Q. One of the most disturbing things I kept running into while writing this book was the mindset among some professionals that anabolic steroids aren’t all that dangerous. Yet, you are living testimony to the fact that they are very dangerous since they cost you the life of your son.
Just a few weeks after my son’s suicide, I heard one of these professionals being interviewed on National Public Radio. It was a physician who expressed doubts about the harmful effects of steroids when used by athletes. In closing, he stated: “There is no hard evidence that anabolic steroids kill. If so, where are the bodies?”
I pounded my dashboard and screamed: “I know where one body is — still fresh in the grave.” I was so upset, I pulled off the road and collapsed over my steering wheel into hysterical sobs. For 15 years, I had watched helplessly as my son used anabolic steroids hoping to gain an advantage in sports. He started out, I’m sure, like a lot of others do. He confided to a friend during his junior year of high school that he would use the steroids just to help him get big enough to earn a football scholarship. Then he would quit. Well, after four years of college football, followed by three years of professional football, my 6’4” nearly 300-pound son still didn’t think he was big enough. He was so addicted to steroids that not even heart failure or a kidney transplant stopped him from using the drugs.
Q. After your son’s tragic and untimely death, you became an advocate against steroid use. How did that come about?
I didn’t start out with an organized plan. It just all came about very fast. I sent for a transcript of that NPR program and then I started a calling campaign. I felt desperate. I just wanted someone to understand my loss — what it was like for a mother to watch her son’s gradual demise as a result of his brutal addiction to these deadly drugs. I talked to anyone who would listen.
I connected with the National Steroid Research & Education Center and did some work with them. Then things just continued to develop from there. I simply responded as opportunities to speak came my way — including a national TV appearance with Jane Pauley. I just took it one step at a time and it grew.
I also began putting on seminars. It was all taking a lot of energy. I was still in grief and still trying to live my own life all at the same time. I even had a close friend of Eddie’s tell me that I was totally wrong about anabolic steroids and that Eddie didn’t take his life because of the drugs. If anything, according to him, Eddie just didn’t know how to take them properly.
I had another young fellow come to my office and bring me a pile of composition notebooks documenting his years of drug usage, his stacking, his dosages, the kinds of drugs he took. He slammed them on my desk and he too told me I was all wrong and I didn’t know what I was talking about.
What pained me even more was the obvious disinterest shown by so many of the coaches. For example, after speaking out against drugs for about four years, I was invited by an athletic trainer at a large university to tell Eddie's story to their football team and coaches. This man was concerned that some of his athletes would start using steroids over the summer vacation. Still, one of their coaches assured me that their school had no problem with steroids. But it won’t hurt to hear your son’s story,” he said to me.
My lecture to that football team was stonewalled. Not a single coach attended my talk. Even more frustrating were the 30 or so disinterested players who spent most of the time shuffling papers and leaving the room. In fact, there wasn’t even a single comment or question at the end of my presentation. As I packed up my lecture materials, three players did walk by me and say thank you.
I remember how sad I felt leaving as I walked down a long hallway lined with trophy cabinets. Outside, as I approached my car with a few tears in my eyes, I turned as a young man called out my name. I gasped when I saw how much he resembled my son Eddie.
“Mrs. Gantner,” he said, “I want to talk to you. Your son’s story is important and it does need to be told, but you will have to find another way. This isn’t going to work. Those players just don’t believe you. You see, they’ve all read the Underground Steroid Handbook. They truly believe they know how to take steroids, how to stack them, when to rotate them, and where to buy them. They even know how to beat the drug tests.”
I stood speechless. Yes — I had heard of this book and its author Dan Duchaine. But this came as quite a shock. Here was my son’s true story being overridden by a book on steroids. I was disillusioned and doubtful that my work was making any difference. But what did make a difference to me that day was the sincerity in that young man’s blue eyes and his willingness to be honest with me. His words rang in my mind for months: You have to find another way Mrs. Gantner. This isn’t going to work.” I almost felt like Eddie had returned to bring me this personal message.
Q. I have run across Duchaine and his notorious book over and over again in writing STEROIDS KILL! My hope is that, in the same way his book had such a far-reaching negative effect, my book will have a counterbalancing positive effect — kind of an equalizer. There’s great power in the printed word. In fact, isn’t this what led you recently to write your own book about Eddie’s life and experience with drugs?
Yes — that’s true. Because of my great frustration on the lecture circuit, I decided I could reach more people more effectively by writing a book about Eddie’s life and experiences with steroids and other drugs. I felt so directed that I even signed up for writing classes at Rollins College. The professor was very supportive and encouraged me to write Eddie’s story. I did write the book and it’s titled DYING TO WIN: A Mother’s Story. Just like you with your book, my hope is that it will deter young athletes from going down the destructive road that Eddie went down.
Q. Yes, the more that people like you and I speak out, the greater the possibility of reaching young people. One thing that the young kids don’t seem to understand is how their decision to use drugs can eventually affect a whole circle of other people.
