Oh holey crap I have only heard of cheque drops, never seen it. That stuff is known as a real monster maker. Some boxers were busted for that and it makes sense to dope up with that stuff when a fight is coming up. Saw a guy, the same guy who taught me how to make fina, actually, throw a 45 lb plate through a wall after a phone conversation in the gym with his old lady. Over the next 45 seconds, everybody left the gym including the staff. Nobody wanted to be around that guy. That's definitely not who I wanted to be. Back in the day it was common to stack Deca with Sust. I only had scrips for Test Cypionate (very nice doctor) and street sources for Deca were pretty spotty so I never started. I never cared about cutting for a show. I knew I could never compete so I just wanted to get "pretty big" and didn't care about getting cut, just sustainably lean.
HGH is IMHO a bad thing because it encourages growth in tissues that should not be growing. Like your intestines for instance. (So-called "roid gut") and your hands and jawbone. Heart. And it is totally not needed, even if you are looking for the pharmacological edge in your BBing or PLing. It has been implicated in speeding growth of some cancers, too. Requires refrigeration and mixing with bacteriostatic water though you could probably mix it with B12 from the vet. I never touched it though my doc offered to write me a scrip. It was very fashionable in the 90's and early 00's.
The gut growth is predominately IGF-lr3 and massive doses of GH. I've been doing GH since 1999. I was doing 6IUs daily of GH back in 2008 and stopped for a camping trip. We were backcountry camping near Mt Rose and decided to hike the summit. I noticed that my nostril was collapsing on the hike... my nose felt like play-doh. The cartilage firmed up in a few days but I formed two almost imperceptible "horns" on my nose. Not visible, but I can still feel them to this day.
LOL! Not making light of your problem, but I have never heard of a side effect quite like that! Oh, I did know a guy with a pronounced brow ridge, seriously a Neanderthal size brow ridge, that he said GH gave him. His nickname? "Knuck", short for "Knuckle-Dragger". He also used to eat Dianabol like it was M&Ms. His brother looked perfectly normal.
I am utterly out of my depth here. But I can't imagine that any of this stuff is good for you guys. You work out and I imagine you eat right, both of which are good for you. Why, then, would you play chicken with the gods?
There is a difference between intelligent, knowledgeable, and reasonable use, and just injecting or swallowing whatever you get your hands on, or trying to set a world record of AAS consumption. You have heard the horror stories here. (as well as grossly exaggerated and misinformed alarmist pontifications elsewhere by people who do not know what they are talking about.) What you have not heard is how lives have been changed for the better with reasonable regimens of testosterone and suitable ancillaries. I don't bother with it now mostly because of the cost and the lack of dependable supply, and because I have not trained since Katrina, and well, just too lazy. I even find taking my daily aspirin and vitamin C pill to be a hassle. But definitely when I was on 1000mg test a week, I was a much nicer guy, nothing much bothered me, and no task ever appeared too difficult for me to have a try at. The only thing to worry about with supplemental testosterone is preventing HPTA from becoming depressed, testicular atrophy, and aromatization. All easily and safely controlled if you know how. I am not recommending anybody begin using gear. ESPECIALLY someone who has not trained and built himself up to his greatest natural potential over a period of at least 6 or 7 years. It is a fringe activity and should remain so. The general public can't even use alcohol responsibly LOL! People can be pretty stupid, and safe, effective use of gear calls for a lot of study and a lot of care and diligence.
Couple of notes, not sure you are talking about long term use of 1000mg/wk, coz that would be hard to defend it´s (remotely) healthy. Cycling with less than that my mid cycle blood panels come out with several issues. Hard to discount long term cardiovascular damage of high doses of aas imo, kidneys and liver also get under stress. As of "preventing HPTA from becoming depressed,testicular atrophy, and aromatization ", while the products and the formulas are available, they all have adverse side effects while acting against each other, like take HcG to avoid testicular atrophy but than you require higher doses of harmful meds to fight aromatization. Actually hard to say any dose higher than moderate TRT is healthy, but the risk/reward of AAS is probably not the worst of all risky endeavors one can undertake. Hard to find a doctor knowledgeable enough and willing to advice properly if one wants to use supra physiological doses as well, which doesn´t help. Need to add that a lot of the adverse side effects are reversible, probably depending on strength and length of aas use
Prices have gone down a lot since then afaik and GH is now even more popular. Also very popular among the anti aging crowd and probably athletes in most disciplines for its increased recovery effects among others, until recently it was very hard to detect even in high level sports so suspect it was Extremely popular. Haven´t read about it for over a year while I went back on it 3/4 months ago, but there were mixed medical opinions regarding GH and cancer if I remember properly. Many claim the BBer gut is linked to heavy use of insuline among BBers on top of their very heavy use of GH. Mixing GH with sterile water is fine btw, no need for bacteriostatic water. I could buy Gh from the drugstore in HK and got some in hospitals in China, while also buying from reputed black market sources and didn´t notice any strong effect and dropped it. But checking work out logs, it appeared I could train more sets on similar intensity while on GH. Not sure how much of that difference in working sets was due to GH but now training fighting sports 5/6 days a week with many guys half my age, I plan on staying on it for a while. Also hoping not to lose muscle mass too fast while out of the weight room. The gym I was going to didn´t make it through the lockdown unfortunately ´so even less in a mood to go back near a squat rack. Lot of fake/underdosed GH on sale though, not the safest product to buy on the black market.