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question to every man in Britain who wants to get in shape without putting in not just the hours, but any hours at all: how far will you go in this summer’s rushed bid to look good on the beach? Whilst other underground, internet-bought products like steroids or growth hormones can help increased muscle growth if coupled with hard work, Synthol is the only one that can guarantee instant growth… with almost no effort whatsoever. To gain bigger guns or broader shoulders users instead have to endure the excruciating pain of having their muscles instantly stretched with injected oil. And on top of that there’s the small but real chance you might die. Alarmingly, it’s a gamble that many British men this summer seem willing to take.

Mick Hart, former pro-bodybuilder and author of The Layman’s Guide to Steroids says Synthol is being seen as a quick fix for those looking to get big fast. “With Synthol you can say ‘I’m going to Spain on holiday in a few weeks with my mates – I’d like to bang an inch on to my arms. I’ll stick some Synthol in.’ By the time you get on the plane you’ll have huge biceps.”

But Synthol doesn’t actually make the muscle physically larger – the oil sits within the fibres of the muscle making it appear swollen in size.

Injections don’t improve strength or fitness, merely how inflated the

muscle looks – almost as if you’re ‘pumped’ all the time. But it does come at a price – if the oil is injected into a vein it may travel to the lungs causing a blockage or to the brain causing a stroke. It can also simultaneously create clots around your bloodstream.

Hit a nerve or nick an artery while injecting it, meanwhile,

and you might cause permanent paralysis of a limb or bleed to death. Far from standing on the shoulders

of giants, users are in fact walking a tightrope between accidentally hospitalising themselves and disfiguring their bodies forever. Take American bodybuilder Gregg Valentino, unfortunate star of the documentary The Man Whose Arms Exploded, for example. Though he strongly denies this to FHM, Valentino is accused of pumping so much Synthol and steroids into his record-breaking 28-inch arms that > a huge hematoma formed inside his

Under the theatre lights of a Liverpool hospital, a young man with impressively honed arms is having one of his biceps sliced open. His arms,

once considered his pride and joy, are infected and swollen from repeated injections with dodgy needles. But this isn’t heroin use – it’s a different fixation entirely. Out of the wound pours yellow pus, lumps of scar tissue and a toxic, oily fluid.

What doctors found in the open wound was Synthol – a silicone oil normally found in mouthwash, shampoos and hair tonics. But rather

than being used topically to add polish to a smile or free hair of

dandruff, this time the oil had been used to boost the

patient’s muscles. Synthol gives near-instant muscle

size, boosting biceps, pumping

pecs and swelling

abs. But it also

poses a

Forget steroids. The new dope for muscle freaks is called Synthol. It works instantly – but it may cost you your life…

m u s c l e m a d n e s s

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muscle?nope. it’s oil

Words: andy jones

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arm and burst, almost causing his death. Aussie bodybuilder Guy Grundy also suffered horrific complications that required surgery after taking Synthol. “The doctor removed a green, cystic-type lump from my bicep,” he says. “He said he had no idea what it was. I had a pretty good idea. I also hit a nerve in my triceps while injecting it and lost feeling and control of my arm for an hour. It was so numb and ached so bad that I couldn’t sleep for three days. After that my nails all went black and my fingertips were so sensitive that if I even slightly bumped them it would hurt for hours.”

YouTube is full of videos of men like German weightlifter Klaus Doring who have inflated their bodies with Synthol to the point where they’ve reached near ‘Michelin Man’ size. Other searches reveal such videos as a Latin-American man having the substance drained from his arm after pumping his bicep with Synthol to the point of infection. After a doctor makes an incision, yellow pus pours out of the wound on his arm and doesn’t stop for a further seven minutes. Likewise, injecting extensively to the point where the muscle is saturated with oil ends up with gravity soon playing its part as the oil gradually shifts downwards, causing baggy skin and strange-shaped bulges.

And yet, looking back at its history, it’s a wonder that Synthol didn’t hit high street gyms in Britain sooner after German weightlifter Christopher T. Clark began championing its use in bodybuilding competitions during the early ’90s. Fast-forward two decades and even those hulks targeted by Clark accept Synthol wasn’t quite the ‘boob job for the muscles’ it seemed.

Pro bodybuilder James Norton*, for example, uses Synthol – which he buys for around £80-90 per 100ml – to inflate muscles which before a show aren’t quite as large as others. “If you inject it sparingly, it feels hard like a natural, gym-worked muscle. But the injections are so painful that anyone with any sense would use it in smaller quantities. Plus injecting too much of it will destroy the shape of your muscles, giving them a lumpy, misshapen look. You have to inject it by pushing the pin in slowly to avoid hitting nerves – you feel a tingle before even hitting a nerve. If you do, you have to withdraw and find another site. You also need to draw back on the plunger to make sure the barrel doesn’t fill with blood so you know you aren’t in a vein before administrating.”

