This morning, in the shower, I thought about my easy progress coming back to running since re-injuring my back in November. I began running again early last week. Half mile at first, but quickly adding up to 2 miles, my leg muscles feeling so supple I declared to my chiropractor that I was running even better than before my original back injury that put me out.

Then, I remembered I forgot to take a dose of prednisone with breakfast. My brain unconsciously balanced the equation plugging in the missing variable. The reason why I felt fantastic running: I was doping unwittingly with prednisone, a corticosteroid used as an systemic anti-inflammatory, which I’m taking to treat an issue unrelated to my back.

After the initial Dr. House a-ha moment faded, I was devastated. This time, I thought I’d done everything right from the new eating regimen to vigilant, nay, obsessive stretching of hamstrings, quads, inner thighs. I assumed I tamed every muscle cell into executing my will to run and run until I felt exhausted and happy. But I was doping. The good sensations were fake. Prednisone was taming my body, not my diligence and will.

Then, finally, I became worried what it would be like when I finish my course of prednisone. After my original back injury 9 months ago, my first attempt back to running was a herky-jerky procession of elation and disappointment. Sometimes I felt on top; most times, I felt like a gasping mess of a goldfish swatted out of its bowl by a mischievous cat. I had to space my runs by at least two days lest I felt like my rickety body was unraveling, leaving a trail of appendages and limbs. This time, I could run consecutive days. This time, I ran consecutive days feeling better on the second day—a testament to the power of the systemic anti-inflammatory. 

Because I follow professional cycling closely, I do think about doping more than the average person. Now, I was an accidental doper. It doesn’t matter if the act was unwitting or that I’m not competing because the disappointment in not having achieved the result on my own is crushing. When did my efforts reach their futile end and prednisone take over? I’ll never know. If you spend a good 20 minutes stretching your legs in every conceivable direction before and after every run, you need it to have worked.

It’s strange to be in a doper’s shoes. I suddenly understand, at least on a very small scale, why it’s hard for some athletes who test positive and serve bans to admit to doping. Dopers cheat to win, not to slack off on training. When you train, eat right, and dope on top of that, it’s going to be impossible to allocate how much of your success was due to ingesting banned substances. The need to believe it was your discipline, your effort, your sacrifice is enormous. The need to believe it wasn’t the dope is even greater. I still want, so much, the pure joy I felt when my muscles were moving correctly and effortlessly that I wonder “Well, is 30mg of prednisone from that day really enough to have made so much difference?” 

What bothers me most about the doping discourse in cycling are the fans who take the moral high ground without having experienced the enormous pressure of, for example, racing or coming back from a debilitating injury—one had to have felt cornered if doping seemed like a viable option. I hate the way it’s too easy for these armchair moralists to deride athletes and demand that we toss them away in a lifetime ban. When we all agree doping is wrong, why be so unbendingly righteous? And where does this righteousness come from if not from having lost a race or turned oneself inside out training?

I was never Manichaean in my views on doping. I’m more comfortable with a nuanced, empathetic approach. And empathy I now have because I am an accidental doper. I can assure anti-doping fundamentalists that dopers aren’t at peace with their offense. I’ll never forget the pure ease and joy of running doped. Whether I’m coasting effortlessly or choking on my seared lungs, every run from now on will be measured against the artificially enhanced performance. I will stretch obsessively, drop a few pounds, do anything to assure myself I can replicate it on my own. We dopers will always chase the asymptote of our perfect doped day. There is no peace of mind.