Injecting Advice

Steroid ‘Spot Injecting’

Written by Nigel Brunsdon on . Posted in .

Spot injecting is when people who use steroids inject into a smaller muscle rather than the glute or thigh. For instance injecting into the deltoid. When you ask people why they are doing this you’ll get an answer along the lines of, “I want to get my arms bigger”. A basic understanding of the human body will tell you that this isn’t how it works.

Muscle injecting

The idea of muscle injecting is to get a slow release of the injected substance (in our case the steroid). This works because deep muscle has very little blood flow to take the drug into your system. The steroid doesn’t work at the point of injection, in reality it does nothing until it’s been processed by the liver.

Shallow muscle problem

Injecting into more shallow muscles (ie spot injecting) means that drug uptake is faster than expected. This will mean that at first the user will get VERY high testosterone levels, with of course related side effects. So someone will be more likely to make snap decisions, wanting more sex and in some cases more aggressive etc.

The problem is that the drug will run out well before the next jab is due. So, testosterone levels plummet and you get the opposing symptoms. Feeling your body is horrible, crying, needing reassurance, depression.

Basically spot injecting can cause some SERIOUS mood swings.

One last point

When someone still won’t believe you that spot injecting doesn’t work even after you’ve explained the above, ask then to talk to their friends about it. Or just point out to them that if steroids worked at the point of injection then most body builders would have a backside like Jay Lo.

Writer: Nigel Brunsdon

Nigel Brunsdon is the owner of Injecting Advice. He’s been working in harm reduction since the 1990’s, previously a frontline needle programme worker he now splits his time between photography and developing online resources for drugs workers and users.

Nigel Brunsdon

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