Doping in Sports: How the Obsession With Being the Best Is Driving Young Athletes Toward Dangerous Choices
- Teo Drinkovic
- 3 days ago
- 6 min read
From Ancient Greece to Modern Performance Enhancement: The Hidden Psychological Pressure Behind Doping, Elite Competition, Social Media, and the Culture of Constant Winning
The problem of doping in sports is not new. Athletes have always searched for ways to improve themselves in pursuit of peak performance. What has changed compared to previous generations is the mentality surrounding modern sport and the constant pressure placed on athletes to be first, to be the best, and to produce outstanding results regardless of the impact on their physical or mental well-being.
Coaches, managers, and clubs are not the only sources of this pressure. Unfortunately, families often play a role as well.
Mothers and fathers push their children to become the best, focusing solely on results, results, and more results, without fully considering what this relentless pursuit may be doing to their children's bodies and minds.
There is something many young athletes hear long before they truly learn how to play, win, or lose. Sometimes it comes from a coach, sometimes from a parent, and sometimes from their own inner voice.
Yet the message is always the same:
"You must always be the best because second place does not exist for you."
There is no room for "good enough" in that statement. There is no room for growth, development, or human vulnerability. There is only the result.
The moment results become the only currency of value, sport stops being a game and becomes a pressure system in which the human body is no longer a tool but a project that must constantly be optimized.
In this context, doping is often portrayed as a personal moral failure, the decision of a "bad athlete." However, when we look more closely at what is happening in youth sports across Europe and around the world, the picture becomes far more uncomfortable and complex.
Doping does not appear as an isolated mistake. It emerges as a logical product of an environment that continuously promotes a single idea: second place is failure.
The Origins and Evolution of Doping in Sports
If we look back through the history of sport, we can see that various forms of performance enhancement have existed since ancient times. Wherever competition has existed, people have searched for ways to improve their physical capabilities.
Ancient Greek athletes reportedly experimented with herbal extracts, stimulants, and even animal-derived substances in an effort to increase strength and endurance. Historical accounts also describe the use of specialized diets and mixtures of wine and herbs before competitions, all intended to improve athletic performance.
The transition toward modern doping began during the nineteenth century alongside advances in medicine and pharmacology. Stimulants such as caffeine, alcohol, strychnine in small doses, and various plant alkaloids were used to delay fatigue and increase endurance.
One of the most famous examples occurred during the 1904 Olympic marathon. The winner, Thomas Hicks, received doses of strychnine and brandy during the race to help him continue running. Today this would be viewed as a dangerous medical intervention, but at the time it was considered part of race strategy. This period marked the beginning of systematic attempts to gain a chemical advantage in sport, long before formal anti-doping regulations existed.
A major transformation occurred during and after the Second World War. Amphetamines were used by military personnel to combat fatigue and maintain alertness. It did not take long for these substances to find their way into professional sports during the 1940s and 1950s. At the same time, the first forms of hormonal enhancement involving testosterone began to emerge.
The 1960s and 1970s are often referred to as the anabolic era. Anabolic steroids became the dominant performance-enhancing substances in elite sports, particularly in disciplines where strength, power, and explosiveness were essential.
The 1980s introduced a new dimension through blood doping and erythropoietin, commonly known as EPO. These methods focused not on muscle strength but on improving oxygen transport throughout the body, dramatically enhancing endurance performance.
The 1990s and early 2000s witnessed the widespread use of human growth hormone (HGH), insulin combinations, and increasingly sophisticated drug stacks designed to affect multiple systems simultaneously, including muscle growth, metabolism, recovery, and nervous system function. Doping evolved into a form of pharmaceutical body engineering.
In 1999, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) was established. Biological passports, out-of-competition testing, and advanced laboratory analysis became central parts of anti-doping efforts. Yet this also marked the beginning of a new race: the race between detection and innovation.
