Steroids message taken to heart, By: David Dorsey

May 03, 2006

Don Hooten brought his crusade to educate high school athletes, coaches and others about the dangers of steroids Tuesday night to Fort Myers High School.

Hooten did so less than three years after his son Taylor, 17, committed suicide after using anabolic steroids.

Speaking for an hour to a packed auditorium of about 1,000 Lee County football players and their coaches, Hooten talked about the rapid strength gains players can make by using steroids — and the devastating costs of doing so.

Steroids can cause long-term health problems such as heart defects, cancer and depression. Hooten outlined many of those risks and discussed the reasons for such rampant use among teenagers.

At least 12 percent of high school juniors and seniors use steroids, Hooten said. He added that number may be higher in Florida, where athletics are emphasized year-round.

His son Taylor obtained his steroids, Hooten said, from the local YMCA.

“The guys down the street are going to tell you that I’m lying to you,” Hooten told the audience. “But the very best steroids you can get off the street are for veterinary uses. For pigs, cows and horses. When you use these, you’re turning yourself into a live human experiment.”

Hooten, 56, works for the Hewlett-Packard computer company, but he has made it his mission to speak out against steroids whenever he can. He appeared before Congress in March 2005, sitting about six feet from baseball stars Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro during their testimony.

Famous, successful ballplayers, advertisements depicting men bulging with muscles and even comic-book characters such as Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman contribute to the country’s youth using steroids, Hooten said.

“Do we really think that we’re sending a clear message that these drugs are as dangerous as they are?” Hooten said.

Some of the athletes came away impressed with Hooten’s talk.
“I think we need to crack down on it,” said Shane Monk, a junior linebacker at Mariner. “It is cheating.”

Monk estimated that a handful of players on every local football team, including his own, use steroids.

“I’ve never thought about it,” Monk said. “I believe it’s cheating, for one. And I understand what it does to you.”

Depression, Hooten said, led his son to hang himself. Taylor had been about to enter his senior year as a pitcher at Plano West Senior High, near Dallas.

“During the fall of his junior year, he was a 6-foot-3, 180-pound young man,” Hooten said. “His coach told him that he needed to get bigger in order to make his baseball team. But his coach never backed up his instructions with what kind of a diet or nutrition program to use.”

So in January 2003, Taylor secretly began using steroids, which led to severe mood swings and outbursts of anger. In five months, Taylor gained 30 pounds of muscle. He also began visiting a psychologist at the insistence of his parents, who were baffled by the sudden change in their son’s demeanor.

In May of that year, Taylor finally admitted he used steroids and quit using them. Six weeks later, suffering from depression, he killed himself. Withdrawing steroid users cannot naturally produce testosterone as they could before, and that’s what brings about the depression.

In the weeks after Taylor’s death, Hooten learned that at least five other boys on his son’s 15-player team were using steroids.

Before flying to Fort Myers, Hooten had dinner with a family whose 16-year-old son suffered a stroke after steroid use.

After the presentation, Hooten hoped he had reached his audience. But he also said some of the players would walk away thinking that “it won’t happen to them because they’re doing steroids the right way.”

“Kids today, they grow up fast,” Fort Myers football coach Sam Sirianni Jr. said. “They believe that they’re invincible more than ever before.”

They think it can’t happen to them, Hooten said. But if it can happen to Taylor Hooten, who had a 3.8 grade-point average, his dad believes it can happen to anyone.