00:00At first, I had to sort of lurk, and as anthropologists do, learn the language of the people and the
00:08ways of the people that they study.
00:11So I hung out in open areas, watched YouTube videos, got to know people, and eventually
00:17I got the trust of a few people who I would call key cultural consultants that helped
00:23me negotiate what was a really sort of foreign terrain for a middle-aged woman, steroid forums.
00:31So they taught me the language, they taught me the norms and the values of the community,
00:37and eventually I earned the trust of members of the community who told me their stories.
00:43Yeah, so you actually did a study on this and have published your research.
00:48What did you find?
00:51I found that a lot of steroid users really want to reduce the harms of their use.
00:57Of course, they want the use to be effective, but they don't want that increased muscle
01:04to come at the cost of their health.
01:07And admittedly, I only spoke to certain type of steroid user, the type of steroid user
01:12that welcomes a social scientist, wasn't paying anyone.
01:17So these were the guys that were more risk-averse.
01:20And what I found was that they want to practice their drugs in an evidence-based way, but
01:28there isn't the science to inform their use, so they generate their own knowledge.
01:34So we've unfortunately got two very separate knowledge systems when it comes to steroids.
01:40The bro-scientific, more experiential knowledge base, where they conduct sort of mini-experiments
01:47on themselves and they do blood tests and they collect the results and they report it
01:53online and they compile their data in a relatively haphazard way in forums and Facebook groups.
02:00And then you've got the scientific body of knowledge, which doesn't really know that
02:04much about steroid use.
02:06And so what I'm suggesting as a result of my research is that we as scientists collaborate
02:14with the bro-scientists who are already practicing harm reduction and we can give them our expert
02:20opinions on whether that's likely to work.
02:23If possible, we can investigate some of their theories and build a more solid bro-scientific
02:28basis for their use.
02:31Why do you think it's important to marry those sources of knowledge?
02:37Well basically because we as scientists know very little and these guys have been doing
02:42this research for decades.
02:45So I think it would be stupid to ignore such a massive evidence base of undoubtedly some
02:52of their ideas are going to be ill-informed.
02:56But there are people in these areas that have PhDs in biochemistry and nutrition and things
03:01like this.
03:02Some of their theories, I mean I'm not an expert who can judge the quality of their
03:08theories but they seem to be very complex and well-informed by science, as much science
03:14as they can get.
03:16As I said, it's lacking.
03:18So I think we've got a lot that we can learn from the community themselves and they're
03:23sort of trying out for us to collaborate with them so that they can practice these drugs
03:29in the safest way possible.
03:31Were some people doing incredibly dangerous doses of steroids?
03:36Well as I said, I was likely to attract a certain type of steroid user.
03:41The more risk-averse, one that's educated and reads the science.
03:48So I wasn't attracting the sort of YOLO user who uses to go to music festivals with his
03:54shirt off and combines his drugs with recreational use.
03:58It was a different camp of user.
04:01After a previous media appearance, I did have people just contact me out of the blue because
04:07they liked the fact that I was advocating for them and some of those were more reckless
04:13in their use, using large doses.
04:19Some felt they had an inability to sort of control their use.
04:23But I mean the reality is with steroids, we don't know what safe use and what reckless
04:28use is because we just don't have the science to say.
04:32And so yours wasn't a study about sorting out how many Australians are using steroids
04:37but were you surprised at the number who were using or did you get a rough idea of how many
04:44people you think in Australia are using?
04:48Well being online, my sample was very international.
04:51I did see a lot of people in these forums and groups discussing these issues.
04:59So from what I could see, working in these communities for a long time, use is widespread.
05:06And so what do you hope will come of your research eventually?
05:14Well I would love it if other academics, some of whom have stigmatised steroid users, could
05:21sort of see past their prejudice and I suppose their ego and acknowledge that people outside
05:30of the scientific community may have something to contribute.
05:34And I mean sometimes the boundary between us and them is actually quite blurred.
05:40So if we could recognise that there is some expertise here, that they, as I said, conducting
05:48their own experiments, collating their own knowledge, they're doing enough experiments
05:52that you can see patterns.
05:55And some of these cycles have been used for decades.
05:58So they've got some pretty solid evidence there that we could use to then inform our
06:04science in order to create one knowledge base rather than two separate knowledge bases that
06:13are sort of running in parallel but not really communicating very much.
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