A lot has changed since Pat Arnold brought the first prohormones to market, as we see the industry has gone from selling only weak prohormones to full-blown methylated steroids that rival and sometimes surpass the strength of prescription drugs. During this time, we have also seen many of our most effective "over-the-counter" products placed on the federal government's list of controlled substances. Despite this government pressure, it has not stopped the supplement industry from continuing to close the gap between illegal anabolic steroids and legal alternatives in the form of designer steroids.

The question has been brewing in recent years, how good are our current over-the-counter "designers" against prescription/illegal anabolics? It's a good question and one worth answering because we have often encountered well-meaning but misguided people who have provided inaccurate information on the subject. Even today, it's not uncommon to read comments like, "Why buy over-the-counter junk when you can buy the real thing" and "Designer steroids are more toxic and less effective than real steroids." Fortunately, there is more than enough reliable information, both scientific and practical, to answer this question.

Before we move on, I must clear up a long-held myth still held by some in bodybuilding circles that over-the-counter designers are not "real" steroids. Rest assured, designer steroids are 100% real, legal anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS). According to both medical science and the government, the only difference between prescription and non-prescription steroids is that non-prescription steroids are not yet listed as controlled substances. You see, of all the steroids sold today, whether they are over-the-counter, clandestine or prescription, almost all of them were first synthesized, researched and archived from the late '50s through the mid '60s, but only a very small percentage of them ever became prescription drugs. It was these prescription drugs that became known as "steroids" in the bodybuilding community and among the general public, while many other steroids that were never manufactured simply dissolved into the history of medical literature.

Of the many hundreds of steroids that have never been manufactured, it is from these that the supplement industry has selected our current list of non-prescription anabolics. At this point you may be asking, "How were these supplement companies able to legally produce and sell these products if they were no different than the rest of the Schedule III steroids?" Remember, it wasn't until 1990 that steroids were officially declared controlled substances and illegal to possess without a prescription, but that only applied to those steroids that were either now or in the past dispensed by prescription. Hundreds of different steroids that escaped prescription status remained unregistered, which meant that anyone was free to possess them without breaking the law. Definitely, I'm sure the government never thought that 20 years later we would have supplement companies digging into 50 years of steroid literature and start producing what it says.

From there, let's go ahead and start comparing some of today's over-the-counter steroids to our traditional AAS. Since it is not economically feasible or legal for supplement companies to manufacture and sell injectable AAS to consumers, they have been forced to limit their business to sales of oral AAS. And since almost all effective oral AAS are methylated (both non-prescription and other) to make them available for oral use, we will only compare non-prescription oral drugs to prescription/illegal oral drugs.

We'll evaluate the following list of over-the-counter oral AAS (and a few that have been banned in the past) and compare them to some of today's most popular prescription/illegal oral AAS: 

The purpose of this comparison is primarily to determine the myotropic ability of these non-prescription oral steroids in relation to oral AAS. For this reason, we will not investigate the metabolism of these drugs, their toxicity, how they can be administered, etc.

As you can see from the above ratings, which are taken from the Julius A. Species "Androgens and Anabolic Agents," the anabolic ratings of most of our designer steroids are superior to those of our traditional oral AAS. It is important to note that while the anabolic rating of a drug can serve as a rough guide when we are trying to establish its real potential for muscle building, we should never use only the anabolic rating when coming to any conclusion, as the anabolic rating often does not reflect the drug's real potential in terms of effective dose.

Next, we will look at the hypertrophic capacity of each drug per milligram. Below I have arranged them in descending order of strength, from the strongest to the weakest.

1) M1T

2) Superdrol

3) Dymethazine

4) Dianabol

5) Pheraplex/Anadrol: I had originally planned to put Feraplex in fifth place, but since I don't know anyone who has used this drug at 100 mg/day (which is very common with Anadrol), I have no real experience to refer to for comparison. However, I assume that Feraplex would show more hypertrophic effects if taken at equivalent doses of 100 mg/day, although most likely they would be very close to what is experienced with Anadrol.

6) Epistan.

7-10) In any order: The remaining 3 traditional steroids (Winstrol, Anavar, methyltestosterone and Turinabol) fall in the bottom 3.

Through the evaluation of thousands of documented real-world experiments, it is well demonstrated that the above rating system is accurate in its assessment of the myotropic potency of each drug in terms of milligrams. Although we can cite one human study in which the steroid Dimethazine was compared to Winstrol, Anadrol, and testosterone propionate.