In recent years, new-generation peptides, Selective Androgen Receptor Modulators (SARMs), experimental gene-doping concepts, and recovery-focused enhancement methods have emerged. The focus is no longer solely on strength and speed but increasingly on accelerating recovery, allowing athletes to train at extremely high volumes and frequencies.
Family Pressure and the Young Athlete
How did we move from sport as a tool for education, health, character development, and preparation for life to a sporting culture where second place is often viewed as complete failure?
Perhaps the most troubling aspect is that many parents place enormous pressure on young athletes to constantly be first. In some cases, children become so desperate to meet expectations that they turn to any available method to achieve the desired result.
The modern mentality often suggests that the end justifies the means. Those means can include chemicals and performance-enhancing substances consumed by young athletes who fear rejection if they are anything less than perfect champions. The pressure created by this mindset is immense. It can lead to a wide range of psychological and physical problems.
From a psychological perspective, this creates a classic pattern of conditional self-worth. A child begins to believe they are accepted and loved only when they win.
Over time, this can contribute to anxiety, chronic stress, low self-esteem, emotional instability, and burnout. In more severe cases, athletes may develop symptoms of depression, especially following injuries, declines in performance, or retirement from competition. The consequences do not necessarily end when a sporting career ends. In many cases, that is when they truly begin.
Very few athletes enter the world of doping because they simply want to cheat. Most do so because they fear falling behind. They want to remain competitive. They want to stay at the top.
Ironically, the family members who should provide the greatest protection and support can sometimes become one of the strongest sources of pressure that drives athletes toward dangerous choices.
The Influence of the Internet and Social Media
In the digital age, social media has become a global showcase of perfection.
Young athletes are constantly exposed to comparisons. Success has never been more visible, but neither has the pressure to achieve it quickly. This accelerates a dangerous psychological process in which natural athletic development begins to feel too slow. Athletes today compare themselves not only with teammates and local competitors but with global standards displayed on their phones every day.
Perfect results.
Perfect bodies.
Perfect careers.
All filtered through algorithms that showcase the highlight reel while hiding the years of struggle, failure, and gradual improvement that made those achievements possible.
In such an environment, patience appears weak. Natural development appears inadequate. This is where one of the most dangerous aspects of doping emerges: the normalization of the belief that speeding up the process is acceptable if everyone around you seems stronger, faster, or more successful.
Once athletes begin to believe that doping is widespread, or at least an open secret, the moral boundary becomes increasingly blurred.
Doping Beyond Elite Sports
Another factor complicating the modern doping landscape is the fact that performance enhancement is no longer limited to elite athletes. Doping-related substances are increasingly found in lower-level competitions, recreational sports, fitness communities, and even among adolescents who have not yet entered professional systems.
In many cases, these are not traditional anabolic steroids but substances that are easier to obtain and more difficult to detect, including stimulants, experimental compounds, and so-called "research chemicals."
For years, WADA and national anti-doping agencies have warned that the distinction between elite-level doping and recreational performance enhancement is gradually disappearing. No matter how sophisticated testing systems become, regulation often struggles to keep pace with innovation.
What Is the Solution?
According to a growing number of experts, the solution does not lie solely in stricter testing and harsher punishments. The deeper challenge involves changing the culture of modern sport itself. This means redefining success. It means providing greater psychological support for young athletes. It means educating parents and coaches. It means creating environments where long-term development matters more than immediate results.
Without these changes, the pressure of "I must be the best" will remain one of the most powerful hidden forces driving one of the most complex crises in modern sport.
It is a crisis that is not always visible on the field, the track, or the court.
Yet it is present behind every training session, every injury, and every difficult decision a young athlete makes. The pursuit of human performance limits has been expanding since ancient times, from early herbal mixtures to sophisticated biological manipulation.
But the boundary is no longer merely physical.
It has become social!
Psychological!
Systemic!
That is why doping in the twenty-first century is not simply a sports problem.
It is a problem rooted in a culture of success that no longer knows where to stop and say:
"Good enough."
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