"The only time I was really happy was when I was in that gym or I was injecting or taking a tablet."
Zak Wilkinson became addicted to steroids. After years of abusing performance-enhancing drugs, he nearly died after falling into a coma.
ITV’s Tonight programme has been told there are believed to be over one million performance-enhancing drug and anabolic steroid users in the UK, with more people turning to tablets and injections to become fitter and stronger.
This is all despite clear NHS advice warning against using these drugs without a prescription.
Yet, few understand the dangers of performance-enhancing drugs more than Zak, who started abusing steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs as a teenage boy.
By the time he was an adult, he was taking 17 performance-enhancing drug injections and 49 tablets a week.
The cost was more than just financial. His addiction nearly ended his life.
After collapsing in his sister’s living room, he spent seven days in a coma in the hospital.
"Eyes have rolled to the back of my head. I’m having a seizure on the floor. And luckily enough, the ambulance was a two-minute drive because any longer and it would have been straight into a cardiac arrest," he said.
Zak is now in recovery and spends his time mentoring other addicts and warning others about the dangers of misuse.
He continues to love fitness, but he keeps himself occupied with amateur boxing. He fears going back to the dark days of steroid addiction.
"Every day I wake up and I would love to put an injection in my ass because I’m still in my recovery. It’s an uphill battle," he said.
His story is rarely shown on social media, but it is a stark warning to those chasing the so-called "perfect body".
The Tonight programme has uncovered a boom in the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs, with social media becoming an encyclopedia of unregulated information about how to buy and use drugs, alongside a growing market of research chemicals called peptides.
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