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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Sarah Marsh Consumer affairs correspondent

‘I felt dizzy’: bodybuilder recalls how drug abuse caught up with him

James Mantzouridis smiling.
Mantzouridis is now a nutritionist and online personal trainer. Photograph: pr

Jamie Mantzouridis vividly remembers the first time he took steroids. He got someone else to inject him and his mind was racing. “What if he hit an artery? What if there was an air bubble?” Mantzouridis, however, says he was young and fearless.

He was small growing up, skinny and self-conscious. By the time he started training seriously in his early 20s, he noticed other guys at the gym who were much larger, and they explained they were taking steroids. “They looked really good,” he says, “and they said that was what they were doing.”

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