January 05, 2000
Issue #28

EXTREME Q&A
by Jason Meuller

WELCOME TO 2001! 

Well, if you’re reading this, you’ve managed to survive your New Year’s festivities to read another great issue of AE.  Congratulations.  Unfortunately, we lost a few AE’rs on New Years when they mistakenly converted a box of Nerds into a sterile injectable.  Let that be a lesson to the rest of you who are considering converting a tren implant.  Sobriety first! 

WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE!

We’re looking for recent photos of the T-Mag crew, specifically “Tiny” Tim Patterson and “Truly Huge” TC Luoma.  You would think that Tim and TC would be easy to spot, as they should both be around 350 lbs of shredded muscle by now after the great gains they’ve both experienced from using Biotest products. Unfortunately, getting photos of Tim and TC has proved harder than capturing the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot on film.  At least I’ve seen a few photos of the latter two. 

For anyone brave enough to venture into the T-Mag lair in Colorado Springs, CO, to capture photographic evidence of the existence of these two monsters, we’re offering a hefty award.  A years supply of Syntrax supplements if you can capture both of these behemoths on film, or 6 months per head.  Photos have to be recent, and will have to capture the awesome physical development of both of these two genetic anomalies.  Let the hunt begin!

HELP, I CAN’T EAT!

Question:  First off, let me thank you for putting out such a wonderfully informative website.  I was turned on to AE by an associate of mine and it was like finding an old friend.  Finally, someone with enough balls to tell the truth.  Keep up the great work!

Now on to my question.  I read Extreme Eating for Mass and think it’s probably the best article I’ve ever read on how to eat to get big.  Unfortunately, I have no appetite, and it’s been impossible for me to eat the volume of food I need to make significant gains.  I’m already fairly big, at 5’8” and 230 lbs, I’m not what you could consider petite.  However, I’d like to get up to about 260 before dieting down so I can compete on the National level.  Are their any tricks to getting the food down?

Answer:  Well friend, you’re in luck, as I suffered from your malady for quite some time and recently found the solution to my problems.  Now, at nearly 300 lbs, you might not think that I’ve got trouble eating, but nothing could be further from the truth.  Every meal was a chore, and there were daily bouts with nausea as I piled on the feedings.

In the past few weeks I’ve started doing cardio sessions twice daily and taking Lipokinetix in order to reduce my body fat.  Normally, I’d expect my body weight to drop like a rock, but I’ve actually put on 18 lbs while losing about 10 lbs of unsightly flab.  Admittedly, I had dropped down to 270 and was in the worst shape I’d been in years, so the 28 lb gain (288 now, up from 270, leaner than I was when I started) in lean body mass was partially due to the rebound effect of suddenly training, eating, and supplementing properly after a brief layoff.  However, even given that fact, the results I’ve seen in the past few weeks are damn impressive.  What’s my biggest secret?  APPETITE STIMULANTS.

Yep, for the first time in my life, I decided to try some of the pharmaceuticals that have been reported to have appetite-stimulating effects.  Specifically, I’m talking about Periactin and Pizotifen.  I’d always been damn skeptical of the effectiveness of these drugs, never having gotten a whole lot of positive feedback from those that had used them.  Well, let me just tell you, I now wonder how in the hell I ever got along without my two new pharmaceutical friends.  Not only could I eat the ass end out of a dead moose every two hours, but the stuff makes me sleep like a rock.  I’ve been taking the Periactin about an hour before bed, and I’d have to compare the drowsiness affect to about a 3 g dose of GHB.  However, the Periactin doesn’t make you feel “drugged” like GHB, just sleepy.

