Tell her that I have plenty of friends that are Doctors(not nurses...),and RN's, and every profession in between. They take copious amounts of stuff. Imagine an ICU/ER Doctor being on 3grams of test,1gram of deca,150 anadrol a day,and 8iu+ of pharmacy grade HGH. Yeah...I'm not exaggerating.
There are certainly long-term risks, especially if you are irresponsible and taking very high doses. Even these long-term risks are few and far for the average user because individuals entering this arena of the sport become responsible so they don't end up in a coffin. Yates said it best: swallow a bottle of aspirin from the store, and you won't wake up to see the next day. Swallow a bottle of dianabol and you will experience bad stomach aches, cramping, heartburn, etc, but you will never die from it. I would go as far to say that 2 weeks of Mcdonalds everyday is worse than 10grams+ of anabolic use for 2 weeks(assuming we eliminate extreme high doses of tren,orals,or irresponsible amounts of EQ from this equation). Lab work would confirm this too...literally...lol.
Simply explain to her that these drugs and their side effects are blown out of proportion exponentially to the 10,000th degree. How many people have been taken to the ER for steroid abuse in the last year? 0% of people. The number is so small it won't even reach 0.1%, and even if it did, I can guarantee you that most of those cases came from other stuff they were abusing alongside them: narcotics, opioids , sedatives, diuretics, recreational drugs, etc. For the vast majority of people, it's *NEVER* the anabolics that kills the individual, it's the copious , unfathomable, and unintelligent abuse by naive-minded people that were on a mission to literally kill themselves from the start who are abusing everything under the kitchen sink and have severe addictive personalities.
It wasn't the crack cocaine and diuretics that killed them - it must have been the testosterone right (of that 0.05%)? Lol, some people's ignorance really is mind boggling. You can find an individual in the ER that is 260 pounds of solid muscle on the table and dying. He will be on aldactone, methamphetamine, large amounts of oxycontin, an iv drug user, and tons of ambien. But when he passes away, "Must have been the gh".
On the flip side:
I am not going to lie to you though, if you are telling me you plan to become an IFBB Bodybuilder, I am concerned for your health regardless. I would also not lie to your wife and tell her that you are not going to be playing with fire. Unfortunately, the problem with becoming a *Bodybuilder* is that you are forced to take very large amounts of stuff, and commit to "abuse". Everybody's definition of abuse is very individual. For me, I see 4-12 grams of gear alongside 10-30iu of HGH with our without insulin as abuse. PS,it was not bodybuilder's fault(for the most part) that this happened IMO -- it was society and the fans because they wanted to see bigger and better. They want to go to a show that they paid money for , and see something absolutely ridiculous and unfathomable. They want the "wow factor", so guess who pays for it? Bodybuilders.
If you really want to enter this lifestyle, and submit to that kind of asinine drug use(not to mention the severe stress put on your internal organs from having so much weight to carry around and a plethora of other factors), nobody here is going to be able to stop you. But please recognize that you are only lying to yourself, your wife, and everybody around you that there is any possible way to become an IFBB Bodybuilder and be competitive while being safe. You are automatically putting yourself at risk with the doses required to reach those echelons of the sport. We are no longer talking about just being on 2grams of testosterone. We are talking extremely high testosterone,trenbolone,high doses of orals, growth hormone, insulin, peptides, tacking on high doses of other anabolics, and most likely adding "fat burners" which are also hard on the body. We are also talking about long term use of these things. Even if you try to make your cycles as "conservative" as possible, and as "safe" as possible, the effect will accumulate no matter what because that is what IFBB Bodybuilding calls for. This is a serious commitment, and you will really need to ask yourself: Will I be able to look at my wife in the face in 15-20 years from now while I am suffering from an abdominal aortic aneurysm, and tell her it was from becoming an IFBB Pro? I am not saying this will happen. You may be perfectly safe and fine, but the chance is always there. Especially since you are starting much older than individuals that started this when they were 15-18, when their bodies were more forgiving.
Enough of the rant . Please make the best decision here.