The use, abuse and misuse of performance enhancing drugs including Research Paper

The use, abuse and misuse of performance enhancing drugs including painkillers in sports - Research Paper Example This normally involves a series of workouts and hard training programs, which may make some of these athletes to turn to performance enhancing drugs (Barr, n.d). Traditional training methods involved by any sports athletes includes keeping on a strict diet of healthy foods and drinks that trainers prescribes, daily and routing work outs on their skills and training sessions to help keep their bodies fit. Some of these athletes turn to performance enhancing drugs to help them improve their performance in the field, or to get faster results in sports without lots of training. In addition, these drugs may be prescribed for medicinal use to athletes, but contain some chemicals that enhance the performance of the athlete unknowingly. The athlete acquires others for the sole purpose of enhancing their performance in the field (Orchard et al., 2006). The need to use drugs by athletes has been researched by Coleman and in an article by Prince (2007), whereby he states that an athlete’ s choice to use drugs is based on some of the following factors. First the athlete may use performance enhancing drugs due to cultural, social policy or attitudes and policing. This implies that the athlete’s cultures and norms may prompt him/her to use the drugs in order to fulfill gain acceptance in their culture. Secondly, environmental factors that includes conditioning, learning and life events, in which the athlete grows in and tries to emulate in sports. Thirdly, athlete’s interpersonal relationship with peers and family members may influence their use of performance enhancing drugs. Therefore, being from a family of athletes or working under the shadow of high performing athletes in the family or society may make them use these drugs to enhance their own performance. Another factor is at an intrapersonal, where the athlete develops cognitively feeling inferior, hence may use performance enhancing drugs to achieve high levels of performance. In addition, with al l these factors in place, the choice of use, abuse or misuse of performance enhancing drugs by any athlete comes to a matter of choice. Athletes use performance-enhancing drugs because in many cases they seek an easy way to achieve maximum performance, with minimum effort. Moreover, they feel that if they use these drugs they shall get a winning edge over their competition. As Coleman relates drive in profit, gaining techniques is the main driving force for any athlete to use performance-enhancing drugs. He clarifies that the athlete has a choice to choose between hard training and work or use performance enhancing drugs. Since benefits of using the drugs outweigh the bad, they turn to these drugs for an extra edge. In addition, athletes have the urge to get socially recognized and approved, and are mainly driven by the rational choice and force to succeed and break records in the fields influence their use of these drugs (Prince, 2007). Increase of use and misuse of performance enh ancing drugs has led to the formation of the World Anti- Doping Agency (WADA) to combat this in sports world wide. This agency later gave the criteria in which a drug is considered as illegal for use in any sports (Gerrard, 2005). The first criteria is that any drugs that performance enhancing to any athletes or gives them extra help over the other violates this rule. Secondly, it is stated that any drug that is deemed to cause health