From brewing bootleg batches in baths to killer doses containing rat poison: inside the underground world of steroids
A bath filled with noxious chemicals bubbles away in a family house.
This home brew will be filtered, drained into 40ml vials, and sold on to users - with the amateur chemist behind it making close to £10,000 of profit.
It sounds like a storyline straight out of Breaking Bad.
But these bathtubs aren’t in New Mexico, but a terraced house in Glasgow.
And the dealers aren’t cooking up crack cocaine, but steroids.
In a desire to get chiselled abs and bulging biceps - or what was dubbed the ‘Love Island’ look last year - there is a growing number of men (steroid use is predominately male) who are risking their health by pumping themselves with drugs rather than just pumping iron.
Shocking new figures reveal that almost a million people in the UK are using anabolic steroids in a bid to get ripped quick.
Worryingly, they are also being used by an increasing number of young people, with their use rising among 16 to 24 year olds by 19,000 in the past year.
It’s this four-fold increase in steroid use Jeremy Kyle investigates in tonight’s The Kyle Files.
The troubling documentary sees the tabloid talk show host speak to grieving mothers, confront a steroid dealer and expose the shocker substances found in steroids bought from various gyms.
As Kyle shows, many of these drugs are made in underground labs - in unsanitary and unsafe conditions, mixed up alongside other dangerous substances, such as crystal meth.
They could contain anything - from rat poison to brick dust - and if they do actually have steroids in them, it could be in such a high dosage they could prove fatal.
Earlier this month, engineer Freddie Dibben, 28, developed a fatal heart condition after taking anabolic steroids he had bought online.
The fit and healthy rugby player was found dead by his father in March last year at his home near Winchester, Wiltshire.
Matt Dear, a 17-year-old cadet from Southend, Essex, died in 2009 after taking steroids in a tragic bid to get into the Marines.
He suffered a fatal swelling to the brain when he tried a £30 black market batch of body-building pills.
Anabolic steroids, also known as ‘stackers’ and ‘juice’, have the same chemical structure as the male sex hormone testosterone.
They are rarely prescribed to humans and their primary use is to promote weight gain and muscle development in farm animals. The most common form in the UK is a brand called Dainabol known as D-Bal.
The substances - usually injected into the buttocks or thigh - help build muscle mass, reduce fat and improve performance. Users say they start to see results in days.
The sporting world has long been dogged with incidents of athletes being found with them in their system, but their main use today is body image rather than athletic prowess.
In 2015, Made In Chelsea star Spencer Matthews was kicked off ITV reality show I'm A Celebrity after confessing to a secret steroid addiction. He revealed how "vanity" led him to bulk up for a charity boxing match.
Dangerous fakes
In the past, body builders could source them from ‘dealers’ at the gym, but an increasing number of users are now buying these drugs online without any way of knowing whether what they’re buying isn’t counterfeit and dangerous.
According to the World Health Organisation, 50 percent of drugs bought online are fake.
Online message boards are full of people asking for advice. One 25-year-old posted: “Going away on holiday in nine weeks and wanting to look great.”
He then goes into detail about the amount of steroids he should take, asking: “Will it benefit my beach bod?”
The majority of these drugs are made in clandestine labs in countries such as Poland, Germany, Pakistan, and the Czech Republic.
But an increasing number are being made in the UK by amateurs, mixing a steroid powder with oil.
After this, two chemicals widely available from pharmacists are added and it’s heated in a bid to kill of bacteria.
This home brew is then filtered twice before being decanted into 10ml vials, which sell for around £40.
Brewing bootleg batches in baths
Steve Wood, of addiction charity Open Road, says amateur chemists are even brewing bootleg batches of ‘roids’ - as they are known - up in their bathtubs.
He told Sun Online: “I went to one underground lab in Glasgow a few years ago and they were making it up in their baths. There’s many a factory out there in the UK cooking up anabolic steroids at home and then selling them online.”
He said that it’s hard to know just how many underground labs are out there but most are being knocked up by amateur chemists.
"You will have thousands of factories across the UK making anabolic steroids."
Making illegal steroids is big money, he says.
“It’s very lucrative. They’re making pills and liquid but the liquid form is where a lot of the money is made.
“For every £1,000 invested in materials you can make as much as £12,000.
“The police are very involved. They are on the internet tracking the people.”
Although possessing steroids is legal, they are Class C drugs and anyone caught producing with intent to supply can face a prison sentence.
Operation Bloodthirsty
Underground labs started to spring up following the passing of a law in 2012 which banned steroid importation and in 2015, the National Crime Agency teamed up with the clean sport organisation UK Anti-Doping to tackle the growing problem of them.
