Worth it? Photo: Luke Forgay / Shutterstock
Formalized drug testing in surfing hasn’t been around all that long. In fact, it was only introduced a few years ago, back in 2012, and the necessity of it was questioned by more than a few people. “I don’t know that if someone takes a drug it’s going to make them win a heat,” Kelly Slater told The Daily Telegraph when asked about whether or not surfers on the world tour might be users of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs). “Surfing is a lot of decision making and skill. It’s not just based on speed, and it’s not just based on strength.”
While that’s valid reasoning coming from the one of the most recognizable faces of the sport, the thought is built on the idea that PEDs equate to injecting yourself with steroids, then bulking up like Barry Bonds or Mark McGwire. Here’s the thing, though: PEDs don’t help you put the bat on a leather ball thrown at you at 95 miles an hour, but that sure as hell doesn’t stop baseball players from juicing. It does, however, make them stronger and faster. So when they do connect, they really connect. Kelly’s remark came four years ago, so for all we know he has a completely different or newly evolved perspective on the topic. I don’t bring it up to hold the man to something he said in 2012, rather to summarize a common attitude toward PEDs in sports culture.
So is it possible for a surfer to step up their game with performance enhancing drugs? It’s a question the majority of the surfing population and professional surfing fans alike tend to brush aside. On one hand there’s a general idea that PEDs are simply anabolic steroids, only used for bulking up and building strength. Fans of any and every sport regularly turn a blind eye to the thought that their own heroes might be “cheaters.” They rationalize it to themselves–there’s no need for it in their sport, and most importantly, there’s some moral code unique to their sport, keeping it all clean and fair.
But the reality is, in a sport with a deep history of recreational drug use, why is it so far-fetched to imagine surfers using them for performance?
So what if there are drugs that help you surf better? The World Anti Doping Agency compiles the most universally adhered to list for sports looking to keep their athletes clean. Every year, that list is updated with new drugs that comprise what’s known as the Prohibited List. Today, that list makes up a nine-page document with anabolic agents, peptide hormones, metabolic modulators, narcotics, stimulants, and plenty more drugs that will get you banned from just about any professional or Olympic competition under the sun (assuming the adhering organization actually adheres to their own testing and discipline policy). In fact, many of those prohibited substances are the same recreational drugs you wouldn’t be surprised to find on the results sheet of a professional surfer.
How a substance ends up on the banned list is quite fascinating and complex. Many drugs are on WADA’s watch list for years before they are eventually banned. There are 34 WADA-accredited anti-doping laboratories around the world that test and monitor trends in drug use. If a particular hormone or substance is found in excessive levels from several athletes on say, a national swim team, WADA takes note. They examine how and why a concentrated group of athletes would provide samples with high levels of something as simple as caffeine. They even run scientific tests through sports labs around the world by studying the effects of a drug on non-competing athletes. If the drug is then found to serve as a performance enhancer, you have yourself a banned substance when next year’s prohibited list comes out. The entire process can take a year or it can take more than a decade, but either way it proves that not only are athletes always testing the threshold for getting an advantage over their competition, but they’re also often years ahead of any governing body that can punish them for doing so.
Understanding how and why certain drugs can help an athlete perform a specific task isn’t always straight forward. So again, can any of them help a person surf better? As far as I know, nobody’s designed the drug that spits you out of the proper end of Tahitian left, but just like in baseball, there are certainly some drugs that just may boost the body mechanics involved. Here are three of them. This list is based on commonly known uses for athletes while asking a specific question: How might this drug apply to a surfer?
Erythropietin (EPO)?
Erythropietin is in WADA’s peptides and hormones doping class, similar to Human Growth Hormone (HGH). That means it’s actually a hormone naturally produced in the body. In the case of EPO, once it’s produced artificially it will shoot an athlete’s endurance through the roof. Lance Armstrong, the world’s most notorious “cheater” called EPO “the meth of performance enhancing drugs.” It was the main focus of his own doping scandal in which he was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles, and it’s also one of the most well known and possibly widely used performance enhancers in all of sports. Why? Because its benefits can serve a wide spectrum of athletes.
“It’s such a strong anti-inflammatory that, with that, inevitably you feel better,” Armstrong said about the drug in a 2015 interview. “Whether it’s physically you feel better, even just a euphoria that comes with that,” he added before raising questions about where the bar is set for acceptable performance enhancing drugs versus supplements. “It’s all performance enhancing. A nap is performance enhancing, vitamin c. You have to draw the line somewhere.”
With EPO, the spike in red blood cells delivers more and more oxygen to the muscles, delaying the onset of fatigue. Cyclists and distance runners are known for using EPO to perform at a higher intensity for longer periods of times. According to BBC in 2006, tests on Australian athletes showed that improvements in performance over a four week period could match the expected improvements over several years.
How would it translate to surfing? How many waves have you missed on the back end of a marathon session? Tired arms, sore back, stiff legs and hips can and will slow the best of us down. Whether it’s a single marathon session or a week-long run of swell, fatigue turns you into a different surfer – slower, less limber, and somehow always a step behind. Imagine paddling out on a full tank, feeling minimal inflammation and soreness after days of being surfed out. Except you’re never really surfed out. For a competitor, imagine having fresh arms in that final or during a big wave contest with hour-long heats.
