According to legends, experts said for years that the human body was simply not capable of a four-minute mile. They stated that it wasn’t just dangerous but impossible. Further legends hold that people had tried for a thousand years to break the barrier. In the 1940’s, the mile record was pushed to four minutes and one second. It stood there for nine years. Athletes struggled to break this feat but they couldn’t. But on May 6, 1954 Roger Bannister broke the history of running a mile in three minutes and 59 seconds. Barely a year after someone else ran a mile under four minutes. Then some more runners did. Now, it’s almost a routine. This they all did without the aid of drugs.
Drugs are poisons. Little wonder, one of the founders of medical practice, Paracelsus, quipped, “all substances are poisons, and there is none which is not a poison.” Sports, on the other hand, is frequently used to occupy our pastime. But this does not rule out the fact that many now take it as a profession; creating an imperative for constant improvement. But should drugs be used for improving performance in sports? From the story in the first paragraph, we saw how humans overcame their limits. For years, they lived in the penitentiary of their own imagination. But the ‘impossible’ was done without the aid of any chemical stimulant. Hence it is not justifiable whatsoever to use drugs with the aim of improving performance in sports or academics. I align myself with this fact due to the following reasons.
Firstly, the beauty of hard work will be lost if drugs are allowed. This beauty was observed in one of the illustrations above. It was evident that only extra effort separated the champions from the crowd. Hence Bannister earned his recognition. Through Bannister’s effort we now know that nothing is impossible. It is the lazy minds who usually want quick and cheap intervention that often resort to drugs. And because the lustre of fame and shine of glory are hard to resist, many professional athletes find themselves tempted to use drugs to enhance their performances in a bid to outdo others. The same goes for students who use drugs. And since academics and professional sports are all about celebrating human capability, this unfair advantage provided by performance enhancing drugs rigs the game and defeats the very purpose for which it was invented.
Secondly, there would be an uncontrolled incidence of abuse. This is true because every athlete would be involved in self-medication. Hence, there would be indiscriminate increase in dose just to get higher performance. Many would take the drugs for nonchalant reasons. Just as sleep postponing substances are abused so they would abuse these enhancers if allowed in sports and academics.
Thirdly, the side effects of these performance enhancing drugs could be catastrophic. It may lead to loss of basic natural ability of the users. A drug taken to improve one’s ability could lead to a downside effect with a decrease below the initial threshold of efficiency. That is, the body of the recipient refuses to function properly except in the presence of such enhancer. This phenomenon is called dependence. Therefore, more and more drugs would be taken to overcome the progressive emasculation of the user’s natural abilities. This condition would lead to a further accumulation of toxic wastes; which then degenerates to a pathological state.
I would not accept any performance enhancer, whether for sports or for academics. It betrays nature. It defeats the purpose of human existence. It immitates reality and creates room for momentous abuse. With drugs in sports and academics, there would be no winner or loser. There will be no commitment, no purpose, no aim, and no reward. This is because, an athlete could win by just swallowing a pill, and a student could do excellently by ingesting a drug.
Imagine a world without commitment. Imagine a world without zeal and hard work, where everyone lives in the shallow caverns of complacency. Before we know it, idleness would replace training sessions and our libraries would be covered in dust. This is not the kind of world we hope for. Rather, we want a place where everyone is entitled to his title; where a student burns the midnight candle to pass examination, where he can beat his chest without second guessing his ability. A world, just like Bannister’s, where athletes would break and make new world records, through hard work, to excite generations yet unborn.
Even if our performances were limited by nature yet we could get past those limitations by natural means by being committed, consistent and disciplined. No wonder the French scientist Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck crooned in his law of Use and Disuse, that “the parts of an organism’s body that are frequently used become more developed.” Hence with frequent routine, man could be what he wants. Instead of taking pills, athletes and students could decide to raise their performance thresholds naturally by rigorous routines of training and study. This would not only avoid all the downsides of drug use but also result in legitimate pride in the resulting performance.
In conclusion, one of the Holy books tells a story about the first human. According to the story, he was deceived to eat the forbidden fruit he had been pre-informed not to touch. But as soon as he ate the fruit everything turned awry for him. He was in pain. He was driven out of the beautiful garden he was placed in. These performance enhancing drugs could be viewed as a forbidden fruit. We may think those drugs could replace hard work but in the end, just like the forbidden fruit, we may not like the consequences that follow.
- Ezekiel, 500-Level Pharmacy, UNIBEN
