Building out from Chapter 4’s psychoanalytic foundation, we can now turn to the more instrumental motivations as well as the immediate environmental influences that drive my sample’s drug use. While I have argued that the need for perpetual dissatisfaction is universal, this chapter looks at the specific contexts in which the motivation to enhance the physique is played out.

Sporting success and the need to win

The most common instrumental motivation behind IPED consumption cited by my sample was a will to win in their sporting endeavours, coupled with the acknowledgement that “everybody else is going to be [using IPEDs]” (Ben). Involvement in competitive sport increases the likelihood of IPED consumption by 91 per cent (Sagoe et al, 2014) and therefore the instrumental use of drugs for athletic success constitutes a mainstay in the existing literature. A typical example of this can be found in my interview with amateur bodybuilder and online coach Sam, when I asked him about his decision to initiate drug use:

This excerpt epitomizes the dual themes discussed within this section. First, Sam’s privileging of his comparative performance over his long-term health illustrates his deep commitment to the competitive individualistic values of the bodybuilding community (see Kotzé et al, 2020). This dogma was echoed by Dom, who told me “I have an athlete’s mindset, a competitive mindset and that’s why I do everything that I do”. This “athlete’s mindset” works in concert with a resignation that “everyone you’re up against will be taking gear” (Kyle) to create a perfect storm for competitors, who feel a pressure to use IPEDs to avoid being cut adrift from their fellow contenders (see Grogan et al, 2006).

In this chapter I will introduce the city of Potsford, within which this research primarily took place, before providing a vivid picture of the various fieldsites I inhabited. By offering a thoroughgoing description of Potsford, I hope to provide the context underpinning my sample’s lives, before emphasizing the burgeoning health and fitness industry that has swept the area in recent years. Similarly, by furnishing the reader with a description of the sites under study, I will set up what is to come and allow for a degree of familiarity prior to my interrogation of the use and supply of IPEDs in this context.

‘Myopic provincialism’: the geography of Potsford

Potsford teeters between the Midlands and the North, flanked by the heavily rebranded cities of Birmingham and Manchester. The area is often misplaced as an outright northern city (see Evans, 2017) due to its heavy industrial heritage and characterization as the ‘most working-class city in England’ (Jayne, 2004: 199). However, in reality it lies in the upper Midlands. While Potsford is the largest city in the region with a population of just over 260,000, its industrial past is shared collectively with ‘five towns’, known locally as ‘The Kilns’. Owing to this unique layout, Potsford lacks a conventional city centre, instead hosting various localized hubs that service residents of each town in a highly parochial manner. Discussing this, Williams notes that Potsford exhibits a sense of ‘myopic provincialism’ (Williams, 2006: 183), fed by locals’ resounding pride in their town.

Potsford has been lambasted as a city devoid of any resounding contemporary identity, described as ‘lacking in things for people to talk about’ (Hansard, 2007: 562) besides its former industrial glory days, and, as Hart (2005) coyly notes, being the birthplace of celebrity Robbie Williams. Instead, The Kilns’ five towns mostly centre around decidedly rundown highstreets (see Figure 2.1), composed mostly of shabby independent retailers, charity shops, and ‘booze and fag’ stores (Ancrum, 2013: 117).

Will-to-recognition and performing for the Big Other online

Having explored the lifestyle aspects of IPED consumption, this chapter sets out to examine the role of SNS in perpetuating bodily desire and, by extension, my sample’s use of illicit ergogenic aids. Before exploring the SNS under study and my sample’s digitally mediated content production, however, it is crucial to map the men’s relationship with Facebook and Instagram. Each participant was active on SNS during the study and most interviewees (besides one) indicated that they simultaneously owned a Facebook and Instagram account. They typically spent between two to three hours on the sites daily and most tended to post content at least every other day. As such, through my own researcher Facebook and Instagram profiles, new digitally mediated data was only ever a swipe away and users’ content perpetually littered both sites. Given the inherently ocular nature of my participants’ posts, it seems futile to rely upon the written word to capture the nature of their content. Instead, towards the close of data collection I contacted the participants with whom I built the greatest rapport to ask for their most-liked images, which are displayed in Figure 7.1.

The men’s posts almost exclusively consisted of their sculpted physiques, as they posed for mirror selfies and shared images of their competition triumphs, all the while tensing every sinew under the “anabolic lighting” (Ed) of the gym or a natural beauty spot. Consistent with Tiggemann and Zaccardo’s (2018) description of male fitspiration content, the men’s posts showcase an over-identification with the male muscular ideal as well as a concerted attempt to self-objectify their physiques (Hakim, 2015). But why do they use social media in this way?

