“He was 19 at the time and said he had been taking them for several years.” Universe who has chronicled bodybuilding in magazines and books. “I was in Munich in the 1960s, and Arnold gave me my first bottle of Dianabol,” said Rick Wayne, a former Mr. They say Schwarzenegger told them that he began taking Dianabol, a popular steroid, at the age of 17 in Germany and routinely injected other testosterone-like substances after arriving in America in 1968. at age 20 because “all you want to do is be a champion and you take what anyone else is taking.”īut Schwarzenegger’s old gym mates say he consumed far more muscle-building drugs over a longer period than he has acknowledged. Schwarzenegger said he began taking steroids when he arrived in the U.S. “I took them under a doctor’s supervision once a year, six or eight weeks before competition,” he told Playboy magazine in 1988. In his books and interviews, Schwarzenegger mostly skirts or downplays his use of steroids while conceding their health risks, which can include liver and heart damage. But like many champion bodybuilders, he rarely speaks about the pharmaceutical shortcuts he took. Schwarzenegger, 56, still boasts about his grueling two- and three-hour workouts at the old Gold’s Gym in Venice. “Whatever it took to win and stay the center of attention, Arnold did.” If he wanted your bodybuilding crown, he’d grab that too,” said Bob Delmonteque, an 84-year-old psychologist and bodybuilder whose physique has graced muscle magazines for 65 years. “If he wanted your girlfriend, he’d take her. The Schwarzenegger they knew was extreme in everything, from the weights he pounded to the anabolic steroids he consumed, from the merciless tricks he played on lesser men to the women he stole from friends. Universes - say Schwarzenegger is tidying up his past as he eyes a new crown, the California governorship. The stories he told in the 1970s of orgies and pot smoking and cruel tricks were fantastic fibs, he now says, a way to draw attention to himself and his beloved sport of bodybuilding.īut the men who sweated beside him in those years - fellow Mr. Bit by bit, Arnold Schwarzenegger chips away at his myth.