When Jason was 17 and “trying to get swole,” he said he and a friend started noticing they were getting served Instagram videos from gym influencers promoting a drug called MK-677. Intrigued by the promise that the drug would make them hungrier, so that they could eat more for muscle building without getting full, the teens “started sending the videos back and forth to one another,” said Jason, who is using a pseudonym to protect his privacy.
After seeking out more information on YouTube and Reddit, they eventually ordered capsules billed as MK-677 directly from a Chinese manufacturer. Jason, who is now 19, said the pills seemed to make him “insanely” hungry, as advertised, and his sleep improved. But the apparent side effects scared him off. “Both of us were constantly bloated,” he said, “and I ended up having high blood pressure.”
Young men in America, bombarded with images, advertisements and peer pressure telling them they need to enlarge themselves, have an unprecedented and largely untested assortment of substances waiting to drop-ship straight into their bodies. Those pursuing more muscle can draw on a wide-ranging and ever-growing gray market for performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), beyond the better-established and more widely known anabolic steroids.
