Originally published Dec 14, 1983

Nine years ago, Bob Paschall had a dream. That dream was to play professional football. So important was that dream that he would have done anything to see it become a reality.

"I wanted to play pro football, it's that simple," he said. "If somebody told me I had to eat railroad ties, I would've eaten railroad ties. Whatever it took, I didn't care. I was 20 years old and only one thing mattered. Playing pro football. "

But there was one very big hitch to Bob Paschall's dream. He was a center. And he weighed only 219 pounds. There hasn't been a 219-pound center in professional football since the Ice Age.

"I tried and I tried," said Paschall, a two-year starter for the Temple Owls in the early 1970s who now is a physician. "I would spend hours and hours in the gym. With a real heavy resistance exercise program that I learned from Olympic lifters that were training at Temple, I managed to get up to 226 and was benching 375. During the season, I played at 219. But I knew I wasn't going to make it in professional football at 219. "

Paschall had heard about anabolic steroids from some of the lifters in the gym. But they were still pretty much of a mystery drug back then. "It was like dabbling in the occult in those days," Paschall said. "The biggest fear (of steroids ) then was testicular atrophy. Everybody was afraid they'd become impotent. "

But Paschall had a dream, and at the time, even impotence seemed a minor sacrifice to make for the chance to play professional football. So he started taking steroids . Dianabol. Five milligrams a day.

"I took drug holidays," he said. "I would be six weeks on and four weeks off. But I only did the four weeks off once. After that, I started to become psychologically dependent on them. My drug holidays started lasting only a week. Then, I started feeling guilty, so I tried using them every other day for about a week. But I felt myself getting weaker, so I went back on them. It got to the point where my holidays started lasting only a weekend. "

But Paschall got results. He began using them in November of his senior year at Temple. By the next spring, his weight had jumped from 219 to 248. His best bench-press shot from 375 pounds to 425.

"I got bigger, I got stronger, I got faster," Paschall said. "When I started getting stronger, when my lifts starting going up, I said, 'Jesus, this stuff works. ' There was no question in my mind that the stuff worked. My muscle mass increased and my body fat content dropped. But at the same time, my blood pressure went up and my liver enzymes started to rise. "

Even with the added strength and weight, Paschall still couldn't earn a ticket to the NFL. But he was able to parlay his new muscle into a two-year stint with the Philadelphia Bell of the World Football League.

After the WFL folded, Paschall taught for a year, then enrolled in medical school. It was while he was in medical school that he began having serious reservations about steroids .

"I started to finally read about them when I got to med school," said Paschall, a neurologist at Northampton-Accomac Memorial Hospital in Virginia. ''That's when I started to wonder what the hell I had done to myself. "

Paschall was hardly a pioneer. When he started using anabolic steroids in late 1973, he had plenty of company.

"I was one of the lighter users," Paschall said. "At least 20 percent of the linemen and linebackers I knew were definitely taking them. "

A three-month investigation by the Daily News has revealed that steroid use among football players has hardly leveled off since then. During the investigation, dozens of players (both active and retired), coaches and physicians were interviewed, and most of them agreed that the drug has become a fact of life in the sport.

Former All-Pro offensive lineman Bob Young, who used steroids for more than seven years while playing for the St. Louis Cardinals and Houston Oilers, estimated that "50 percent to 75 percent" of NFL strength position players have taken steroids at one time or another. "Everybody does it," Young said. ''Everybody knows about it. "

Young wasn't alone in his estimation. Jeff Everson, who served as the University of Wisconsin's strength coach for 10 years before going into private business this past summer, figures 30 percent of the college football players in America have used steroids . "( Steroids ) have really mushroomed in the last three-to-five years," Everson said.

And players are using them despite warnings from physicians and researchers that anabolic drugs can be hazardous to their health. Paschall only used steroids for two years, and in very moderate dosages. But he suffered some minor side effects.

"I kept a book the whole time I was on them," Paschall said. "I'd take my blood pressure twice a week and get monthly blood work done. When I started out, my blood pressure was 120 over 70. I ended up with a blood pressure of 140 over 90. Now, it's 130 over 80. It never did go back down to what it was before. Other than that, my liver enzymes are still a little bit elevated and my five o'clock shadow starts showing up about quarter-to-12 every day. "

More dramatic, said Paschall, were the psychological side effects. "After I went off them, I wasn't big any more," he said. "I began to feel mentally bad about myself. It really hit me around mid-terms of my first year in med school. I'd go from one day, going out with the boys where they were all 260 and 6-5 and I'm the dwarf at 250 and 6-foot, to the next, going to school with guys with coke-bottle glasses who weigh 140 and look like a strong wind might blow them over.

