The Doper Next Door ─ My Strange and Scandalous Year on Performance Enhancing Drugs

What happens to a regular guy who dopes? Surprised to learn that pro athletes aren’t the only ones taking performance-enhancing substances, journalist Andrew Tilin goes in search of the average juicing Joe, hoping to find a few things out: Why would normal people take these substances? Where do folks get them? Does the stuff really work?

But these controversial drugs often silence their users, and so his queries might have gone unanswered had Tilin not looked in the mirror and succumbed to curiosity. Soon wielding syringes, this forty-something husband and father of two children becomes the doper next door.

During his yearlong odyssey, Tilin is transformed. He becomes stronger, hornier, and aggressive. He wades into a subculture of doping physicians, real estate agents, and aging women who believe that Tilin’s type of legal ?hormone replacement therapy” is the key to staying young?and he often agrees. He also lives with the price paid for renewed vitality, worrying about his health, marriage, and cheating ways as an amateur bike racer. And all along the way, he tells us what doping is really like?empowering and scary.

Andrew Tilin has written for many publications, including The New York Times, Wired, and Yoga Journal. He was a senior editor at Business 2.0 and Outside magazines, and is a contributing editor for Outside. He is the co-author, with Reed Timmer, of Into the Storm. He lives in Austin, Texas.