The £150 drug that promises a shortcut to the ‘perfect body’… but at a terrifying cost: Inside rise of new fitness ‘super supplement’ and how it can trigger psychosis and leave young men with permanently ‘shrunken testicles’

Weightlifter Joseph Black was still legally a child when videos on social media introduced him to a dangerous shortcut to a better, stronger, body.

‘This stuff was all over YouTube – films of men with sculpted physiques telling you that with these performance-enhancing drugs you could look like them with no risk to your health,’ he says. ‘I was just 17. By the time I turned 18, I had the testosterone levels of an 80 year old man.’

The ‘stuff’ Joseph, now 23, is talking about are ‘selective androgen receptor modulators’, or Sarms, research chemicals that are banned for human consumption, but which are being pushed to naive youngsters in a social media world where having the perfect body is increasingly important.

According to drugs counsellors, fitness instructors and even the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, there has been an explosion in the use of Sarms in the past few years, particularly among young men, but laws controlling their use are not being properly enforced.

Even though it is illegal in the UK to sell Sarms for human consumption, numerous websites and bodybuilding shops offer them. I was able to buy some online from a Norfolk company which arrived with neither instructions, warnings nor even a check to see if I was over 18.

‘Sadly, this doesn’t surprise me,’ says drugs educator Tony D’Agostino, an expert in tracking dangerous drug trends. ‘Sarms have become a multi-million pound business and even though they’re illegal to sell for humans to ingest, there are plenty of unscrupulous dealers online and on the high street who are only too happy to sell to kids to make a fast buck.

‘Among teenagers used to watching TikTok, YouTube and other social media platforms, Sarms are common knowledge. But they’re worrying, because they are promoted by influencers with perfect bodies and pumped-up muscles who often claim Sarms can get the bodybuilding results of anabolic steroids without the commonly known side-effects – such as liver damage, heart attacks and sexual dysfunction – but they’re wrong. Sarms can have dangerous side effects all of their own.’

The first Sarm – Andarine – was created in the late 1990s by scientists looking for a treatment for prostate cancer. While they found it largely ineffective when it came to that disease, it was highly effective at promoting muscle growth and mimicked the effects of anabolic steroids by targeting androgen receptors in bone and muscle.

Androgens are a group of steroid hormones – testosterone being the most common – that drive the development of male physical traits and reproductive health.

Researchers hoped they would be able to copy the effects of anabolic steroids without the side-effects associated with traditional testosterone therapy, but they failed.

To date, no Sarm has been approved by either the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in the UK, or the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US.

According to a warning issued by the FDA, Sarms’ side-effects in both male and female users can include increased risk of heart attack, strokes, psychosis/hallucinations, sleep disturbance, liver injury and acute liver failure. In addition, they can lead to infertility and miscarriages among women and ‘testicular shrinkage’ and sexual dysfunction in men.

Joseph, (not his real name) from Essex, first became interested in trying Sarms after seeing them on social media.

‘It was mostly on YouTube because TikTok wasn’t so well known but, after a while, Sarms were all over that, too,’ he says. ‘There would be these pumped-up guys telling you about getting great results without the risks associated with steroids.

‘I was going to the gym lifting weights about five times a week with a friend, and we’d had good results, but we believed that with Sarms, we could grow stronger, faster.’

Joseph says that, at the time, using steroids was considered hardcore and risky, while Sarms were being touted as a safer alternative that didn’t amount to cheating.

‘We didn’t want to do anabolic steroids but social media gave the impression that with Sarms you’d be clean,’ says Joseph. ‘They came in the form of capsules, so you just swallowed them.

‘That seemed good, because people using steroids would inject, and everybody thought injecting put you into the same category as a smackhead [heroin addict].’

Joseph went online and bought the SARM RAD-140, also known among users as ‘Ibutamoren or Testolone’. This is a chemical that has been banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, but which is still easily available online.

He also easily bought MK-677, or ‘Nutrobal’, an experimental growth hormone that has never been approved for human consumption, but which is also readily available online. His first complete order cost him ‘about £150’.

The sites that sell these, and the social media influencers who promote them, almost always warn that they are intended for research only, and that they are not recommended for human consumption. And then shamelessly promote their use in bodybuilding regimes.

Joseph says that, at first, he believed his choice to go down the Sarms route was a good one.

‘They produced incredible results,’ he says. ‘And it was pretty fast. Within around two and a half to three weeks, there was noticeable difference in my traps [trapezius, upper back and neck] and deltoids [shoulder muscles]. They were visibly bigger and I felt stronger and was able to lift more weight.’

However, Joseph was now on a slippery slope. He began taking more Sarms and supplements, but noticed that you had to take one substance to counteract the negative effects of another.

For example, his MK-677 was known to increase glucose and insulin levels, so he had to take a ‘glucose disposal agent’ in order to manage blood sugar levels and prevent diabetes.

‘You find you’re taking A plus B to achieve C, but then you realise that you need to take D to counteract the effects of B – there’s a pill for every ill, and an ill for every pill,’ says Joseph. ‘Within about three months, I was taking 35 pills and supplements a day, and the downside started kicking in.

‘I felt lethargic and my mood was very low. By then, I was about 18, and being a naive 18-year-old I think to myself that my testosterone levels must be low, and I might need to go on testosterone replacement therapy.’

Joseph went to a private clinic to have his blood and hormone levels checked and was told the devasting news that his Sarms regime had almost destroyed his body’s ability to produce testosterone – giving him the same hormone levels as an octogenarian.

‘I went back to the black market and bought testosterone replacement and began injecting myself,’ he says.

At the time, aside from the lethargy and low moods, Joseph, experienced a loss of libido and sexual dysfunction. He says that people who knew him found him to be ‘agitated, short-tempered and irritable’ – colloquially known as having ‘roid rage’.