In answer to this question, it is first prudent to unpack the ubiquity of SNS use on contemporary subjectivity and how selfhood, for my sample, is indelibly bound up in the content they prosume (Toffler, 1980; Fuchs, 2021). Yar (2012: 251) explores this within the notion of ‘will-to-representation’, which describes the ‘imperative to represent the self via electronic mediation’ and have one’s actions observed and validated by others.

Turning to recent developments in the broader illicit ergogenic aids market, this chapter follows Fincoeur et al’s (2015) contention that the IPED market is experiencing a number of significant shifts and cannot now exclusively be understood in line with the notion of offline minimally commercial and social supply.

Commercialization and community breakdown

Despite the culturally embedded supply chains employed by most of my community-based sample, I became increasingly aware of some simmering tensions in the broader IPED market as I spent longer in the field. Even those who engaged in Potsford’s local closed market expressed a perception that the ‘good old days’ of IPED supply as a community enterprise were numbered and appeared resigned to the fact that increased profitability and scale of production were fundamentally altering the market. This sentiment was voiced by non-IPED user Scott who, deriding the notion of social supply, scoffed:

Scott captures the general cynicism that my sample expressed regarding the motivations of most actors in the market, despite the fact that many of them used the supply chains that he critiques. Fincoeur et al (2015) echo this in their finding that the market for recreational weight trainers and bodybuilders in the Netherlands and Belgium has experienced a move away from minimally commercial and social-commercialist supply, towards what they call ‘market-oriented dealers’. They describe how these actors lack the community ties that underlie closed markets and are instead entirely motivated by maximizing their revenues. The authors attribute this to growing regulatory oversight and the associated increase of risk for sellers, arguing that the otherwise law-abiding culturally embedded suppliers have essentially been forced out of the market as a result of the ‘war on doping’. However, I found the IPED market to be extremely poorly regulated (Gibbs, 2022).

Following on from the investigation of instrumentality, competitiveness, and hyper-conformity, this chapter turns to Mulrooney et al’s (2019: 3) contention that an acknowledgement of pleasure constitutes ‘an essential part of a coherent and reasoned response to steroid consumption’. As such, the following analysis will examine the chemical, symbolic, and psychic pleasures of IPED consumption through the case study of Phillip, the project’s oldest participant and ardent ‘lifestyle’ user.

Introducing Phillip

The first point to mention about Phillip was his choice of career, which immediately explains his fascination with the minutiae of my methodology. Nicknamed ‘The Doc’ in Muscle Sanctuary, Phillip is a retired biology professor whose illustrious academic career has seen him employed by several prestigious universities in the UK.

This final chapter will summarize this book’s findings and answer the fundamental questions of why my sample used IPEDs, and how they engaged with the market. Though these are rather lofty aims for a single study, it is hoped that what has been presented in this book will go some way towards shedding light on these key questions and adding some much-needed theoretical nuance to this burgeoning area of study.

Why use IPEDs?

A primary focus of this monograph has been to address the question of what motivates IPED users to consume substances that are often accompanied by a panoply of harms, expenses, and ascetic protocols. Aiming to move beyond basic accounts of aesthetic motivation, sporting attainment, and deficient body image, this book has, to paraphrase Winlow (2019), examined what lies beneath my sample’s compulsion to chemically enhance their physiques. I have argued that the fundamental drive to consume IPEDs lies within the Lacanian notion of desire, wherein the subject is psychically compelled to prolong a state of dissatisfaction and lack by perpetually striving for, but never attaining, the objet petit a (Lacan, 1958; McGowan, 2016). For my sample, this relentless search for the lost object is manifested in fitness and muscular growth as a result of the inherently unending nature of bodywork (Bauman, 2012). As such, the physical form becomes the objet petit a and corporeal improvement is the unattainable promise that the subject can aim for. Therefore, the orthodox accounts of bodily dissatisfaction fuelling IPED consumption ought to be reinterpreted in light of the reality that the subject fundamentally seeks to perpetuate a state of bodily desire. By extension, IPEDs provide users with a means of erecting further barriers to their corporeal satisfaction, so that the objet petit a remains tantalizingly out of grasp. From this, we can better understand the acts of bodily jouissance that accompany IPED consumption as well as the addictive nature of substances such as AAS, whose illusory promise draws the subject to continually seek chemical enhancement, potentially to the point of abuse.

I have also sought to ground analysis in the meso and macro politico-economic contexts of this work, and therefore, sitting atop this psychic draw to bodily enhancement, I contend that a host of external factors have contributed to the recent swell in IPED consumption.

Introduction

Having established the context underlying the work, it is now time to introduce the ontological and epistemic commitments underpinning this monograph. The following chapter will first introduce the schools of ultra-realism and deviant leisure before embarking on a critical exploration of the health and fitness industry. Drawing on these frameworks, the tide of commercialization that has swept up the world of fitness will be unpacked and the manifestation of this broader trend in my offline fieldsites will be explored. The gym as a social arena will then be examined in the local context before the authenticity of these fraternal bonds will be questioned. Finally, the idea of gym-based bodily labour will be introduced and analysed.

