If you are a parent, there’s nothing more important to you than the safety and well being of your child. This is especially true when you feel that your child may be doing something that puts their health and safety at risk. Steroids are one of the major problems that athletes and men who wish to look fit deal with when they are competing or trying to meet their goals. With the added pressure to look good and be successful from peers and the steroid use of their heroes, teens sometimes resort to using these performance enhancing drugs to reach their goals quicker.
When this happens, there can be changes such as added mood swings (irritability and aggression among them), acne, excess body hair and increases in muscle and body mass as well as interrupted sleep patterns. When these symptoms occur we begin to wonder if something is going on and how we can resolve it. Now that there are home steroid testing kits that means deciding if testing is necessary. Before you take this step however take the pros and cons into consideration.
Pros:
- Definitively knowing if your teenager is using steroids.
- Convenient, Simple Test.
- Privacy for you and your teen.
- Quick results (usually in about a week).
There are several benefits to knowing if there is a problem in the first place; the greatest of these is if you can stop the use before it’s really begun. The ease with which the home test is created will help a great deal in the process of gathering the sample and getting your results. The fact that the testing happens in your home also helps you to handle the problem as a family rather than through a school testing program or through that of an athletic club. The efficiency and speed of these tests also means that the wait will be relatively short, giving you a fast resolution to the issue.
Cons:
- You may need to monitor the urine sample.
- Steroid testing can be expensive.
- Trust can become an issue.
- Testing is only the beginning
With all the positives in mind, you will also have to deal with some unpleasant truths. In order to bring up steroid testing, you will have to call into question whether your child is abusing performance enhancing drugs. This means you will have to ask your child about the situations that have caused you worry in the first place and challenge whether they’ve been honest with you or not. Along with asking them to do a urine test you may have to monitor the sample giving process to be certain they don’t tamper with the results. As a whole the testing process can feel invasive to the teenager and you should expect some discomfort and irritability from them as it occurs.
If the results are positive, you will have to steel yourself for a rough road ahead as you ask your teen to stop using the steroids. Stopping steroid use can be a problem as well. Many aren’t aware that there is a very low feeling associated with quitting steroids. This low period can quickly become a depression that for some can lead to thoughts of suicide. It’s important that you monitor your teenagers’ behavior even after they’ve stopped using steroids.
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Tags: Drug Testing, Drug Testing guides, random drug testing, testing guides
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