Steroids: one teen's tale: Efrain Marrero wanted to bulk up for football. After his death, at 19, steroids are called the culprit.

• Author: Wilson, Duff

Brenda Marrero came upon her son Efrain surfing the Internet one day, last October at their home in Vacaville, a town in Northern California. When Efrain hid what was on the screen, she asked what he had been looking at. He turned and said he wanted to tell her something: He was using steroids.

She called her husband, Frank, and they told Efrain he needed to stop, because steroids are dangerous.

"But Barry Bonds does it, his parents remember Efrain saying.

"That doesn't make it right," his father responded.

To please his parents, Efrain handed over a dozen pink pills, a vial of liquid, and two syringes. His mother flushed the pills and kept the vial. Efrain, who played football, promised to stop using steroids. It was a promise that no one doubts he kept.

Less than a month later, Brenda Marrero found Efrain in a bedroom at home, a bullet in his head, a .22-caliber pistol in his hand. He left no explanation for his suicide. He had no history of depression or mental illness. He was 19.

"We didn't see it coming," his mother tearfully recalls. "We were absolutely devastated."

In the weeks that followed, the Marreros found out that their son had been surrounded by steroids; his sister's boyfriend, co-workers at the mall, and weight lifters at his gym used steroids. And when Efrain went off to college, a number of players on the football team he joined were using steroids.

FINDING AN EXPLANATION

Not until they learned what steroid withdrawal can do to a teenager's hormones did the Marreros find a plausible explanation for Efrain s suicide: The family, their doctor, and their friends think that Efrain fell into an emotional abyss from having suddenly stopped using steroids. Two previous suicides of young athletes had been attributed by their parents to steroid use: Rob Garibaldi, 24, of Petaluma, Calif., in 2002, and Taylor Hooton, 17, of Piano, Tex., in 2003. The athletes, both baseball players, died shortly after they stopped using steroids.

Though a definitive link between steroids and suicide has not been proved, medical experts say there is persuasive anecdotal evidence and a reasonable biological explanation for a connection. When someone takes steroids, the body suppresses its natural production of testosterone. After a person stops, it takes weeks or months to produce normal levels again, leaving some but not all people vulnerable to profound mood changes.

A SERIOUS PROBLEM

The three suicides, while extreme, have underscored for many...