Bodybuilder’s Near‑Fatal Steroid Episode Sparked a New Mission

Jamie Mantzouridis recalls the moment he first used steroids. A friend injected him, and his mind raced with worries—like hitting an artery or an air bubble—yet he says he was young and fearless.

Growing up he was small, skinny, and self‑conscious. When he began serious training in his early twenties, he saw larger gym mates who revealed they were using steroids. “They looked really good,” he recalls, “and they said that was what they were doing.”

At 21 he was impulsive. “If everything else is done right, steroids can fast‑track your results,” he admits. “But it’s not a cheat code. The risks can be quite dramatic.”

His first cycle involved trenbolone, a potent cattle‑grade anabolic among the harshest available. “All you need to do is ask the biggest guy in the gym,” he says. “They’ll either supply it or point you in the right direction.”

Within a year the gains were obvious, but so were the side effects. Acne spread across his back and chest, making him avoid taking his shirt off. One evening a routine injection went wrong; the needle was misplaced, and he adjusted it instead of using a fresh one. The site became infected, and he spent a week in hospital on antibiotics. “They said I was lucky,” he recounts, “that they didn’t have to cut tissue out of my leg.”

He lied to his mother about his hospital stay; she didn’t believe him. “She’d spoken to the doctors,” he says, “and she just asked, ‘Why are you talking shit?’”

He continued using despite the ordeal. At 22, a hospital stay felt more like an inconvenience than a warning. “When you’re young, you don’t develop that sense that this is doing damage in the long run,” he reflects. “You worry about it in ten years’ time.”

In the following years he experimented with growth hormones and insulin—normally a diabetes medication that bodybuilders use off‑label to drive carbs into muscle. “Short‑term it’s incredibly dangerous,” he notes. “Long‑term, anabolics are worse. The damage simply doesn’t become apparent right away.”

The turning point came in a bathtub about four years ago. “I remember feeling really dizzy,” he recalls. “I had to run out and get some sugar because I felt like I was going to collapse.”

He remembers thinking, “This is fucked. What am I doing to myself?” He quit that very day.

Now 29, Mantzouridis works as a nutritionist and online personal trainer. He observes that modern men face intense pressure about body image, amplified by social media. “Everyone believes they’re meant to look a certain way,” he says. “That someone successful has a Ferrari and a six‑pack. Some people will never achieve that, and it stops you from acknowledging what you have already accomplished.”

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