003 PED test has come to light, about whether or not “Performance Enhancing Drugs” are what they claim to be, etc.

Well, have you ever heard about Stuart Stevens’ experiment five years ago?

Greg Bishop wrote about it three years ago. Here’s a snip from that:

An avid skier and cyclist, [Stuart] Stevens watched cross-country skier Johann Muehlegg keep two of three gold medals from the 2002 Olympics when he tested positive after his third race. Intrigue grew into an idea. Stevens found plenty of positive and negative literature on the subject, but nothing that explained the actual effects.

So Stevens hooked up with an anti-aging doctor near his home in Southern California. They worked out a plan that introduced one drug to his body at a time.

They started with HGH, injecting it in Stevens’ stomach, at the cost of about $850 a month. Sun blotches that used to dot Stevens’ arm faded away. The scar on his forehead disappeared. His reading glasses suddenly never left their case.

Testosterone came next, rubbed like cream onto Stevens’ stomach. Then he started injecting himself with EPO, which gave him migraine headaches and cost $3,000 for 20 weeks. Stevens says he wouldn’t take EPO again if somebody paid him to, but he would continue HGH if it wasn’t prohibitively expensive.

Lastly, Stevens added an anabolic steroid. He took deca-durabolin, and despite being ridiculed as soft on steroid message boards, watched a year-old cycling injury to his left knee heal within two weeks.

He gained 15 pounds, from 195 to 210, without lifting weights. It brought on an “Incredible Hulk” feeling and gave Stevens a “werewolf effect.”

“Most of the stuff wasn’t really frightening,” Stevens says. “This stuff is fairly transparent in the sense that you don’t feel different. You can just do more. But with steroids, there’s an immediacy to it. I felt like I swallowed a freight train.”

And, to read the full Stuart Stevens’ story, click here. It’s an incredible report on how PEDs work.

More muscle, increased strength, improved eye-sight, miracle recovery from injury…yeah, those things could never help a baseball player, right?

Hat tip to X-M Radio’s Baseball This Morning show today for alerting me to this story.