Experts say other symptoms can include acne, headaches and sleep disruption. And while Joseph’s testosterone levels were restored after about a year, some Sarms users with the same problem have to take replacement therapy for the rest of their lives.

Dan Watson, a fitness trainer who works with bodybuilders, has been outspoken in his opposition to Sarms. ‘One of the problems with Sarms isn’t just that they’re potentially dangerous in their own right – it’s also that you don’t know whether what you’re buying from these dodgy sites are even actual Sarms,’ he says. ‘They could be anything. There’s lots of fake stuff out there, and that’s terrifying.

‘What concerns me is that I don’t get misguided clients messaging me and saying, “I’ve heard about these Sarms – where can I get them?”. Instead, I get 13, 14, 15 year olds contacting me saying they don’t need to know where to get them because, thanks to social media, they already know that.

‘What they say is, “Hi Dan, I’m already taking this – what else would you recommend?” And my response is, “Holy s***. Get off that immediately!”’

Among the many sites youngsters are directed to by social media videos is uksarms.com, which describes itself as ‘The UK & Europe’s #1 Sarms Supplier’. It promises its customers ‘Quality-Integrity-Transparency’. As with all similar sites, it carries a disclaimer that reads: ‘Our products are only intended for medical professionals to administer in research settings.’

But it then goes on to promote their use in bodybuilding with articles and tips. On a page promoting a huge array of Sarms, the site unambiguously says: ‘Looking to maximise the results of your training? Opting for a muscle gain stack is a great way for bodybuilders and athletes to get the most out of their training by making it easier to pack on lean muscle, boost strength, and speed up recovery. Whether you’re bulking, cutting, or maintaining, our Sarms stacks can help you reach your fitness goals’.

Using an intermediary, I bought a ‘stack’ of S4 ‘Andarine’ and MK-2866 ‘Ostarine’ for the sale price of £98.99 from UK Sarms, which is located on an industrial estate in Fakenham, Norfolk.

As promised on its site – which also boasts a ‘24/7 support team’ – the Sarms quickly arrived. They were not pills, but came in liquid form with a dropper. There were no instructions so I asked my intermediary to request some.

Ryan Cooper of the UK Sarms Customer Services team responded: ‘Thank you for your message. We are glad to hear that you have received your order. Please note that all our products are sold strictly for research purposes.’

He then added: ‘Ostarine: Beginners should start with 10mg/day, while experienced users can go up to 30mg/day gradually. Beginners can use Ostarine for 6–8 weeks, increasing to 12.5mg or 25mg/day. For Andarine, you can begin at 12.5mg per day.’

I contacted Mr Cooper and asked why UK Sarms was promoting the illegal use of these chemicals for human consumption in breach of the Novel Foods (England) Regulations 2018, an offence that can result in an unlimited fine and up to two years in prison. I also asked whether the company would stop selling Sarms, but received no response.

The Daily Mail’s evidence about our purchase from UK Sarms will be passed to Norfolk Trading Standards. 

Laura Wilson, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s lead on Sarms, has been warning about them for some time.

‘These are research products only, so they’re not regulated or approved and shouldn’t be available as human medicines,’ she says. ‘This means they haven’t been properly researched and so there is no information to show what the long term effects of them are.

‘So these young men and women are taking these, and their decisions to take them are not informed. They’re being given information by social media, but they have no idea whether it’s true or whether it’s a sugar-coated version of what is likely to happen to their bodies.’

Laura says government, social media companies and enforcement bodies such as trading standards, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and the MHRA need to come together to clamp down on the advertising and sales of Sarms for human consumption.

The effects that social media has had on Joseph and other youngsters should not be underestimated. A 2023 report by the US-based Center for Countering Digital Hate, entitled ‘TikTok’s Toxic Trade’, found that videos promoting ‘steroid-like drugs’ – including Sarms – had been viewed 587million times.

Pumped-up influencers would be advocating their use, often overlaid with slogans such as: ‘Risk it’; and ‘Just tell your parents they’re vitamins’; and, possibly the most cynical, ‘Teenagers lied about their age just to fight in WW2 but you are too scared to take Sarms?’.

The report resulted in social media companies taking many films down and trying to block more from being uploaded. However, they are still all over social media.

The film overlaid with the WW2 reference, for example, was still on TikTok when I looked in December– and it took me less than five minutes to find.

When I pointed this out to TikTok, the company immediately took it, and others I showed it, down and said it would also block searches that used adulterated words to get past its checks, such as ‘S4RMS’.

YouTube claims that it ‘prohibits any content encouraging dangerous or unlawful activities, including content that facilitates the sale of certain illegal or regulated goods and services, like drugs or pharmaceuticals without a prescription’.

Yet I told the company about three videos it was hosting that expressly promoted the use of Sarms – and weeks later they still had not been taken down. I asked why, but received no reply.

Joseph still works out in the gym but is now completely clear of all kinds of performance-enhancing drugs. His aim now is to persuade other youngsters to steer clear of the temptations that lured him into a very dark place, and to call for more action on Sarms.

‘The social media companies need to ban all videos promoting them, and they need to do it thoroughly,’ he says. ‘Sarms are illegal to sell for human consumption, but they’re so easily available for kids to buy, and the government needs to get serious on clamping down on this.’

He also has advice for parents. ‘Kids who are on these will do anything to stop you finding out,’ he warns. ‘So go online, find out as much as you can about Sarms and then sit down with yours sons and daughters and have an informed conversation with them about the temptations and realities of what Sarms could mean for them.

‘You could be saving your children from liver damage, infertility, kidney failure or a whole host of other problems. And in the long run, they’ll thank you for it.’