How I Got Here – Gains vs Loses
I lost it all. At least that’s how I felt. No more steady high dollar income, no more life of crime, no more single life and no more steroids.
My life changed drastically 4 years ago. Some of the changes were voluntary, while others were forced upon me. Instead of appreciating what I would gain in my new life, I could only focus on what I no longer had.
My ex-girlfriend and I were moving in together to start a life as a family with her son. He was 3 at the time and I wasn’t going to allow him to be raised around a man who was selling drugs. He deserved better than that. So I quit my lucrative profession of choice for the last 20 years and I had no idea what I was going to do.
Luckily, I had saved up a nice nest egg to make sure we would be well taken care of for a couple years. However, I totally lost perspective of that. All I could think about was what in the hell was I going to do now.
I was lost and I certainly didn’t have the work ethic to go work for someone else. My ego told me that was beneath me. I was an entrepreneur, so I had to figure out a way to be my own boss. It’s amazing what ego and arrogance can lead you to believe.
I was forced to give up using steroids because a scan found pool ball sized tumors on my liver. The doctors told me they were liver adenomas from using steroids and I had to quit using immediately. Two years later I found out they were cancerous and had be removed, but that’s a story for another time.
I had been using steroids off and on for the last 10 years. The last 2-3 years I used them continuously. I was obsessed with how I looked and how “big” my muscles were. If I had to rank the importance in my life, it was in the top 3 things I cared about most.
Without steroids my muscles quickly diminished and my clothes no longer fit like they once did. I would put on a shirt I used to love and have a meltdown complaining about how it used to fit. I lost 15 pounds in a couple weeks. I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror without clothes on. (more…)