Bodybuilders Who Took Things Way Too Far

Trevor Smith never competed in any professional competitions, but despite this, he was well known and liked in the bodybuilding community. Rather than get on stage and flex in front of judges, Smith instead chose to coach, write articles, run his own bodybuilding business called Nuclear Nutrition, and create a workout regimen called Beyond Failure Training that ... sounds utterly terrifying. But the thing he's most famous for is simply being huge. Trevor Smith stood 6'1", and at his peak weighed over 400 pounds. Unfortunately, to get that big, he not only had to train excessively, but also reportedly used steroids. All that extra weight, and the damage done to his internal organs by years of steroid abuse, meant he was putting an excessive strain on his heart, and in 2004 he suffered a heart attack and died, at the age of 33.

Sally McNeil was never much of a prize-winning bodybuilder — her highest achievement was winning a couple of Armed Services Physique Championships when she served in the Marine Corps. However, just because her steroid use didn't bring home the silverware, doesn't mean she didn't suffer the side effects — and in her case, they were severe. So much so, in fact, that on Valentine's Day 1995, she shot and killed her husband, fellow bodybuilder Ray McNeil.

During her trial, the defense tried claim that Sally was the victim of domestic abuse, and that she killed Ray in self-defense. Unfortunately for her, the prosecution, aided by her first husband serving as a star witness, presented evidence of a history of aggressive and violent outbursts, including threatening her first husband with a gun and smashing his car windows, getting maced by police officers who came to check on her children, attacking a spectator at a bodybuilding competition, and assaulting a police officer after she was asked to stop dancing on a bar table.

At the time of the murder, Sally McNeil was found to have steroids in her system, and her legal team even tried to use her "roid rage" as a defense, but it didn't work, because that's not even close to an excuse. She was sentenced to 19 years in prison for second-degree murder.

Gregg Valentino is notable for two things: holding the record for the biggest arms, and being possibly the most hated man in the bodybuilding community, according to Elite Fitness. The reason being that, unlike most professional bulkers, Valentino didn't try to bulk his whole body evenly — rather, he focused on his arms, making him look like a cartoon character to serious bodybuilders. While he managed to get pretty big while training naturally, it wasn't until he started using testosterone, steroids, and synthol (a type of oil used to add bulk), that his arms grew to an unbelievable 27 inches.

He must have liked what he saw (even though seemingly no one else did), because all that flexing in front of a mirror seemingly distracted him from observing the basic rules of hygiene. Valentino was so busy injecting that he stopped changing needles, instead reusing needles and not bothering to sterilize them. This (along with getting hit in the arm by a baseball bat) resulted in a very disgusting abscess in one of his arms, but he liked looking at his arms so much, he filmed himself trying to drain the wound in his own bathroom, rather than go to the doctor. When that inevitably failed to achieve anything besides making his bathroom look like the scene of a brutal murder, he gave in and went to the hospital, where the doctor had to slice open his arm to clean out the abscess. This left him with a large scar across his bicep, and a distinctly asymmetrical appearance.

Romario dos Santos Alves could be described as a bodybuilder, though like with Moustafa Ismail it's not really a case of building anything, so much as blowing up a balloon. That's because, instead of spending untold hours lifting weights and chugging protein shakes, Romario dos Santos Alves just injects his muscles with "synthol," a special oil that artificially enlarges them.

Unfortunately for the wannabe human Hulk, his addiction to artificial muscles has come with a not-totally-surprising price tag — his health. Alves's addiction was starting to cause him pain, and toxins from the oils were putting his kidneys at risk, but despite what would be an obvious red flag to anybody else, Alves ignored the fact that his muscles were becoming too hard to inject using regular needles. Instead of calling it quits, he went out and bought veterinary needles — the kind they use on bulls — and kept right on pumping. Eventually his muscles became so hard, and the pain so unbearable, that doctors warned the only option left might be the amputation of both arms.

Luckily for Alves, it didn't come to that, and he now claims to be a reformed character ... in mind, if not yet in body.

Dean Wharmby was a 39-year-old English bodybuilder who used steroids. At his peak, he had an impressive physique, topping out at 240 pounds of muscle. However, it didn't take long for the debt to come due, and it did so in the form of liver cancer. He was diagnosed with liver tumors in 2010 and by 2015, when he died, he had gone from muscle-bound behemoth to a bed-bound shadow of his former self. At the inquest into his death, the blame for his death was laid squarely at the feet of the steroids.