Deaptation, theoretical stagnation, and the need for revitalization

Before shedding light on the ontological underpinnings of this monograph, it is important to present the abject philosophical landscape which precipitated the conception of ultra-realism, the theoretical lens through which this book is framed. Critiquing the discipline of criminology, Hall and Winlow (2015) propose that the subject’s theoretical canon is not simply deficient at the level of analysis, but instead the discipline is fundamentally premised upon several problematic conceptions of human nature, which fail to capture the essence of the subject in contemporary society (Kotzé, 2019; Hall, 2020). This is important to note, given this book’s aim of exploring the use and supply of IPEDs in a fundamentally innovative manner.

Hall and Winlow evoke Johnston’s (2008) concept of deaptation to describe how the same paradigms are continuously lent upon by criminological scholars, despite the dramatically altered socio-political backdrop of contemporary crime and harm. Many of the theoretical bastions of criminology were conceived in the 1960s or earlier, and therefore continuing to rely upon such explanations in the contemporary world has created something of a slow puncture, whereby a constant repurposing of the ‘tried and tested’ theories is deflating the discipline’s analytical potential.

Hall and Winlow (2015) contend that current criminological theory can be characterized as a dualism of classical liberalism (currently manifested as right realism) versus left liberalism. The former of these paints the subject as always capable of deviance and in need of control (see for example, Clarke and Cornish, 1985; Hirschi, 1998), while the latter understands them as oppressed but innately good, valorizing the concept of resistance and transgressive agency (see Ferrell, 1999).

Now we turn to the online supply chains that have played a role in allowing a host of less culturally embedded actors to enter the UK muscle trade. Signalling the prominence of this market, Rob concluded our interview by stating that “The marketplace for steroids is probably more so internet-based and social media-based than anything. That’s the way it’s gone”. While the operation of online pharmacies, sales forums, and dark net sites has been expertly navigated within the current literature (Hall and Antonopoulos, 2016; Antonopoulos and Hall, 2016; Moore and Rid, 2016; Turnock, 2021a), during my time in the field it became increasingly obvious that the surface web online IPED market is mainly concentrated on SNS (see Cox et al, 2023). As such, although I acknowledge the heterogeneity of online supply and its numerous messy intersections with different platforms, the following analysis will principally focus on ‘retail’ selling on Facebook and Instagram as a burgeoning part of the online IPED ecosystem.

Mapping the SNS market

Customer base

Before outlining the structure of Facebook and Instagram as sites of IPED supply, it is worth noting the widespread derision and mistrust of both platforms’ sellers by my offline sample. Understood within the context of their reliance upon community-embedded closed market supply, most of my gym-based participants were highly sceptical of utilizing these platforms as spaces of illicit commerce. This was summed up by Johnny as we discussed what he saw as the inevitability that he would begin using IPEDs as his lifting journey progressed:

Back in 2013, while in the latter stages of my PhD research, I landed a job as a researcher on a project that would go on to change my intellectual path. Never having been a student of criminology, I found myself tasked with ‘finding out all I could’ about the illicit market in pharmaceutical drugs. No mean feat. But it remains my most productive and encouraging period in academia to date. This is in large part due to the freedom and time I was given to immerse myself in the world of users, suppliers and officials attempting to police the trade – in other words, to do the job of a proper criminological ethnographer. I was lucky that my boss at the time was a seasoned ethnographer of illicit markets, and that he trusted me to do a good job.

Criminological ethnography is hard, even for those scholars with a great deal of experience. Some have convincingly argued that a PhD is the last period of sustained time left in today’s fast academy conducive to ethnography. Yet nowadays even doctoral researchers are not immune to the growing demands of academia’s specific style of managerialism and target culture. It is increasingly difficult to play the long game, something that is an essential prerequisite for any researcher attempting to gain access and build trust with hard-to-reach populations. In a bid to offer someone the space and time to experience what I had five years earlier, I advertised for a PhD student in 2018 with an idea for a project I titled ‘Refitting the Self’. The aim was to delve deeper and find out more about one specific aspect of the illicit market in pharmaceuticals dedicated to performance and image enhancement. That PhD student would go on to be Nick Gibbs, the author of the book you are just about to read and whose PhD research its analysis is based upon.

As we begin to get back to life following a global pandemic, one might assume that the market in so-called lifestyle drugs is beginning to wake from a period of deep slumber. In fact, the market has only continued to build steam despite several national lockdowns.

