Tens of thousands ampoules of unknown substances for gyms

Photo: Sander Ilvest

In gyms of Estonia, they lead a double life. On the one hand, men and women are all about pumping up their muscles. On the other, there's pills for beginners and injections for the experienced. At that, the substances are mostly quite unknown. 

How do these substances reach the gyms of Estonia? Hard to tell, as international experience says people caught carrying doping do not cooperate with authorities. Why? Because sports doping is internationally organised crime which is feared more than the state, as consequences may be more terrible.

While for years Estonians were able to live in the illusion that Estonian sportsmen did not take doping, the revelations of these past years have begun to erase the faith. Meanwhile, rare are cases of people caught by police of customs with doping substances. According to Raul Koppelmaa, drug department head at tax and Customs Board (MTA), some single cases have been detected in earlier years but the two largest hauls were snatches in June last year.  

First, a man attempted to take a vast amount of doping into Finland, hidden in a mattress: the dispatch contained 9,540 ampoules, 100 bottles and 1,400 pills. Let us remember that one ampoule should last a user for many a week.

But as he failed, a close relative tried another time at the end of June. Also driving to Finland in a car, this time the goods were hidden among boxes of alcohol. The customs officers caught 1,009 bottles, 150 ampoules, and 198 packages of drugs.

Mr Koppelmaa said they are not able as yet to tell us who the people were as the case is in pre-trial procedure to be investigated by prosecutor’s office. The punishment pending is from a fine to three years in prison. A definite financial blow is that they will miss the money spent on buying the doping. The substances will be destroyed.

While not disclosing the carrier of the load, MTA allowed us to take a look at the stuff. For a better understanding, we invited Estonia’s best known anti-doping fighter and sports biologist Kristjan Port.

The amount of substances we saw at the customs warehouse was frightening indeed as for a while it seemed Mr Koppelmaa would be forever hauling in the boxes.

In nice packages, the boxes contained doping like stanozolol, nandrolone, methane, testosterone in various forms. But this is but the package. Whatever is inside, only those know who put it together. Kristjan Port says we should not be fooled by the nice packages as to produce these even chemists in garages can afford.

Mr Port shows us that even the packages of similar substances are of largely varying print quality. «Naturally, it may happen to all, but this is extremely rare in high quality companies. Rather, this will serve as a hint about the origin and quality,» said Mr Port. Probably, these have been made in former pill factories in Eastern Europe.

«With a pharmacy, for instance, the whole supply chain is verified. The substances come from a pharmaceutical company and the entire path has been checked. Regarding the black market substance, it may be known for sure that nobody knows where it is coming from,» said Mr Port.

Yes, it may definitely happen that the substances have been sold by some decent drug companies as well, which are quite friendly towards the black market. «But there are uncountable examples of the garage companies making the substances themselves. In UK they did this documentary where two men in a garage are mixing these together with a spade,» said Mr Port.

Such is the style characteristic of the doping use as well. As an example, Mr Port holds a cardboard box containing a doping cocktail.  

«This is a mix of fast and slow functioning steroids, each a bit. This package contains a cocktail of 13 testosterone derivatives. Has this mix been clinically proven and scientifically reasoned? No. In body building, there is a whole lot of the speculative and the experimental. They say this is one of the best means, not considering the risks,» explained Mr Port.

For doping users, this is like multivitamin with lots of exclamation marks. Mr Port says the cocktails will usually be used once a person has administered a single substance for a longer time and its impact has begun to wane.  

He says this is good for marketing as the package stating multiple substances is easier to sell. «Alas, when things do not go as desired, most of the buyers will not blame the supplier, but themselves: I did something wrong, and ought to take more,» said Mr Port.

The habit is hazardous in many ways, beginning with the people using same syringe multiple times. Also, use of the  substances is a very robust intervention into the hormone balance of the body.

«Hormone regulation does not have the single goal of growing muscles,» said Mr Port. «We also have the central nerve system, we have tissues which react differently to hormone changes. And the brutal interventions with a larger doze – by ten, a hundred or a thousand times – carries consequences unpredictable. A well known effect of introducing outside testosterone, the body ceases to produce its own.» To exit administration testosterone is very difficult for the body.   

Also, the use of steroids has a severe long term effect.

«The tumour hazard is thought to take effect rather in 30 to 40 years, not taken seriously while administrating the substance. Also, use of anabolic steroids has the effect of enhancing aggressive behaviour,» said Mr Port. He said it is body builders that have committed especially aggressive crimes against persons.

«The side effect is bipolar, depressive behaviour, with euphoria followed by deep depression as leading to suicide. On one balance is all of this, on the other side is the big muscles,» observed Mr Port.

Though the doping load caught in June was on its way to Finland, there is no reason to assume some are not left in Estonia.

How long would that have lasted on the Estonian market? Mr Port says this is difficult to answer. «The problem is the abundance of myths spread on these substances. All kinds of various uses. The doctors would prescribe these substances according to altogether differing logic. Whatever the case, such an amount would serve Estonian sports a severe trauma,» said Mr Port.