As part of an initiative named Operation Bloodthirsty, they raided three labs in the West Midlands, Manchester and North Wales.
After this, a dealer from Cheltenham, Glos, was jailed for three years after his "Steroids R Us" online business was busted.
Carl Dix, 27, had £21,000 seized from his home and bank account.
Lawrence Gibbons of the National Crime Agency’s Organised Crime Command said: “While underground drug laboratories sound like something out of a TV show, the damage these labs can cause to the public both from the drugs that they produce and their potential to explode catastrophically, is very real.”
A Home Office spokesman said steroids should only be supplied by pharmacists with a prescription and the government was taking a “tough approach” to tackling the problem.
“Law enforcement agencies continue to work with internet providers to shut down UK-based websites found to be committing offences such as selling steroids.”
Corrupt cops cashing in
Although the police are meant to be enforcing the law, there have been numerous examples of corrupt cops cashing in.
In June last year, Inspector Darren Lewis was formally dismissed by the Metropolitan Police Service, then jailed for three-and-a-half years for running a steroids factory from his home.
He was convicted of conspiracy to supply and produce Class C drugs and converting criminal property to the value of £66,600.
Inspector Darren Lewis was nicked for making and selling pills. A month later, another police officer Gareth Golds, of Kirk Hallam, Derbyshire was jailed for two years.
He was arrested after offering to sell the drugs to friends through a closed WhatsApp group.
Police recovered illegal steroids from his home and he pleaded guilty to charges of encouraging or assisting their supply.
Steroids and murderers
Earlier this month, an inquest into the three terrorists who carried out the London Bridge attack heard they had taken large quantities of steroids before killing eight people.
Last month a separate pre-inquest hearing into the Westminster Bridge attack revealed Kahlid Massood, 52, had taken steroids before he drove into pedestrians, killing four and injuring 50, in March last year.
He then fatally stabbed PC Keith Palmer, who was guarding an entrance to the Houses of Parliament, before being killed by armed police.
Raoul Moat, 37, a heavy user of steroids, shot his ex-girlfriend Samantha Stobbart, her new partner Chris Brown and blinded PC David Rathband after blasting him in the face in 2010.
In a letter to police, Moat described his anger saying: “It’s like the Hulk. It takes over and it’s more than anger and it happens when I’m hurt.”
And Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik, 35, who killed 77 people in a bombing and shooting rampage in July 2011, was a heavy user too.
National health risk
One of the worst hotspots for steroid use in the UK is Wales, where just over half of people using needle exchanges are steroid users. In some areas, the figure is 75 percent.
And so popular have they become across Britain, many gyms now have needle sharp bins to dispose of them safely.
Furthermore, the number of people injecting themselves with steroids is the same as those shooting up with heroin, with HIV infection rates being at the same level for both - 1.5 percent.
But not only can steroids cause serious medical conditions such as high blood pressure, heart disease, strokes, as well as liver, kidney and prostate cancer, they can also lead to reduced sperm count, infertility, shrunken testicles, baldness and gynecomastia - the development of female breast tissue.
This is because when the body is overloaded with synthetic testosterone, it stops making it naturally and creates more of the female sex hormone, oestrogen.
And some of the darker side effects are psychological, such as paranoia, impaired judgement, mood swings, and aggressive behaviour known as ‘roid rage’, with studies showing that men on steroids are twice as likely to be involved in violence.
Joe Kean, who is the lead recruiter of steroid users for the report into image- and performance-enhancing drugs (IPEDs), told The Guardian he was confident there were about 900,000 users in the UK.
He said users he had worked with included everyone from members of the emergency services, soldiers and imams.
He said: “The evidence is emerging that steroid use will cost the NHS millions.
“Lads are taking steroids, drinking and taking a bit of coke and they go out feeling hard and manly. Steroids, alcohol and cocaine are the holy trinity for heart issues.”
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UK Anti-Doping‘s Director of Operations, Pat Myhill, said his organisation works hard to shut down "unhygienic and unregulated labs" and that anyone taking them needs to be aware of the potentially life-threatening risks.
He says: “Buying and using non-prescribed drugs for either performance or image-enhancement can have devastating effects.
“They can prove extremely harmful to health, with long-term, permanent and even fatal consequences, especially those produced in illegal underground laboratories.”
We previously investigated 'Mob Britain', talking to the paedo hunters, Guardian Angels and angry cyclists who are taking the law into their own hands to catch criminals.
We also looked at the rise of sleazy delivery drivers who sexually assault and pester women on their doorsteps.