It used to be secret, now social media makes it common knowledge. JOHN McCRONE catches up on how to get instant muscles out of a vial.

Jacked, shredded, swole, yoked! Innocently searching YouTube for a shoulder rehabilitation exercise, I seem to have made a sharp left turn into the realm of extreme body-building weirdness.

Did that gravel-voiced dude, burlier than the Hulk, just admit he bulks up his biceps by injecting plastic micro-beads under the skin? Expensive, he says. Originally developed as a cosmetic filler to flesh out the faces of wasting AIDS patients. But better than the synthol oil and other "site enhancers" being used to get fake muscle gains. And what is this bubble gut or Palumbolism syndrome that seems to be afflicting today's top body-builders? READ MORE: * Former dealer blows lid on 'rampant' steroid use by young men * Steroid use on the rise in New Zealand * Former champion bodybuilder 'Mr Big' Justin Rys dies * Christchurch high-flyer's illegal body-building drugs business ends in jail Having started to click around, a ton of fitness channels are popping up with talk about the big controversy of the recent Mr Olympia competitions. The current generation of champions trains not just on massive blasts of steroids but also human growth hormone mixed with insulin. This cocktail causes everything to grow unnaturally – including internal organs like the liver and intestines. So the teak-stained torsos lining up in their dinky posing pouches are nothing like the wasp-waisted Arnold Schwarzeneggers of yesteryear. A 57-inch chest married to a 34-inch midriff for a classic V-shape. Today's lot have thick trunks and six-packs that bulge outwards – pot bellies stretched drum-tight by their swollen insides. Coupled with the fact that the arm and leg muscles start to bunch and waste in the advanced stages of the syndrome, some of the recent big names are left looking pretty much like a row of bronzed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. However, grotesque or not, muscles seem to be back in fashion. And chemical enhancement no longer appears a shameful secret. Mention steroid abuse and normally you would think of it as being a problem of elite sport. In New Zealand, we always hope we are a nation of drug-free gold medal winners and champion teams, even if that is probably dreaming. But there is a reason medical authorities now talk about steroids as performance and image-enhancing drugs (PIEDs). Men care about their appearance. And with the ridiculously jacked-up body-builder physique becoming a cultural ideal – regardless of how it is achieved – even ordinary gym goers and weekend warriors are turning to the same artificial shortcuts. This is what health officials are saying. The general public use of steroids is increasing dramatically.

At an Australasian conference for emergency medicine held in Queenstown, an Auckland City Hospital ER doctor said they were seeing an alarming number of 20-something "gym bunnies" coming in with heart palpitations and ruptured tendons.

The internet makes the drugs widely available. If they don't get through the ordinary post, local underground suppliers are importing the hormone powders from China disguised as soup mix or some other food.

It only needs blending with grapeseed oil or another carrying agent to make them injectable. Then a willingness to use them. It is the guy equivalent of the Kardashian female. The problem is fake is not just acceptable – it is the new aesthetic. Breast implants have been around forever. But what is different is women saying the fake boob look is the one they were going for. The obviousness has strangely become the point. Just like pumped lips and inflated butts. I can remember when the first trout pouts started appearing and how they were the subject of waves of public ridicule. Now, on reality TV at least, to look weird is not to have had the full list of plastic surgery which turns women into barely distinguishable clones of each other. Natural is out. Artificial is how to be in. RISK AND REWARD It is this general lack of embarrassment about chemical and cosmetic methods that fascinates me when I stumble across the surprisingly frank clips of former Mr California, Rich Piana. In the social media age, people reveal. And Piana certainly just lays it out about what it takes to develop the modern cartoon ideal of a muscled body. It is what you suspected, but way more extreme. Piana says the old school body-builders of the 1970s and 1980s were drug cheats. Yet there was a different mentality. Young lifters were expected to build some kind of natural base. They first had to learn how to train, how to eat, how to dehydrate ahead of competitions. So earn the right and then introduce the steroids in progressive fashion. A limited range of pharmaceutical grade products.

The philosophy was it should take 10 to 15 years of hard gym work to reach competition grade. Drugs were there to provide the finishing touches.

But Piana says today the drugs mean the muscles virtually grow themselves. Insulin is used to compound the effect of human growth hormone.