Side Effects: For those using EPO non-medically, the side effects include clotting, thrombosis, heart attack and stroke.
Beta Blockers?
Fear is man’s most basic survival tool. It can save you in one instant and paralyze you in another. And if you surf, whether it was the first time a wave held you down or you’re an adrenaline chasing hellman, you’ve experienced fear in the ocean, even if just for an instant.
But what if you could control fear on a chemical level? Many athletes use beta blockers like Propranolol, Atenolol and Metoprolol to do just that. The specific reasons doctors prescribe these drugs to patients typically have to do with treating heart conditions, as they all help in reducing blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tremors and anxiety.
So why and how does this serve as a performance enhancer?
Beta bockers are actually a class of drugs within WADA’s prohibited list, rather than one specific drug. In general, they can actually diminish performance in aerobic activities like running, which feeds the argument they wouldn’t actually help you surf better. But they also help the body control the effects of anxiety – like hand tremors, for example– and improve the steadiness of the body while under stress. In the simplest terms, a drug like Propranolol blocks the body’s normal reaction to adrenaline. They’re often called “stage fright drugs,” which might open that conversation about surfing back up. Beta blockers are banned by WADA because athletes in archery, billiards, golf and shooting can gain an obvious advantage with them. Even musicians have been found to use beta blockers ahead of performances to diminish stage fright. The drug has such a widely assumed calming effect in moments of anxiety that a 1991 study investigated the use of beta blockers on high school SAT performance. Thirty-two students with a history of test anxiety were given the drugs an hour before taking the test for a second time. The study found students scored an average of 130 points higher than the first time, more than four times the normal increase for second time test takers.
Of course, surfing is wildly different and requires more athleticism than the previously mentioned sports and surfers aren’t exactly sitting in SAT prep courses, but the same logic could apply when looking to stay in control under extreme conditions (bigger surf or contest nerves, for example). To be clear, beta blockers don’t erase adrenaline rushes or the charge of fear in an exhilarating scenario. They simply help control the body’s physical reactions to it. It’s worth debating whether or not this would hinder performance for some or accelerate it, but for the anxious person who doesn’t handle pressure-filled situations well, beta blockers might be a practical shortcut.
Side effects: Many of the side effects from non-medical use of beta blockers are mild, but the list is still long. Depression is potentially the most dangerous side effect, but other impacts include fatigue, trouble sleeping, shortness of breath, headaches and more.
Modafinil?
Stimulants are huge in the sports world. Everything from Adderall to the prescription drug Dexedrine are commonly found in locker rooms across several sports for their ability to increase a person’s focus.
It would be hard to pick out just one substance from the stimulant list because they all have a pretty straightforward application in sports: spikes in alertness, stimulating the nervous system, and refining reaction times. The stimulant class makes up a large chunk of WADA’s prohibited list, so you can grasp how easy it would be to overlook several that could apply to surfing. Modafinil is/was one of the more popular drugs amongst athletes for years, used as kind of a super drug in that sense. It landed on the banned substances list a little over a decade ago when Major League baseball players, cyclists, weight lifters, sprinters and any other competitor you can think of found a way to benefit from what they call the “smart drug.” Even military personnel have been given Modafinil because it can enable a person to stay awake for as much as 40 hours while operating at full mental capacity. The common difference between a drug like Modafinil and other stimulants or even narcotics like cocaine is that the body experiences no side effects during use. Drink a pot of coffee and you’ll have shaky hands at the absolute least, but when athletes like Barry Bonds used Modafinil, they were gaining the stimulating advantages without any jitters, anxiousness or even aggressive behavioral changes. Essentially, it’s a super drug for enhancing alertness and stamina at the same time. Some even referred to it as the time shifting drug for its ability to keep an athlete operating at their full capacity for extended periods of time.
Many stimulants are designed to treat things like ADHD or narcolepsy, but when used by people who don’t suffer from what the drugs are created for, the user experiences a heightened baseline for normal activity.Interestingly, the side effects of non-medical use are similar to those when taking beta blockers unnecessarily. Depression is sometimes experienced, as well as even hallucinations and unusual behavior by users. The common description of their benefits to athletes simply states the effect as increased “alertness,” which is a broad term generalizing everything from a euphoric feeling of invincibility to heightened spatial awareness. So while they don’t exactly give you the physical balance and agility needed to take off under the lip at 10-foot Cloudbreak, it seems that they can boost the presence of mind needed to do so in the first place.
In fact, none of these drugs (or the countless others researched to answer this question) have a direct application to giving you stickier feet or a sixth sense for finding the peak. Interestingly, most of the published information on the specific benefits of a given banned performance enhancer is filled with science speak and little to no plain English, making it tough for the common man to understand how and why athletes turn to them. And that’s more telling of our turned cheek – pretending they don’t help, therefore only exist in other sports – than it is of the people looking to gain an edge.