That is so true. This is not a victimless decision. It has an extensive effect on everyone involved. The damage to our family, for instance, has been immeasurable. It’s an ever-present elephant in the room.
Q. Speak for a minute about the addiction to the drugs that you witnessed with your son.
It was horrible. My professional area of expertise is stress management, so you can just imagine my own personal distress in watching this addiction slowly destroy my son’s life, right before my eyes — and I’m not able to do anything about it. Drugs robbing his soul from him a little more every day of his life — and he can’t even see the progression of it because he’s right in the middle of it.
Yes, he was addicted. So much so that just five days after his kidney transplant, he was back to lifting weights again and using steroids. I hadn’t seen him until he came home for his high school reunion. When I finally saw him — and how much he had increased in size again — it just blew me away. It was obvious to me that he was back to using steroids and I just couldn’t believe he would start this insanity all over again.
Q. How did you first discover that your son was using steroids?
When Eddie was young, he and I were very close. Up until his junior year in high school, he was always an easy-going, soft-spoken, very considerate boy. But then something changed. He started to get very disrespectful, very defiant, very angry. He’d go into a rage just because he didn’t have a shirt to wear or because we were out of milk. And physically he had changed tremendously too — all over one summer. I didn’t know about steroids then so I didn’t suspect anything like that. I just assumed it was teenage hormones and the stress of his father’s and my divorce. Eddie had also begun spending a lot of his time at a local gym.
When he graduated high school, he got a football scholarship to the University of Tennessee. By that time, he was treating me so badly that I was glad he left and I wouldn’t be confronted with his disrespect anymore. I did go up to his homecoming game and he apologized for his behavior. When I was leaving to go home, he asked if I would have a box of vitamins sent up to him from a local doctor in Florida. He said they would be all packaged up and I would just have to put the postage on them. Only later did I realize I was sending him his steroids. I unknowingly did this twice for him.
One time when he was home, he had some friends over. They were all sitting at our picnic table in the yard arm wrestling. And of course, Eddie could just take them all right down. I heard them chanting: “Juice man! Juice man! Juice man!” Somehow I connected that with a television program I had seen on steroids and it was like the lights went out. I confronted him and, of course, he became very angry and walked out. That’s how I found out. But in his mind he needed steroids to play ball and that was it as far as he was concerned.
Q. What was your relationship like after that?
From that point on, his steroid use was always in the background of our relationship. I walked a fine line between urging him to stop the steroids and yet trying not to have him push me away. I had fears but I also had hope that Eddie would change and make some better decisions for his life. At that time, the rest of the family saw me as an overly concerned mother. I stood alone through this period. It was very painful and very confusing for me.
There was a time period after his kidneys failed that he moved to Colorado. He stayed off steroids for about nine or ten months and that was such a wonderful time. I saw him go back to his natural size and all of that horrific negative energy he had just dissolved. I had my son back. We were all hopeful that he would be able to heal his kidneys. But once again he got hooked up with the wrong people and he got into the steroids again. And it wasn’t even about sports anymore since he wasn’t playing ball. It was just about image. He had become addicted to an image of himself as a big, strong person.
After a year of trying to heal his kidneys, things actually got worse and he needed to go on dialysis. If you can believe it, he continued to take steroids even while on dialysis. By now, he had also started using cocaine. One thing led to another and then his heart started failing. He actually had several close calls in the hospital where he almost died. They had to use the electric paddle on him several times to bring him back. What an addiction this is. Here he was facing death and he still couldn’t quit. It was my worst nightmare coming true and I was totally helpless. In one roid rage he threatened his girlfriend and was arrested and put in jail and had to go on a program for spousal abuse.
Meanwhile, his kidneys got so bad, he eventually came home and made plans for a kidney transplant. And as I said earlier, just five days after the transplant he was back on the drugs. At that time, he even said that if he had to do it all over again he wouldn’t change a thing. It wasn’t until later, near the end of his two-month psychiatric hospitalization that he said if he ever had a son, he would never let him play contact sports because he would have to take steroids to compete. He said he wouldn’t want anyone to go through the anguish and hell he was going through.
Q. So along with his terrible physical problems, he was also going through a period of great psychological depression?
Yes. He eventually moved back to Florida and tried to stabilize his life but I could tell there was something very, very wrong. There was tragedy in his eyes. I just knew something bad was going to happen. He slipped into such deep depression that he couldn’t even go to work. The doctors put him on a variety of anti-depressants and other pharmaceutical drugs that only made things worse.
Finally, on New Year’s Eve, my handsome but troubled son Eddie saw no other way out but to take his own life. Let me read you the words of an article I wrote.
“In crisis, my 30-year-old son returned home to recover from the dark night of his soul. I listened helplessly as he wrestled with some of the identical questions I had. Who is God and how can I find new life? Can you help me mamma? Please tell me. I will do whatever you say. But his wounds were too deep and his pain too great and in the end he chose a peace of another kind.”
My hope and my prayer is that his death hasn’t been in vain and that when other young athletes read about him, they will have the good sense to stay as far away from anabolic steroids as they possibly can.
I pounded my dashboard and screamed: