Until 1988, steroids could be purchased over the counter. Relatively cheaply, too, thanks to chemist Russell Marker’s discovery in the 1940s that two types of wild yam indigenous to Mexico—barbasco and cabeza de negro—could be synthesized into sex hormones.
A few critics warned Congress against making steroids illegal. “The medical facts do not support scheduling,” Edward Langston of the American Medical Association told a Senate committee in the spring of 1989. “First, anabolic steroids have an accepted use in the treatment of several medical conditions. Second, abuse of steroids does not lead to physical or psychological dependence.”
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) also opposed adding anabolic steroids to the Controlled Substances Act. At a 1988 hearing, the DEA’s Gene Haislip argued that steroids did not share the “principally psychoactive” quality of other scheduled drugs, and were mostly used “to develop muscles, to increase physical performance, and perhaps simply to look good and appear to be more attractive to the opposite sex.” Haislip also didn’t want to add to the DEA’s workload. “We do, in fact, have our hands full with some other problems.”
When Marker went to Mexico City in January 1942, the U.S. Embassy advised him to leave immediately because of widespread anti-American sentiment fueled by World War II. Instead, Marker took a bus to Orizaba, changed to the local bus to Cordoba, and, on the way, recognized the stream described in the botany text. By the stream, he found a country store owned by Alberto Moreno, a native Mexican who did not speak English. Despite the language barrier, Moreno was enlisted to find some cabeza de negro. Although Marker had no plant-collecting permit, two large roots in bags soon were loaded on top of the bus to Orizaba. When Marker got there, the bags were gone, but he recovered the larger 50-pound root by bribing a local policeman.
Back at Penn State, Marker isolated diosgenin in satisfactory yield from part of the smuggled tuber. Because his research had been funded by Parke-Davis, Marker took the rest of his root to its laboratories in Detroit. There, he repeated his process in an attempt to persuade the company to commercialize it. However, Parke-Davis’s president refused, because he believed chemical work could not be done in Mexico. Marker’s efforts to interest other pharmaceutical houses also failed, and, by the fall of 1942, he was convinced the only path to success “was for me to do it myself.”
Marker returned to Veracruz and arranged with Moreno to collect and dry about 10 tons of cabeza de negro. In Mexico City, he found a man with a small-scale extractor, who extracted the roots with alcohol and evaporated the extract to a syrup. Next, in return for a third of the product, Marker arranged with a New York friend, Norman Applezweig, to use his laboratory to convert the syrup to progesterone. Marker finished with three kilos valued at $80 per gram, then the largest lot of progesterone ever produced.
Time machine and local GNC.
Or be a basic bench chemist. Of course today that would be insane in US (do not try this).
GNC by no means had the market on GHB. Quite a few health food stores carried it. I was pretty much anti-GNC as the help was very close to clueless about everything, but presented themselves as a go-to source for muscle building information.
Quite pricey as well.
Well… hopefully you wont be one of those 8 out of 10 topics here called “i did just 1 cycle 5 years ago and my peepee doesnt work still”.
Good luck 
How much do you need to eat now to grow? I’d add maybe 200 calories to that while on cycle and adjust as needed
My maintenance is 2800. So il prob add a few hundred on to that. 2-300. See how I get on.
IMO, it is all very simple.
- Eat plenty of good protein (about 1.5 times your body weight in pounds for grams of protein)
- Eat clean for all foods
- Note the quantity of food to maintain your body weight
- Start a feedback loop. That is, add about 200 calories/day in carbohydrates, weigh in one week and monitor increase in strength.
If you gained a little weight and got stronger, then stay the course.
If there was no change in strength or weight, add another 200 carbohydrate calories/day.
If you got stronger but didn’t add weight, stay the course.
If you didn’t get stronger but gain over 2 pounds, cut back a few carbohydrate calories.
Problem with this methodology:
Weight varies throughout the day as the percent of water varies throughout the day or week. This variation I would label as “noise”. So your body weight changes could be misleading. If you know how to generate Control Charts you be assured when you receive a signal (actual weight change). The problem with this is that very few people are competent in Control Charts.
I find that strength is the most reliable metric for gaining muscle.
Sorry @swoops39. I meant this for the OP, and I saw it became a reply to you.