Part II, which consists of four chapters, provides an analysis of the ‘muscle trade’ through the voices of users, sellers, and industry professionals. Various elements of the market – from local gym-based supply chains to online SNS sellers – will be explored, and the interconnections between each highlighted. Starting with an examination of production, the following three chapters explore my participants’ experiences of ‘traditional’ offline closed market supply, before tracking the currents of digitization and commercialization that have accompanied the ascension of the online market.

Before a picture of the distribution of IPEDs can be painted, it is vital to interrogate how and where these compounds are produced. This chapter will, therefore, examine the dual means by which illicit ergogenic aids are made, first unpacking underground laboratory (UGL) operations before turning its attention to licit pharmaceutical production.

Underground laboratories

Operation and market share

Consistent with Turnock’s (2020: 2) contention that ‘most users are likely buying UGL’, 77 per cent of my IPED-using sample acknowledged that most of their substances were manufactured in UGLs. According to Rob, “80 to 90 per cent of steroids [in the UK] are UGL-produced” as well as a selection of fat burners like T5 and DNP. In relation to AAS, Carl told me that although “tablets can be made at home. … Anything oil-based needs to be done properly in a lab. So most of the [UGL owners] buy their raws from China and then they produce them in the labs” (see Llewellyn and Tober, 2010; Denham, 2019; Turnock, 2021a). Therefore, in the words of Aaron, “Ingredients are being imported, but production is predominantly over here”. This was reflected in my sample, as 90 per cent of UGL-consuming interviewees stated that their producer was located in the UK.

Throughout data collection, the domestic nature of UGL production was commonly attributed to “the change of law a few years ago” (Aaron), wherein anabolic steroids were stripped of their status as ‘medicinal products’ in 2012 (Brunsdon, 2012). As a result, importing AAS became a criminal offence, punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

Over the last two decades, the UK’s health and fitness industry has experienced a meteoric rise and the physical and digital spaces of bodily modification have become prime sites of late-capitalist leisure. In line with this, interest in hardcore training – be it bodybuilding, powerlifting, or even CrossFit – has steadily increased as ever more emphasis is placed on the physical form as a site of identity formation and consumption (Kotzé and Antonopoulos, 2019; Gibbs et al, 2022a). Committed bodyworkers are now able to choose from a wide selection of licit sports supplements, from flavoured whey protein powders to potent fat-burning stimulants and pre-workout products (Mooney et al, 2017), which can even be purchased at their local supermarket.

However, the well-marketed exterior of this lucrative economy belies a darker side, and it is this illicit underbelly that this book seeks to address. This monograph sets out to uncover the use and supply of image and performance-enhancing drugs (IPEDs) – or what I have termed ‘the muscle trade’ – in a post-industrial Midlands city that I have called ‘Potsford’, as well as the social media sites Facebook and Instagram. A growing body of literature documents the increase in IPED consumption domestically (McVeigh and Begley, 2017; Mullen et al, 2020) as well as globally (Sagoe et al, 2014; van de Ven et al, 2018), affording the study of these substances a relatively ‘newsy’ status (Wacquant, 2008) within contemporary drugs research. Although this context has generated a veritable tsunami of scholarship, most research into IPEDs falls within the schools of anti-doping (see Pineau et al, 2016; Backhouse et al, 2018; Andreasson and Johansson, 2019) or public health (see Van Hout and Kean, 2015; McVeigh and Begley, 2017) and the field can broadly be characterized by a paucity of theoretically charged critical criminological engagement (van de Ven et al, 2020). Therefore, although I acknowledge the important contributions of scholars working within both of these disciplines, this book seeks to provide a more nuanced and theoretically informed account of the muscle trade to support and challenge existing scholarship.

Following the interrogation of IPED production in Chapter 8, we can now turn to the localized, offline supply chains that exist within Potsford. Importantly, this section does not claim to provide a definitive account of all the various supply networks in Potsford’s fitness scene. Instead, it serves as a glimpse into the different means by which my sample leant upon their gym-based community to source IPEDs, highlighting the significance of peer networks and unpacking the most prominent features of offline supply.

“It’s always people you know”: the importance of community and peer networks

In line with the existing literature on offline IPED supply, the significance of peer networks in Potsford’s local fitness scene played a substantial role in facilitating my sample’s acquisition. Of my IPED-using sample, 77 per cent relied upon their contacts in the hardcore fitness scene – be it fellow bodybuilders, coaches, or close friends – to access the market, while 62 per cent collected their products in person, either from a UGL supplier or from a friend who was also a reseller. As such, many of their primary experiences of the market physically occurred in the spaces of the gyms under study. It is crucial here to note the normalization of consumption within these sites and how the widespread acceptance of illicit enhancement in both gyms facilitated their centrality in the supply chain. Scott, although not an IPED user himself, captured the ubiquity of consumption in Muscle Sanctuary: