"I'm not using them now, but I do crave them," said a bodybuilder who used to use steriods. He is getting treatment from a drug abuse doctor at the Biological Psychiatry Laboratory at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital in Boston.

Nubain is not supposed to be nearly as addictive as morphine, but his previous research indicates body-builders are getting hooked.

A letter in The New England Journal of Medicine indicates that steroids might lead some bodybuilders into harder drugs.

"Steroids may serve as 'gateway' drugs to opiod dependence," wrote a substance abuse counselor at Sunrise House, an in-patient dependence treatment facility in Lafayette, N. J.Pope and Arvary looked at 227 men admitted for dependence on heroin or similar drugs in 1999.