‘Steroid Holidays’ as Drug Tourism and Deviant Leisure

The use of non-prescribed steroid and other performance- and image-enhancing drugs (PIEDs) is growing around the world. In a number of countries such as the UK and Australia, syringe exchanges now provide more needles for these drugs than for heroin users. As the use of PIED has grown, so has the means of access to them, with traditional access points such as local gym owners and ‘dealers’ being supplemented by both online access and locally available ‘social supply’. One further but understudied emergent form of access is that of the so-called ‘steroid holiday’ or ‘steroid vacation’ where PIED users travel abroad to countries such as Thailand to access and use cheaply sourced ‘legitimate’ PIED while on ‘vacation’. This research is the first to report on and outline some of the key issues relating to steroid holidays/vacations and provide details of the rationales behind the activity as well as related risks. Twenty-two qualitative interviews were carried out with PIED users from Australia’s ‘hot-spot’ for IPIED use, Gold Coast, Queensland. Findings suggest that steroid holidays have a meaningful presence among Gold Coast PIED users but are often accompanied by weak understanding of the legal context in which they are undertaken. They can vary from serious training to dilettante activity where partying is as important as training. Steroid use is at an interesting intersection of approved and disapproved leisure and the steroid vacation extends this form of ‘deviant leisure’ even further into areas of commodification.