FanPost

Dehydrochlormethyltestosterone: What IS This Crap?

Nick Turchiaro-USA TODAY Sports

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Beautiful Soda...Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

So, a lot of us have been asking "What is this stuff 'dee-hi-dro-klor-meth-el-testosterone' that 'Soda got popped for?" Some have probably been wondering (after trolling through the internet) "Should I be taking this stuff? Look what it did for 'Soda!"

Lets tackle this in two parts. First though, the disclaimer: I looked all this stuff up. Had no idea this existed before it turned up in 'Soda's pee and was reported. Second, I'm an NICU nurse and took ONE course in clinical pharmacology many, many, many years ago, so I knew as much about this as the average person with a soupçon of familiarity garnered from dosing babies with another steroid called "dexamethasone" which ISN'T an anabolic steroid. Now, I know a lot more AFTER looking it all up, and this is meant as an aggregate of what I learned rather than any claim of long standing expertise on the matter. We're lucky to have at least one person identifying themselves as familiar/proficient with pharmacology in the comments so I welcome ANY corrections and discussions that increase our knowledge as to what our 'Cola was suspended for.

On to the first part: a little history on what this crap is.

"Dehydrochlormethyltestosterone" is also known as "Oral Turinabol". As the name implies, it's taken as a pill. It was developed and patented in 1961 by an East German Pharmaceutical company and used as a performance enhancing anabolic steroid for decades (known as "State Plan 14.25", the extent and success of EG doping wasn't fully understood until the 1990's). Its one of those PEDs that's mainly responsible for all those Communist gold medals handed out from then until tests were developed to detect it. It's a bit unique in that it's formulated so as to NOT cause the user to grow breasts. It does this by suppressing the feminizing hormone estrogen. If you're a woman taking this stuff, over time you're going to look and sound like a dude. Deep voice. Body hair. Acne. Inability to see dirt on furniture or dishes in a sink. In addition to these traits, you'll also grow bigger muscles, gain speed, have much better endurance, and fancy a hammer drill as an accessory. As anyone can tell, the attraction to it for male athletes is going to be pretty profound.

Now, why NO ONE should be taking this crap.

First, these days it's not made by a pharmaceutical company any longer. It was discontinued as a sanitarily produced, quality controlled, dose accurate compound back in 1994. It is only available through black market labs. Most, if not all, of these are going to have dubious sanitary quality control, dose accuracy, and even compound/drug formulation quality. You stand an excellent chance of poisoning yourself or becoming stupidly stomach sick. Then, should you actually get some of the real thing in a dose that's correct and that won't render you confined to your bathroom with The Scours, you stand an excellent chance of destroying your liver. Dehydrochlormethyltestosterone is well known to be very hard on the liver and many of the Eastern Bloc athletes dosed with it (often without their knowledge) suffered hepatic (liver) and renal (kidney) failure in later life as a result. Few lived long full lives after being on a regime of dehydrochlormethyltestosterone. The female athletes suffered perhaps worse than the males, too. Lastly, the tests to detect it are very good these days. If you're a professional athlete and someone offers you this crap, you'll need to walk away from it: your career is OVER if this is how you plan to cheat.

Colabello claims that he didn't take anything illegal or cheat in any way. It is possible he was dosed without his knowledge (after all, a couple generations of Eastern European athletes were) but, as a professional athlete living under a regime administered by a laboratory certified by WADA, one would have to be awfully naive to be taking supplements or substances not explicitly tested and approved by MLB. MLB offers this service to all ballplayers free of charge, too.

'Cola's got some 'splainin' to do.

Editor's Note: This is a FanPost written by a reader and member of Bluebird Banter. It was not commissioned by the editors and is not necessarily reflective of the opinions of Bluebird Banter or SB Nation.