"Even today, I feel like I shriveled. I'll look at a picture of me when I was on them and then look at myself now. It makes me feel beaten down, fat and about 5-9.

" Steroids give you one of the greatest sustained feelings of euphoria that you can have. But when you come down, you really come down. "

Since he became an MD, a number of college and professional players have asked Paschall to write them prescriptions for anabolic steroids . "I've been asked by All-Pro quality linemen in the NFL to write prescriptions for them," Paschall said. He says he has so far refused.

"The only possible people I would consider giving them to - and this would be under strict medical supervision, blood tests, EKG and all that other stuff - is a kid who's 2 inches away from the world's record in the shot put or a kid who could make the Olympic weightlifting team or a kid who's maybe an 11th-round draft pick who's got the height, who's got the weight, who's got the heart to play pro football, but doesn't have the strength.

"Those are the only people I'd consider. And I balk on the last one

because it's a sustained thing. If you start on them and that's what's making the difference in making the team, you're going to have to keep taking them to stay playing. "

Bob Paschall knows a lot more about anabolic steroids now than he did nine years ago when he started taking them. He knows they can be dangerous. But for all the risk present, he knows they also can do one other thing. They can make dreams come true, even if that dream turns out to be a couple of seasons in a league that no longer exists.

"If I had it to do over again, would I still use them?" said Paschall, repeating a question that was put to him. "Hell, yeah. To play pro ball, you bet. If I was 19 again and had a chance to play pro ball and a guy told me to take these little blue pills and I'll be able to play pro football, I'd do it in a minute. And if you polled anybody else out there, they'd tell you the same thing. "

Constant warnings by physicians and researchers that extended use of anabolic steroids might cause severe long-term side effects such as damage to the liver and other internal organs have frightened very few potential users of the drug.

''Until somebody sees somebody drop dead in front of them, they're not going to think twice about using them," said Brad Oates, an offensive lineman for the USFL's Philadelphia Stars who spent six years in the NFL. "A number of my friends in the NFL used it. Some of them are among the strongest men in the world. And I don't think it's any secret that, to get to that level, they used steroids , with or without a doctor's supervision.

"Everybody's tempted. We live in a society where instant gratification, instant success, is the measure of the day. And steroids are considered the competitive edge to get ahead. "

"The research on steroids is still so vague," said Jim Erkenbeck, the Stars' offensive coordinator. "A kid reads that it might cause liver damage, that it might cause high blood pressure, that it might do this, that it might do that. It's like the Surgeon General's warning on a pack of cigarettes. How many people does that scare off? Zero, that's how many.

"Tell a kid this stuff's going to make his gonads shrink to peas in 20 years and it doesn't faze him. He's not thinking about what it might do to him later. He's only thinking about how it can help him now. "

"Most players are simply going to ignore the warnings of side effects," said Ron Mix, an NFL Hall of Fame offensive lineman who played for the San Diego Chargers in the '60s. "That's something in the future. It's like trying to sell a young person on one employer over another because the employer has a better retirement program. That's just too far in the future to consider.

"The desire of men to play professional sports and enjoy all of the amenities, such as money, fame and women, is so great, I'll bet you nine out of 10 guys would give up 10 years of their life to be a professional athlete for just five years. "

Everson, who began working at Wisconsin in 1973, was the first full-time strength coach in the Big 10. He used anabolic steroids himself briefly in the mid-'70s when he was a competitive powerlifter. He has had athletes tell him that a few years of their lives is a minor sacrifice for the chance to be an All-Pro or a gold medalist. But he doesn't buy it.

"I've had a player tell me if he knew steroids would shorten his life so that he would live to be 70 instead of 76, but that he would be an All-Pro, he wouldn't think twice about using them," Everson said. "But I wonder.

"Hindsight is always a dangerous thing. If somebody is a champion now and 20 years from now they can prove that a tumor he gets is directly related to steroids , I bet you he would say, 'God, I would never have done it if I'd known this was going to happen. '

"But a lot of the athletes I know, they can barely look ahead to 9 p.m. in the evening if it's noon, let alone 10-15 years down the road. They don't care about that. They just care about now and being a great football player."