Now, though, even casual gym-goers are using it to boost something

they never had in the first place. “A lot of the younger guys are using it as a quick fix,” says steroid-dodging pro bodybuilder Rob Riches. “They go down the gym and realise all the money, time and hard work that goes into having a naturally toned body and they want to cheat. They then see their buddy at the gym, who suddenly blows up in size, telling them they’ve been injecting something. And that’s how it started, because for men there aren’t that many ways of cheating to enhance your physique except for hard work. You see women with boob

jobs, lip enhancements, nose jobs. The guys who are injecting Synthol see this as the same thing. I’ve seen it used by people to target their weak points – their calves, shoulders, the back of their arms to bring them up to scratch. But you can tell straight away who’s been using it because they look freakish. After all, they’re injecting a substance that’s 85% fat.”

But as steroid advice guru Mick Hart says, once people start using Synthol, it’s impossible to stop. “And their muscles don’t look good; they just look in pain. I’ve seen people jab five shots in different points around their biceps in one session. They

must be in absolute screaming agony afterwards. And their arms end up looking watery if they inflate too much of it. In fact, imagine what supermarket vegetable oil looks like under your skin and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what injected Synthol looks like.”

Hart says that pressures on young guys to achieve perfect builds means they’re easy prey for gym-based dealers selling them products promising overnight growth. “What these characters are selling is ridiculous but they don’t give a

toss. They just want your cash.” The use of Synthol goes hand in

hand with the rise in ordinary gym-goers turning to steroids to bulk up, with health clubs reporting that as many as 250,000 men in Britain are regularly using steroids. But drug content expert Allen Morgan says some of those very gyms are now the biggest culprits. “Even your standard, run of the mill, local gyms have become the biggest sources of needle exchanges because people are buying Synthol from dealers in there and injecting. I was investigating a drugs case in a building on Merseyside recently where local smack addicts

MUSCLEFRAUD!Cheat drugs that work

SynthoLa legal but potentially fatal oil injected into the bicep by wannabe musclemen who overnight develop the appearance of muscles.

D-BoLIllegal steroid causing huge muscle gains. Once used by arnie in his bodybuilding prime; now outlawed, but available on the net.

nAnDRoLonEBanned injectable oil that boosted the athletic performances of soon-to-be busted British Olympic runner linford christie and ufc Hall of famer. royce gracie.

“Fitness fanatics who inject Synthol reckon it’s the male equivalent of getting a boob job. It’s not”

“ten years ago, gym-goers across Britain weren’t dying. now they’re dropping dead every month”

were suspected of using an alley at the back of the site to shoot up. It turned out it wasn’t heroin users – it was needles being thrown out of the back of a gym next door.”

But Synthol isn’t illegal – in fact there is no government provision on its use – and like steroids, which have no restrictions providing you can prove all your supply is for personal consumption, there are no rules in place to stop users and dealers having huge stashes. “I’ve had mates bring back suitcases full of steroids, Synthol and hormones from holidays in Greece,” says another bodybuilder who wishes to remain anonymous. “Bodybuilding supplements like steroids and Synthol have to be one of the easiest things to shift. You can visit the continent, buy them there legally then shift them onto gyms. At your local gym, you have a captive audience and can hardly be touched by the police as long as they don’t practically catch you in the act. It’s hard to arrest on intent to supply and even harder to prosecute.”

And worryingly, drug expert Morgan says there’s an increasing number of cases involving dealers being arrested in possession of dodgy bodybuilding drugs. “One dealer was arrested and a lot of the substances he had were found to be fake – in each phial was simply an inert liquid. This was being sold as steroids. He didn’t know himself that they were fake – he took them on good faith from a supplier in China who’d basically ripped him off. But there’s absolutely no guarantee about the quality of anything you’re being sold.”

Hart also adds that, even though the internet has meant bodybuilders can pick up pretty much any

supplement they want, greater choice hasn’t created quality, with the explosion in easy-to-access supplements being funded by backstreet producers in Eastern Europe and the Far East.

“Ten years ago there were around 1,100 good, safe products. Now, I only trust about ten out of all the illegal ones on the internet because dodgy producers in places like Russia, China and anyone else with a tin bath to mix stuff in can make ‘Synthol’.

“The worst thing about it is, ten years ago gym members across Britain

weren’t dying. Now they’re dropping dead every month, with doctors finding traces of metals in phials being shipped in from all over the place. So much of the gear sold on the internet isn’t safe. There’s no literature out there advising people on these dodgy supplements apart from the internet where the only advice comes from the same people who are flogging them to you. And there’s no advice for people who want to use this stuff. Lads are being offered all sorts in gyms and they’re giving them all sorts. The internet has created a

US-based Synthol fan Rodrigo Ferraz flaunts the instant results of his latest jabs (above); while now-clean Gregg Valentino flashes implausibly large arms (right); other users (far right) aren’t so lucky

free-for-all for guys wanting to get bigger.”

And the free-for-all won’t stop with Synthol. As muscle culture continues to grip the UK, newer, deadlier cheats will flood the market, forcing increasing numbers of men to run the death gauntlet in exchange for overnight abs. But, conclude the experts, it’s a risk more and more of us are now willing to take.

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