Certainly all that bulking up often comes at a steep price. Anabolic steroids, which are illegal to distribute without a prescription, are synthetic derivatives of the hormone testosterone and have been linked to a wide range of serious health risks, including heart disease, infertility and organ damage, not to mention the uncontrolled aggression, known as " 'roid rage," that can afflict abusers. Bodybuilder Steve Michalik, then 28, won the Mr. Universe contest in 1975 and at one point in his career was injecting himself with steroids 14 times a day and taking 15 pills. He was forced to stop in 1986, when he nearly died of liver complications that he says were caused by the steroid abuse. Says Michalik, now 57, who reports being clean ever since and currently works as the training director at a gym in Farmingdale, N.Y.: "These kids don't know what they're in for."

In some cases – as with Shane, who plays hockey for a Division II college – part of the motivation for using steroids is to improve athletic performance. But for many others, it's simply a matter of vanity, the desire to look, in a hunkified world of Justin Timberlake and R&B singer Usher, as buff as they can. "It's about body image," says Dr. Gary Wadler, a prominent specialist in performance-enhancing drugs at the New York University School of Medicine and a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency. "It's fashionable to be cut, defined, muscular."

To which many experts might say, Be careful what you wish for. Shane, for one, insists that he did his homework on the perils of steroids before he started using them. "I was pretty scared about the side effects," he says, so he did extensive research on the Internet. He decided not to buy his drug on the Web, as many steroid abusers do, because he was concerned that they might be of poor quality. Instead Shane paid another player on his team $240 dollars for a two-week supply. He claims he isn't worried about possible 'roid rage because "I think I have a lot of self-control." A pharmacist he had consulted warned that steroids could also make him sterile, but Shane says that he does not plan to use the drug long enough for that to become a problem.