Keep in mind that dymethazine is a very close relative of superdrol, essentially being just two molecules of superdrol linked by an azine bond. When dymethazine is ingested, the azine bond breaks down and 2 SD molecules are released. One of these molecules is released into free circulation as an unchanged superdrol, while the other undergoes some type of enzymatic transformation that is not yet fully understood. Regardless, the point is that dymethazine is a weaker relative of superdrol, showing a smaller effect of hypertrophy per milligram. We can also see this difference in strength in the anabolic rating table above, where superdrol has an anabolic rating of 400 and dimethazine is in a position with a rating of 200.

Dimetazine's results confirm that dimetazine has a greater myotropic effect per milligram than Winstrol, testosterone propionate, and even Anadrol, which is widely considered one of our most potent oral AAS. Not only that, but the implicit information extracted from this study allows us to logically deduce how we should place the other steroids on the list relative to their myotropic effect per milligram. Thus, since dymethazine is stronger even than Anadrol, we can automatically place all the other traditional steroids on the list under dymethazine, superdrol and M1T, in terms of muscle building strength per milligram, since it is well known that drugs like Anavar, Winstrol and methyltestosterone are nowhere near as potent as Anadrol.

Now that we have a frame of reference regarding strength per milligram, we can move on to what really matters, which is how these steroids relate to each other in terms of muscle building strength per "effective dose." It's the effective dose of the steroid that determines how much muscle it can potentially build compared to another steroid. It doesn't matter how strong a steroid is per milligram if it is so toxic that we can only use micrograms of it. There are enough steroids that demonstrate anabolic power per milligram that is many times stronger than any other steroid ever produced by either a pharmaceutical or supplement company. But many are so toxic that they cannot be administered in doses even close to those used with the steroids listed above. We see this in the case of a steroid like Cheque drops. It is extremely strong, but it is also so toxic that it limits its use to doses sufficient to build any significant amount of muscle. This is why the "effective dose" of the drug is so important in determining its true muscle-building potential.

Effective doses for over-the-counter and traditional AAS

1) M1T: 5-30 mg/day.

2) Superdrol: 10-40 mg/day.

3) Dimethazine: 15-45 mg/day.

4) Dianabol: 20-100 mg/day.

5) Pheraplex/Anadrol: 20-45/50-100 mg/day.

6) Epistane: 20-100 mg/day.

7-10) Anavar, Winstrol, Turinabol, and Methyltestosterone: 40-100/50-100/30-100/20-50 mg/day.

The doses listed above reflect average dose ranges for each AAS, although some individuals will choose to go beyond these recommendations. The unofficial data is crucial when you are trying to decide how to place these drugs according to their effective dose. There is no steroid in nature that does not rely on user experience to verify its potency. That being said, M1T, which was a huge success among non-prescription drugs in the mid-2000s, is more than proven to be the strongest oral AAS for weight gain ever produced. Just 30 mg a day of M1T will kick your butt into the growth zone (most often into the side effects zone as well). Growing 9+ pounds in 3 weeks is "normal" ... Which easily makes it the #1 mass builder of all time.

SD ranks second after M1T, although each drug affects the user's appearance so differently that it makes any comparison between them difficult. SD has been around since 2005 and has been sold in quantities of 10,000 cans from various manufacturers. Users can gain more total body weight with both Anadrol and SD, but results with Anadrol tend to produce more water and bounce back quickly, while SD achieves dry, solid gains, resulting in significantly more retention of results after discontinued use. This is an indicator of a higher percentage of dry weight per kilogram gained.

Dimethazine is very close to SD in potency and creates almost identical physical effects. It has been proven in a study, as stated above, to be superior to Anadrol, Testosterone Propionate, and Winstrol in the strength of muscle building. Non-prescription designers are currently ranked in the top 3 on the list of "The Strongest Oral Steroids currently produced". You won't find any other steroids currently sold on the black market or prescription that can build more muscle per effective dose (Note: Both M1T and Feraplex are currently banned and can be found at some underground lab distributors).

I'm going to end with detailed comparisons, as I believe I've adequately stated my point, but if I were to go on it would turn out that Feraplex is similar to Dianabol in strength... that Epistane gives very similar results to Anavar (but still builds more muscle per milligram)... that Halo Extreme gives almost identical effects to Turinabol in milligram to milligram terms... etc. So, the next time you read on the forums that OTC designers are not "real" steroids... or that "real AAS work better," you'll have enough information to parse and refute these silly claims.

Note: Some very strong over-the-counter designers, such as Methylstenbolone and Boladrol, have been deliberately excluded from this article for time-saving reasons. In addition, these drugs have much less practice using them in optimal dosages compared to the other drugs on the list. Therefore, I felt uncomfortable assigning them any definitive ratings relative to the steroids mentioned earlier in this article.