So, what are these drugs REALLY used for and where can you get them?  Well, Periactin (cyproheptadine) is an antihistamine, and was once prescribed to treat the symptoms of allergies and colds, things like runny nose, watery eyes, rashes, hives, etc.  While it is still used for that purpose, Periactin is now more commonly prescribed as a treatment for conditions such as cachexia or anorexia, basically any condition that results in the patient being extremely underweight.  Although this is a non-FDA approved use of the drug, it’s well known in the medical community that Periactin has the side-effect of increasing appetite, and prescribing drugs for non-FDA approved purposes (known as off-label prescribing) is perfectly legal.  Which would beg the questions as to why anabolic steroids cannot be prescribed for bodybuilding purposes, but we’ll avoid that topic like the plague, lest we get sucked in to a three-hour Meuller tirade.

Like Periactin, Pizotifen is also an antihistamine.  It’s also a powerful serotonin antagonist, and as such, is used in the treatment of vascular headaches (migraines).  And like Periactin, it also has the beneficial side-effects (for us growing bodybuilders anyway) of increasing appetite and causing drowsiness. 

A word of warning.  Both of these medications have VERY powerful sedative effects, and should only be taken before bedtime.  I would also recommend that the first time you take either of these drugs, you don’t have anything planned for the next day.  The first time I took Periactin, I slept for 14 hours straight.  In a few days, your body seems to better tolerate the drug and it’s not a problem to wake as you would normally, but the first few times you take them I’d be prepared for some serious sleep. 

Ah yes, I forgot to mention where one might obtain these drugs.  Drum roll please….of course it’s our good friend SBC.  SBC always has Pizotifen in stock, and sometimes carries Periactin.  Quite frankly, they both seem to work equally well, so it really doesn’t matter which one you use.  You can contact SBC at newsbc@operamail.com.  Don’t forget to tell him Meuller sent ya!  

WE’VE GOT ALL AGES FOLKS!

Comment:  Just want to say that I think Anabolic Extreme is one of the best publications on bodybuilding that I have found.  It really cuts through the crap and gets down to what is real.  I'm 49 years old and have only been lifting for just over a year.  I went to a gym about 16 months ago just as a lark and became hooked immediately.  It really is difficult to find honest information.  Most of what I read is tied deeply to the pockets of some supplement company. Well, keep up the great work and thanks for an excellent information source.

Answer:  Thanks for your kind words.  I really get jazzed when I get emails from guys like this, it’s great when you see someone in the 40+ age range getting in the gym and making a transformation.  My training partner is 44 and has been kicking my ass all over the gym for the past 6 months.  Just over two years ago, he was a 320 lb “fat slob”, as he likes to refer to his former self.  Now he’s 260 lbs of muscle and has more sex than I do.  Of course, most of it is with the other guys in his office, but his sex drive is still impressive.

The very best thing I’ve been able to do for AE’rs in the 40+ age range that contact me regarding training is put them in touch with Dr. Ray Scruggs.  They never realize how bad things have gotten until that first month of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) start turning back the hands of time.  Every time it’s the same story…”I can’t believe how great I feel!”  Let’s face it, none of us are getting any younger and we’re all going to get old.  However, unlike most people, I’m pretty sure you guys are like me and want to fight Father Time every step of the way.  You can bet your sweet ass that I’m not going to age gracefully, I’m going to beat the crap out of old age every time it steps within striking distance. 

Some of the guys I’ve talked to are opposed to HRT because it involves using steroids.  Quite honestly, I can’t blame these guys, they’ve been brainwashed by a media that uses every chance it gets to print sensationalistic garbage and scare the shit out of everyone.  Let’s talk frankly here for a moment.  Comparing bodybuilding steroid use to HRT is like comparing a raging alcoholic to a person that consumes a glass of red wine a day.  One endeavor is extremely unhealthy, the other has been proven to prolong and improve the overall quality of life.  I’ve spent a lot of time trying to convince aging members of both sexes to get on HRT, SIMPLY BECAUSE IT’S THE SMART THING TO DO!!!  HRT is a form of preventative medicine, and I can’t help but think if I had been able to convince my Mother to use HGH, she might still be alive today.  Lord knows I tried.

Dr. Scruggs is one of the few physicians I’ve ever had the opportunity to talk to that truly understands how to properly treat aging members of both sexes.  And I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I told you I’ve seen Ray perform miracles in people’s lives.  For more information on his services, visit his website at www.newhopemed.com.  You can also call his offices for more information at 949-631-9047.    