It creates an excess of blood sugar that the stimulated growth of the body then just sucks up. Body-building is less about time in the gym than time spent downing thousands of calories. It all sounds rather like the way they produce foie gras by force-feeding geese with corn. Piana talks about the results of being on this regime for a decade. "My shoe size: I used to wear a size 12 and now I wear a size 15." His hands have grown. Also his skull. And his abdomen has distended. No doubt his heart and internal organs have swollen up too, he says. Piana runs a supplement business – 5% Nutrition. Protein powders and peptide mixes are part of the deal. They are the fuel the drugs convert. It is all a game of risk and reward. Piana says steroids are now stacked – taken in combination. Anadrol, Trenbolone, Masteron, Primobolan, Winstrol, Proviron, Halotestin. All have their purposes. Some drugs are taken to combat the side-effects of the others, like growing male breasts. The list goes on. The EPO used by endurance athletes to increase red blood cell counts has become part of the mix to allow for more intense training. To get the shredded look – a body with dehydrated and paper-thin skin despite a 4000 calorie daily diet – there are powerful drugs like DNP or dinitrophenol. A chemical used in the First World War for making explosives, it was noticed munitions workers were losing weight drastically. DNP interferes with the body's ordinary energy producing pathways, causing them to be inefficient and so demanding the burning of fat. It was briefly tried as a dieting aid in the 1930s. But a fractional over-dose is fatal. The body produces too much internal heat. People cook from the inside. An ice enema might not save you if you get it wrong. Then Piana gets on to the secrets of the site enhancers, the cosmetic aids, that have crept into professional body building.

Protesting slightly too much, Piana says he has used PMMA, the polymethylmethacrylate microsphere filler. But only to plug a gap left by a torn left bicep. The rest is genuine chemically-stimulated beef.

However Googling around suggests the body-obsessed are turning to this completely effort-free way to build an image of bulk.

Like breast implants or the Brazilian butt lift, muscles can be manufactured with injected oil. If you want the real freak shows, search YouTube for "synthol" and see the true bizarreness that pops up. THE PRICE OF FAME I was finding Piana absorbing. I've weight-trained all my life, but will always be the lanky type. Getting muscled just isn't in my genes. And anyway, I was only ever looking to get fit for sport. Yet still, it is easy to see the temptation to experiment. Why not put in the same effort at the gym and get an immediately more impressive result? Then scrolling through the comments section, I saw an RIP message. Rich Piana. Sorely missed. May 1971 to August 2017. Just months after filming some of the clips I was watching, Piana had died of cardiac arrest. Back to the search bar and a whole lot of other similar deaths came up. In the same month as Piana, there was 26-year-old Dallas McCarver, an up and coming bodybuilder from Florida. Cue pictures of a blond buzz-cut giant clenching his teeth and muscles, arms like Christmas hams. A US hospital specialist with his own YouTube channel, Dr Thomas O'Connor, sits at his desk in his blue scrubs and dryly goes over the autopsy report for the benefit of viewers. McCarver's heart was three times the size of the average man. His lungs were double normal. His liver 4.5kg compared to the usual 1.5kg. No doubt the result of insulin and growth hormone. "He had organomegaly. All his organs in his cavity, from his thorax to his abdomen, are massively enlarged," the doctor intones. So with furred up arteries, another common side-effect, no wonder his heart just blew.

Many top body-builders are failing to make it past their 40s. I'd forgotten about New Zealand's own "Mr Big", Waikanae's Justin Rys, who died in 2015, age 38.

A former Mr Oceania, Rys was already suffering heart problems by 24. In 2006, he went to jail for importing GBL – a recreational drug known as Fantasy, also used as a growth stimulator.

On his release, Rys said it had all become a reckless game of easily obtainable chemicals and a social pressure to meet an image.

"It used to be for elite athletes – not any more. Now it's anyone who ever wants to look good, anyone who wants to get bigger to get girls."

Is there a moral to the tale? Probably none in particular. It is just how quickly the taboo or the unnatural can become the unembarrassing and the acceptable.

After catching up with what is going on, I will certainly be looking at every big guy in the gym and wondering how much juice might have been involved.

I check the conversations taking place on a local forum, New Zealand's GymNation. They are are equally matter-of-fact.

Mrgeezuz, a 29-year-old newbie, is apologising for posting his "first cycle" plan. "I am hoping not to sound like a ballbag," he begins.

So he is going to start out with testosterone enanthate – the usual entry point drug he is told. For the first couple of weeks, 250mg on Mondays and Thursdays. Then double that dose for nine weeks, before tapering off over the last fortnight.

Yet does he really have to inject the testosterone deep in his buttocks? Or can he get away with subcutaneous? This bit gets him squeamish.

Some of the posters – the ones with avatars of pit bulls and gang colours – heap derision on that. Don't be such a pussy, replies kiwicannon.

He has sprayed the walls with his own blood when struggling to withdraw the "pin" from a hard to access spot. Having big arms can make it difficult to reach that far behind your back.

Ah, the ever-accelerating wonderfulness of the modern world, I think.

However now all those clickbait pictures of grey-haired geezers with washboard stomachs and serious shoulders are catching my eye when browsing online.

I had assumed they were photo-shopped. My sort of head on someone else's body. Suddenly they look a lot more believable.

The result of the various drugs that can get you jacked and shredded, swole and yoked, without actually having to put in an extra effort at the gym. Well, for a price, at least.