So it finally happened, the steroids sacandal has reached La Fraternidad. After destroying the integrity of baseball, drug use in sports has moved on to local Honduran futbol… well sort of. I was having a conversation about local futbol with a guy the other day as I was waiting for a jalon from my desvio (a common theme in my life down here). He lived a few towns over from me and our teams occasionally compete. After a little while he began to complain about how the kids these days were using drugs to make themselves more competitive at futbol, and how if you wanted to play semi pro in the area you had to start using drugs. I was pretty shocked by this since I didn’t know that futbol players even did steroids anywhere in the world, and I had never heard of anyone locally doing steroids (or even knowing what they were). Things began to make much more sense however when I asked his what drugs they were doing and he looked at me and with a serious voice said “panadol y ibuprofena” (Tylenol and motrin basically). He went on to explain that they would take these preemptively so as not to feel the bangs and bruises associated with playing and as a result of this they supposedly play extra aggressively. The way he described it pain killers are roughly the equivalent of taking pcp, players run around aggressively banging into people with super human strength and then get naked and have to be subdued by like 6 police officers (ok maybe I made up that lat part, but either way, he was over hyping the effects). This is similar to the way that people in my village describe the effects of marijuana. According to them you go crazy and get super aggressive and get in fights. I feel like I should sit them down and show them Half Baked so they will understand what the real effects are (effects that are significantly less grave than those of the guaro (moonshine) that they suck down like water. So in conclusion, apparently the drug problem in sports here is not as bad as in the US just yet (well unless you ask my bus stop companion).