WHAT DO YOU TAKE?

Question: You started using AS in your younger years, now we know once you get used to a certain dosage, you need to increase it to see gains.  Based on that, what are you at now week wise?  I know you were off for the whole probation thing, do you believe it cleared out your receptors enough to start using milder dosages at first?

Answer:  In order to answer your question, I’ll have to look back on 1995-1996, when I made an amazing physical transformation.  It was during this time that I started following the principals outlined in the Extreme Eating for Mass article, training according to Hardcore Training protocols, and taking insane amounts of gear.  To give you an example of what I mean by “insane”, the base of my stack was 18 sten per week. 

At the time, Dan Duchaine was the only steroid guru around.  And at the time, I followed Dan’s writing as if it were passed directly to him from heaven above.  It was sometime during this period that Dan really became a proponent of high doses of steroids, talking about the “magic” that would take place at 4 g of steroid per week.  As I said, his teachings were like holy writ to me, so if Dan said 4 g plus a week was the thing to do, I promptly did 4 g plus a week.  At my biggest, I was 295 with about 10-12% body fat. 

Cut to today.  I’m now 288 at about 13-14%.  I’m using about 70% of what I was back in ’95-96, and am still making great gains.  I firmly believe that I will shortly surpass my previous best condition, without resorting to using the enormous dosages I did before.  How?  By eating and training smarter. 

What dosage I take is immaterial.  Let’s say I write that I take X mg per week.  All of a sudden, everyone who reads this Q&A is going to say, “AHA!  In order to achieve that kind of size, I’m going to have to take X mg per week.”  The bottom line is that Duchaine was wrong.  There is no specific dose of steroids, no matter how high, that will cause “magical” results.  Here’s how it does work.

Let’s say I’m a 200 lb bodybuilder using steroids for the first time.  If I use 500 mg of sustanon per week, coupled with 50 mg of oxymetholone per day, I’m going to experience some pretty “magical” results, even though my total weekly dose is only 850 mg per week.  This isn’t because I have virgin androgen receptors, it’s simply that due to the fact I’ve always been clean, I’m not supporting any LBM above and beyond what my body can support via my genetic set point and natural output of hormones. 

Now let’s consider what happens when this formerly natural 200 lb bodybuilder blows up to 250 lbs.  I’m now carrying an additional 50 lbs of LBM that I didn’t have before.  All of a sudden, the 850 per week I’ve been taking no longer does anything, despite the fact that I’m training and eating properly.  The standard explanation for this situation is that I’m no longer growing because my androgen receptors are shutting down in response to my prolonged use of steroids, and that the only way to overcome this situation is to either take a lot more steroids or go clean for a while for my receptors to “clear out”. 

Let’s ponder the situation at hand for a moment.  If indeed my receptors were shutting down, wouldn’t I necessarily start losing weight?  And if my receptors were shutting down, how would increasing the total dose make any difference?  If the androgen receptors (AR’s) are shut down, my body wouldn’t respond to double, triple, or even quadruple my former dose, I’d simply continue to lose weight until I cleaned out and allowed my AR’s time to reset again. 

Bottom line, the more LBM you add above and beyond what you could naturally carry, the more steroid you’re going to have to take to continue growing.  And by no means would this dose follow a linear curve, rather we would have to apply the Law of Diminishing Returns to the situation.  If you take a Dorian Yates or Ronnie Coleman and double their current dose, you wouldn’t see any kind of appreciable weight gain.  Why?  Because they’re max’d out as it is.  You can only get so big, no matter how much gear you take. 

The idea of receptor down-regulation is archaic and outdated.  It’s time we threw it out and accepted principals that are proven in science and practical experience.  Hey, the idea of receptor down-regulation is almost as retarded as classifying steroids as Type I and Type II.  But that’s another story…

Questions can be submitted to Jason Meuller via his email address, Jason@anabolicextreme.com.