Men have body dysmorphia too. That's why some use this drug.

It's Been a Minute

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🗓️ 28 April 2025

⏱️ 22 minutes

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Summary

Body modifiers like Ozempic and other weight loss drugs have gotten attention for how skinny they can make you. But what if you're a boy who wants to get BIGGER? For young men, there's another drug getting more and more popular: steroids.

Fit and muscular bodies get celebrated on social media, and many men turn to steroids to match what they see. But with that comes the rise of "muscle dysmorphia," a kind of body dysmorphia where a person feels that their muscles aren't big enough.

Brittany sits down with Roberto Olivardia, a alinical psychologist and lecturer at Harvard Medical School, to talk about how a drug, once primarily associated with professional athletes pursuing performance enhancement, is now the drug of choice for boys and men struggling with negative body image.

For more, check out Roberto's book, The Adonis Complex.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This message comes from Subaru. As part of their Subaru Loves the Earth initiative, they have partnered
0:05.3	with the Arbor Day Foundation and will distribute over 100,000 trees this year, growing greener, healthier
0:12.1	communities for generations to come. Subaru, more than a car company.
0:19.6	Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
0:36.6	These are the guys who, despite being in good shape, they might wear long-sleeved shirts on a 90-degree day because they think their arms look too puny or too scrawny.
0:46.5	And they don't want anybody to see their body.
0:48.3	Exactly.
0:52.8	I know that body modifiers like Ozepic and other semaglutides are getting all of the attention right now,
0:58.7	but I want to shine a light on another supplement that people are obsessing over, steroids.
1:06.8	Just like people speculate over whether OZemphic is to blame for their favorite celebrity getting smaller,
1:11.9	they're also wondering whether steroids are making their favorite social media influencers bigger.
1:17.7	In the last 24 days, look at the change in physique.
1:21.1	He's small than big, and what you're going to see is he's going to get small and big yet again.
1:26.3	What that often means is they're going
1:28.2	on and off cycles. So what exactly are steroids? So if steroids are basically synthetic derivatives of
1:36.6	testosterone, the male hormone that is implicated in muscle growth, and it could be either
1:43.3	injected, taken orally, sometimes there are
1:46.0	creams, some that will target certain muscle groups, some that are more fast acting, some that are
1:52.2	sort of more slow acting. That's Dr. Roberto Alavardia. He's a clinical psychologist and lecture
1:58.0	in psychology at Harvard Medical School. Thank you for having me. It's my
2:01.9	pleasure, Brittany. He's worked with a lot of people using steroids in non-medically prescribed
2:09.0	ways in order to achieve a certain muscular aesthetic. An aesthetic, you'd maybe connect with
	...

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