Admit it!

The first time your biceps grew by an inch, your inner self transposed up to a higher, celestial octave. Your fingers started shaking, and the measuring tape slid down towards the ground like a spiral fading into the harmonious and peaceful water. One by one the objects in the room received a powerful transfusion of enigmatic glow melting the oxygen in the air into rose gold and disarming the toxic thoughts in your head. Thereupon the atmosphere gradually turned into a warm, mysterious coat surrounding your physical presence.

You felt timeless and in peace.

That feeling of completeness entered your chest of emotions, and you promised to never let it go.

But you didn’t know how to keep it, and it left you in a week.

Where did it go?

You didn’t know.

You tried to recreate it under the wisdom of muscle magazines and online muscle videos, but it didn’t work. You did every biceps exercise from every possible angle, but the feeling never came back. You even bought BCAA tablets and pre-workouts, hoping that your heroes hadn’t lied to you, but they had. Five bottles were already empty, and yet the tape was still saying no.

What did you do next? You bought two more bottles, just to be sure, but the tape said no again.

You cried inside just a bit and decided to quit because living without that feeling seemed meaningless to you. You saw no point in doing something that gives you nothing in return. The juice was gone, and a seemingly perpetual dryness was reigning supreme inside of you.

But the spring won over the winter once again. One day, right after work, something inside of you pulled you and demanded a change of direction. “Why not,” you asked yourself and went back to the gym. You didn’t even bother to bring your training clothes with you and stayed in your torn rodeo jeans. People were looking funny at you, but you didn’t care. You simply wanted to satisfy the voice inside making you question your decision to quit. You wanted to prove to it that you had been right all along.

You grabbed the barbell, and its coldness warmed your heart. The experience woke you from The Sleep Of The Modern Humanoid.

It knocked you out of the hallucination just for a second, but even that was enough to make you ask for more.

And the barbell gave you what you asked for.

By the middle of the workout, you had gotten so high on muscle pump that even a bag of coke would have failed to recreate the mad vitality running through your veins like a wild horse that knows no lashes.

You left the gym and said to yourself:

”I was wrong. The destructo is back in the game, dear motherfuckers!”

And you started lifting again.

Your new hope was your new base. It felt firm… but only for a little while.

A few months passed, the winter came back, and you decided to ask the higher force (the TAPE) whether you were ready to experience the miracle known as biceps growth again.

The tape wrote {middle finger} and hit Enter.

You went to a frozen lake, close to your home, and stared at it like it were a source of profound knowledge and a greater than life mystery. The lake was dead and yet alive underneath. You didn’t know exactly why, but it gave you faith. You thought that maybe, just maybe, your muscles, or better yet your whole life, were once again in a state of hibernation which you had to overcome by persevering underneath a thick ice cover.

But how?

You looked online, hoping to found a blowtorch, and you did, or at least so you thought.

After a few days of research, you selected a weapon of choice – Anaconda.

The legend said: people have reported up to 60% strength gains just be smelling Anaconda’s fumes before a bench press session.

“We have some smelling to do,” you thought and opened a bottle.

It smelled really bad, but you loved it. ”The smell of muscle”, you called it in your mind and proceeded with your lifting.

You trained under the influence of Anaconda for a few weeks, and right before New Year’s Eve, you decided to ask the TAPE for a permission to be happy.

The tape stabbed you with a vitriolic and sharp no.

You felt as though your heart had been grabbed by the cold and numb hand of the robot called universe and began bleeding like a blood bank with a dagger in it.

All kinds of destructive thoughts entered your head and took over the wheel. You began wondering whether you were going to experience the feeling that you were after ever again. Your prior success had transformed into a distant memory that was alive only in your day and night dreams.

For a few days, you remained in a form of comatose. You were doing barely enough to be registered as a living creature.

But then destiny decided to kick in again, and while you were browsing on your phone, you saw something that grabbed your attention.

This time the magic pill was called Ostarine or maybe Ostarinio.

I’ve never heard of this before, you thought. Is this a steroid?

You started reading. Each word was reaching your soul. You were fascinated. The supplement was promoted by a man who claimed to be the king of ballers, and in his words, Ostarine was as good as steroids without the usual side effects. In other words, Ostarine > Steroids.

At first, you didn’t exactly understand what Ostarinio was and read the promotional piece 10 more times just to be certain that you were not dreaming. You even printed the page and read it one more time. When you were done, you left the paper gently as though it were a single copy of a sacred text that you had to protect from the world and pass on to future generations.

You ordered Ostarinio. It arrived as fast as a mad monkey from Hell. You began taking it at the recommended dose, expecting to finally crush the TAPE’s exam. A few weeks passed, but the only adventure you experienced were mild side effects such as headaches and a deep sense of lethargy which you attributed to your recent failures. You didn’t blame Ostarinio just yet because you really wanted to believe that it was the ultimate anabolic cookie.

You wanted to finish the cycle, and you did.

And, no, I will not stop writing because I know what happened next – Ostarinio wrecked your balls. It put rust in your testosterone producing system even though it was not supposed to. Moreover, it didn’t give you the steroid-like results the label promised you. It gave you nothing but damage.

The next day you didn’t have the strength to look at yourself in the mirror because you already knew that the eyes of your reflection had the power to reach down to your sinful core and slice it with incisive criticism.

You were tired of the whole muscle game and needed a vacation far away from the lies of the barbell.

A few months passed, the cycle reset, and you remembered something. The barbell never lied to you. People did. The only thing the barbell did was wake you up.

“You know what? I will do it again,” you said to yourself. As soon as your shift was history, you went to the gym to bath in the shiver produced by the cold iron.

You did some weighted chin-ups. You did some push-ups. You did some curls. You did other things too, and in the end, you were tired. So tired that the magic was gone because the motivational light in you had drowned in a sea of lactic acid. But you loved that state of being because exhaustion takes down the masks around you.

You started lifting without asking the TAPE for approval.

For a few short moments, you even forgot about its presence, but the TAPE never left your mind completely. It was always there, waiting to be called to perform its role as a cruel master, an enemy, a friend and a reminder that you’re still on Earth and subject to the LAW.

Time did not stop and neither did you.

You pushed through and after a little while you realized something – you had become a slave who laughs at the face of his master after a hit. You knew that there was nothing you can do, and that made you powerful. You outgrew your little self. Even the master of your life was disturbed by the metamorphose before his eyes. He saw your efforts as pathetic and laughed a little, but for what it’s worth, he respected you just a bit more for trying.

You continued.

One day, something in you cracked. The planets adjusted, and you decide to call upon the TAPE. You grabbed it, and right when you were about to measure your biceps, you entered an unknown state. Back in the day, you were eager to learn what your new measurements were going to be, but this time you were calm and bigger than before.

You were ready for whatever.

The TAPE said: ½ inch growth.

Well, that’s better than nothing and certainly better than what Ostarinio gave me, you thought, opened your logbook, which was nothing but a plain Notepad file, and wrote: “½ inch increase thanks to consistent and progressive training with chin-ups, curls and dips.”

You were certainly happy with your achievement, but you knew that the next day you were going to lift even if the TAPE had said NO.