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| Gregg Valentino taken 09/04/2008 |
My third case study took place with an American body builder, Gregg Valentino, famously known to take an excessive amount of steroids to improve his body image. Known to have “the biggest arms in the world”, it was not until 28 years of natural training that Gregg began to take Steroids. Anabolex, a well known steroid to body builders is known to be taken to enhance body builder’s size quicker than to attempt it naturally. At the age of 36, Gregg found that his gains came quick and “almost over night and I loved it”.
It was an unexpected turn for the worse when Gregg’s drug abuse took a turn for the worse when he had to pay the price for his drug abuse. After years of steroid injections, he began to be careless in his reuse of unsterile needles and this caused an infection in his arm which blew up like a balloon full of puss. After attempting to drain his arm himself, he was rushed into emergency surgery where all his hard efforts had been lost.
Through Gregg’s experiences of the harsh realities of drug use, he has not taken any further steroids but has gained a low-self esteem due to the scarring from his surgery. Although steroids achieved its objective they are not suitable to fulfil true happiness rather than the true revelations of how damaging and life threatening steroids can be. It is clear that Gregg was attempting to achieve his ideal self which included a greater self esteem; however, he didn’t accomplish this through extreme drug abuse but the outcome of which it caused. There is nothing more important to Gregg than his friends and family and at the end of the interview he said “It has made me stronger… I like myself now, I am happy with my life.”
