Something from Brock Strasser and Nelson Montana
NM: Speaking of half-lives...this is a topic that a lot of people don't fully understand. The standard literature states that a drug like Deca is effective for 14 days or so, but isn't there a dispersion of potency? I mean, is a drug as powerful on Day 13 as it is on Day 3? They say that it takes a drug a few days to circulate, but I've always "felt" it within a few hours, whereas after a week or so, I feel as if the "kick" is gone.
This is purely empirical on my part, so tell me the scientific explanation, if you can. Am I wrong, or are the half-lives of steroids misunderstood? I guess that the simplest question should be, isn't a steroid incrementally less active after a while?
BS: It's incrementally less active every second! A lot of people get this wrong. A steroid's potency starts degrading almost immediately. The scientific reality is that a drug enters the half-life stage the moment it hits the bloodstream. The "half-life" is simply the time when 100 active milligrams breaks down to 50 active milligrams, to 25 active milligrams, and so on. The half-life may come after a few days, or a few hours, depending on the drug.
Effectiveness is dose-dependent. If you take only 200 mg of something, it will stop being effective pretty quickly, even if it's a long-acting ester. But if you were to take 1,000 mg of the same thing, then you still may have enough drug in your system two weeks later to be effective, because you'll still have 500 mg floating around.
NN