Risk and enabling environments in sport: Systematic doping as harm reduction PMC - Daddy Tv

However, it can be difficult to examine the efficacy of individual 12-step programs; by definition, they are usually anonymous and assignment to appropriate control conditions is logistically challenging. No published studies have examined the efficacy of 12-step programs among athletes, although numerous athletes have undoubtedly participated in such programs. If an athlete has a significant alcohol abuse and/or drug use problem and is open to abstinence https://ecosoberhouse.com/ as a treatment goal, then encouraging them to consider a 12-step program would be appropriate. A number of effective intervention and prevention strategies for alcohol abuse and drug use have been identified. This section of the chapter will address those strategies that have been well-studied and have the strongest empirical support. When possible, research that has examined these approaches specifically among athletes is presented here.

Methods to increase oxygen transport

Gene-doping is a still-experimental manipulation of cells or genes to improve athletic performance. Gene therapy came about in the 1990s and entered popular culture via “Schwarzenegger mice,” which had been treated for muscle wasting conditions and ended up with twice the normal amount of muscle after gene manipulation. While currently more science fiction than reality, WADA has already banned the practice in athletes. Stimulants are drugs that speed up parts of the body and brain, directly affect the central nervous system, and increase heart rate, blood pressure, metabolism, and body temperature. Medical uses include the treatment of allergies, asthma, ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), common colds, headaches, and nasal congestion. Athletes use the drugs illicitly to increase alertness, competitiveness, responsiveness, and weight loss.

Athletes and Substance Misuse

This study found that the structure of employment and working conditions could be addressed in ways to reduce risk as a preventative measure against doping. A second doping study surveyed Danish elite athletes about their views on PEDs and methods (Overbye, 2018). Rather than focusing on the contours of a sport risk environment, this quantitative study took the risk environment as a jumping off point drug use in sports to argue that prohibited substances should be divided into those that produce social harms and those that produce individual harms (Overbye, 2018). Although both studies have merits, neither gives a full picture of what a sport risk environment looks like across micro and macro levels, nor do they engage with enabling factors or delineate ways enabling environments may be produced within sport.

• A number of players have therapeutic-use exemptions for it if they’ve been approved for them by the testing program’s independent administrator or medical advisor.
• This equates the more oxygen for the muscles, which comes with a performance boost.
• Stringent guidelines and regulations can lessen the danger of doping that has existed within some endurance sports.
• It may reach an extent where the athlete abuses the drug every day to help cope.
• Conversely, rates of use for many other types of drugs are lower among athletes than nonathletes.

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Currently, there are limited data to support the potential benefits in alcohol, cocaine and opioid use disorders. One study related to marijuana found a decrease in cannabis use frequency [103,107]. Despite the limited nature of this literature, the data presented so far may be a promising avenue to explore in a population in need of better treatment options. Once an addiction is identified, screening for a co-occurring mental health disorder should be performed due to the increased frequency in those using substances and the possibility that they may be attempting to self-medicate. In 2017, there were 20.3 million individuals with substance use disorders in the U.S., 37.9% or 7.7 million had co-occurring mental health disorders [35].

• If they are addicted to another substance like alcohol, athletes may make bad decisions like drinking before a competition to stave off the symptoms of withdrawal.
• People who use drugs have long faced barriers to receiving the medical and social supports they need because of the stigma and criminalization of drug use.
• Future research on anti-doping policy and harm reduction may look more closely at the ways known doping systems have developed and their strategies for reducing various risk factors in order to enable doping.
• They have to perform on large stages, with many people’s expectations resting on them.
• The Canadian sprinter tested positive for anabolic steroids at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul.

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• WADA indicates that its primary duty is really to protect non-doping athletes, as its central mission is keeping doping and doping athletes out of sport.
• Many of those who were implicated received competition bans up to four years.
• However, lifting the doping ban would grant further competitive advantage to athletes who represent economic superpowers such as the US and China.

Patronage of wellness and antiaging clinics may also put recreational athletes at risk of inadvertent positive doping test results because treatments prescribed at these centers often include hormone replacement. Athletes did still suffer harms within these systems, often at the hands of central organising individuals or groups in the forms of bullying, coercion, and extortion. One reason athletes were vulnerable to such abuse is due to the nature of the risk environment in which these systems operated. Because of the risks that accompany doping revelations and the secretive nature of such systems, athletes had little recourse that did not necessarily out them as dopers or threaten their livelihoods, safety, or reputations. Much like individuals who are victimized as part of their use or sale of other controlled substances, doping athletes lack ‘access to law,’ an absence posited to fuel the apparently violent ‘nature’ of illicit drug markets at large (Jacques, Rosenfeld, Wright, & van Gemert, 2016).

As such, systematic doping may also be a way of managing risks (e.g. safe supply, dosing oversight, side effect management) that would be greater if each athlete were to undertake doping individually. Of course, both HAT and systematic doping as it currently exists are still limited by international/national prohibition policies. Overall, it is a common belief that substance abuse and addiction likely occur at a lower rate in athletes compared to the general population [2]. Competing at a high level appears to be somewhat protective in some areas of sport outside of the concept of doping. It can be surmised that this paradigm may change after certain events such as injury and retirement which may lead to more vulnerability.

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And it is not just positive tests that have brought athletes unstuck, with Lance Armstrong and Marion Jones retrospectively stripped of medals for years of systematic doping. Out of the major professional sports, the MLB has perhaps the most interesting history of drug policies. In January of 2005, under pressure from Congress, the MLB and its players announced a new drug agreement, in which first offenses earned a 10-day suspension and fourth violations earned a one-year ban. The frequency with which players are tested also varies greatly among professional leagues. In the NFL, all players are tested at least once per year, and the policy allows for targeted testing.

Doping in sport