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Zoe Garcia

Professor Speiser

English 101

Fall 2023

Performance Enhancements

One small dosage injected on either your thigh and BOOM your body is pumping rep

after rep and a boost of testosterone pulsing through your body enhancing your performance

mentally and physically. Making your whole workout feel as if you were the strongest and most

energized person at your local gym. There have been many types of enhancements that have

been created throughout the years since the use of performance enhancement drugs have been

used all over the world for years around as early as 776 BC. The Ancient Greeks were the first to

discover and use these enhancements being that at the time the Ancient Olympics was also

created and very popular to the Greeks. So many Greeks that participated in the Olympics were

using the new performance methods and it seemed to be effective. For the Greeks since the

Olympics was so special and important to them that in some cases they needed the military to

have more power over the big crowd of people that were dying to see the games live. Although

they did not have any actual enhancements at the time they still created beliefs for them. Getting

good rest and having a good diet was a main performance booster for them. But when the players

participating were introduced to performance enhancements at the time which was the use

marijuana at the time. Way back when actual enhancement drugs were invented to enhance

people's performance in a port, the ancient Greeks used other methods. For example in this

article about the history of performance enhancement drugs it mentions “.The ancient Greek

athletes also drank wine potions, used hallucinogens and ate animal hearts or testicles in search
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of potency.” ("Winning, Cheating Have Ancient Roots," Washington Post, Aug. 3, 2007). They

had other beliefs that they believed that would help the athletes have a better performance in

tournaments. And in another paper by Else Bartels and colleagues from Copenhagen University

(“An Ancient Greek Pain Remedy for Athletes”, Pain Practice, Volume 6, Issue 3, 2006 212–

218) mentions that the greeks way back in the Ancient Olympic days, Greeks would use some

sort of mix of herbs to create and ointment called “Olympic Victor’s Dark Ointment”. An

ointment that is made out of cannabinoids which is an active component in marijuana and opiates

an natural chemical that has the same functions as opium and morphine. To help reduce any

swelling or inflammations that the athletes may have that they used back in the day as an

enhancement for their injuries.

I would like to consider myself a very active person throughout my day. Even when

growing up , I would be outside either playing soccer with the neighborhood kids or helping my

dad out with fixing up his car and working around the house. But playing sports was always my

main focus and what I enjoyed doing the most at the time. But as I got older and started dealing

with life and dealing with problems that life throws at you. I had gotten a little stuck and lost in

life and needed something to take up time of my day so I wouldn't go and do dumb things. And

have some sort of distraction from everything and some of my older friends were always into

lifting weight and gaining muscle. But the gym never seemed to interest me until one night, my

friend Daniel and some other friends were out catching up with each other. Daniel had

mentioned how amazing the gym was for him and how it makes him feel so relieved from

everything and is also gaining muscles at the same time. And it really stuck to me how he was

using the gym as some sort of comfort from all his emotions and problems. But I struggled when

I first started going being that my whole life I have always been thin and small so gaining muscle
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was always something I would struggle with the most. But my older friends were all big and into

taking enhancements like “Creatine powder”. Creatine is an amino acid that your body naturally

produces as it is gained from red meat and fish and from high proteins. But I myself do not

support the use of supplements to boost my muscle growth because it is a very natural way of

going about weight lifting in my opinion. So my choice was trying to “Bulk up” a term used

when an individual is eating an excessive amount of calories than they should be intaking to

gain more weight for muscle to build on. So being that getting big and gaining muscle is my goal

I seem to connect with the whole use of enhancement drugs. Not saying I do use the

enhancements drugs but the people around me in the gym and my fellow gym buddies as well.

But seeing them get bigger and bigger without all the hard work that others take years to do

really seemed very unnatural and not safe. I myself choose not to do any enhancements because I

love the feeling of seeing me progress with all the hard work that I put in my workouts everyday.

And I see it as a more safer way of lifting weights because intaking supplements causes side

effects like high blood, dizziness, liver failure, and weight gain which could benefit me but I

never turned to taking supplements. Out of the fear that I am not properly working out or enough

to be taking any enhancements.

The history of performance enhancing drugs has changed so much as the time passes and

the better technology and knowledge that we have now. As mentioned the Ancient Greeks were

the first known people to have the enhancements at the time but their version of enhancements

were drugs like cannabis and other herbs mixed to cure and strengthen the athlete if it was

needed. But around the 19th century is when people were discovering more drugs and more tests

were being made by scientists. In the 1950’s was the first created performance enhancement and
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it was called “the amphetamines” and it was actually more effective than the other enhancements

that were created in the past. As mentioned int this article in the Historical Times mentioned

"The first 'effective' performance enhancing drugs, the amphetamines, which were used widely

by soldiers in the Second World War, crossed over into sports in the early 1950s” ("Tainted

Glory - Doping and Athletic Performance," New England Journal of Medicine, Aug. 26, 2004).

And around the same time Russians weightlifters discovered the use of steroids to help recover

teared muscle and help gain bigger and more muscle. Also in another article that says that

“Increases in endurance have been demonstrated in both humans and rats. Smith and Beecher, 20

years ago, showed improvement in running, swimming, and weight throwing in highly trained

athletes.” (Laties VG, Weiss B. The amphetamine margin in sports. Fed Proc. 1981

Oct;40(12):2689-92. PMID: 7286248.). Meaning that later on in the future we have created some

sort of drug that has an actual effect to make the athletes performance better. Around the end of

the 1900's they officially made the use of performance enhancing drugs including steroids illegal

in the Olympics. Although we've been using performance enhancers for millions of years and

have transformed as time passed it still seems as an unnatural way of going about sports because

you are intaking more to gain more when your body already produces the right amount of the

supplement and I don't support the use of it.

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Work Cited:

"Winning, Cheating Have Ancient Roots," Washington Post, Aug. 3, 2007

https://sportsanddrugs.procon.org/historical-timeline/#:~:text=The%20ancient%20Greek%20athletes

%20also,testicles%20in%20search%20of%20potency.%22&text=Gladiator%20competitions%20and

%20chariot%20races,60%2C000%20spectators%20in%20100%20AD.

Else Bartels and colleagues from Copenhagen University (“An Ancient Greek Pain Remedy for

Athletes”, Pain Practice, Volume 6, Issue 3, 2006 212–218)

https://cannabis.net/blog/opinion/old-school-doping-how-ancient-greek-athletes-used-cannabis-for-better-

sports-performance

"Tainted Glory - Doping and Athletic Performance," New England Journal of Medicine, Aug. 26, 2004

https://sportsanddrugs.procon.org/historical-timeline/#:~:text=%22The%20first

%20'effective'%20performance,sports%20in%20the%20early%201950s

Laties VG, Weiss B. The amphetamine margin in sports. Fed Proc. 1981 Oct;40(12):2689-92. PMID:

7286248.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7286248/