Man boobs, rages and shrivelled testicles article from Britain's Sun newspaper.

 BODY-OBSESSED blokes may down steroids to bulk up like “real men” – but the side-effects can make them more like monsters.

Beefed-up musclemen can end up sprouting breasts and covered in acne because of the hormones found in the illegal sports’ boosters.

And sometimes the drugs can even KILL.

But an investigation has found that there are more than 80 of the dodgy supplements on sale in Britain.

And experts fear that movies like Magic Mike, which featured Channing Tatum among super-buff strippers, may drive more Brits to steroids in a bid to get bodies like the stars.

David Carter, of the Medicines And Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, warned: “The products could contain unapproved ingredients that cause kidney failure, heart problems or seizures.”

Here, MATTHEW BARBOUR speaks to three men who have turned to drugs in a bid to achieve the perfect body.

 ED ‘SPYK’ GHEUR, 49, a retired professional rugby player from Brighton, took steroids every day from the age of 16 to 34, when he suffered a heart attack.

He has since written a book about his experience, to help raise awareness, called A Naughty Thing Called Life by Papa Spyk. He says:

When I was 16, I was introduced to steroids by a friend. I could exercise harder and for longer, I packed on lean muscle and the girls flocked to me. I soon became hooked.

 As a professional rugby player in South Africa, I either injected or took oral steroids every day.

I grew “bitch tits” because of the excess oestrogen in my body. I had them surgically removed. I had terrible acne on my back and my testicles shrank to the size of peanuts.

But this seemed a small price compared with the attention, money and glamour of being so ripped.

After I retired from rugby, I became a model and stuntman in the US. I soon became addicted to cocaine, which cost £300 a day over eight years.

Everything changed one evening in 1997 when I was cooking dinner for my wife and my heart exploded.

My aorta, the largest blood vessel in the body, had split in half.

 I faced having my legs amputated, which were miraculously partially saved by a surgeon, and all the organs in my body died.

I was in a coma for a month and intensive care for two more, needing more ops to replace my aorta with a plastic one.

My wife left me because she’d been told I’d almost certainly be brain dead and paraplegic.

I spent two years in bed recuperating, needing round-the-clock care, then five years in a wheelchair, very slowly learning to walk again.

I was told I would never be a father but got married and we had a girl who’s now six.

All I want now is to share my story so other people don’t do what I did.

 DENNIS DX, who is single and from Nottingham, is a TV extra who has appeared on EastEnders, Holby City and Shameless. Using steroids caused severe mood swings and he has now stopped. He says:

I used to be a project manager for a charity which would build self-esteem in young people — ironic, as I started taking illegal substances to make myself feel and look better.

I began taking steroids in 2002 when I was 19 — my gym partner was taking them and he was getting bigger and I wanted to be as stacked as him.

I started weight training without steroids when I was 18 and went about four times a week.

However, you can only get so big without using steroids, even if you use all the protein shakes and any of the other hundreds of products available.

My training partner bought steroids from a contact of his — I never met the dealer, but they cost me £25 for 100 tablets.

I started taking only three a day as I was scared of side-effects, but within weeks I was up to 15 a day.

After I started taking them I’d work out six days a week and they really improved my body.

I noticed a difference within four weeks as they make you lift a lot more and you want to do more.

The testosterone boost gives you more power and determination.

I took tablets until 2008 when I moved on to injections.

I was more scared of the needles than the steroids because I had done a lot of research.

I administered the injections myself.

 The first time was a bit scary — I nipped into the toilet at work and was worried I might do it wrong. You inject them into your bum — it’s quite awkward.

I got free needles from a needle exchange used by heroin users as well as steroid users.

I had injections twice a week, at a cost of £8 a shot.

I wanted to up the dose but it can be very bad for the heart.

They worked better than the tablets though and are supposed to be less harmful to your liver.

I didn’t tell my friends and family I was taking steroids as I would be embarrassed that I was taking harmful products just to make myself look better.

I eventually stopped in 2010. It was making me very aggressive.

I would get into fights in pubs and did some things I regret. If someone said something, I would react in a violent way and I wouldn’t back down. I didn’t like the person I was becoming.

I had on-off partners. If they noticed my aggression problems I would move on.

I looked good and there were plenty of fish in the sea.

Steroids didn’t shrink my penis or cause any hair loss, but they did affect my mood.

Friends were wary of me, as I could flip over something minor.

Eventually, when I stopped taking them, I told a few friends why I had been so aggressive and apologised.

I still work out five times a week.

I do miss my perfect body but steroids weren’t worth it.

I hope I stopped before the long-term effects took hold, but do worry I might have problems later in life.

 COL WOOD, a former chef from Rugby, Warwickshire, fears taking steroids made him go blind in one eye. He says:

I’ve always loved playing rugby — I was never that big, weighing just 12st, but I always made up for that with my determination and strength. Certainly nobody ever messed with me on the pitch, but I suffered lots of injuries as a result.

When I got to around 32 the injuries started taking their toll, I wasn’t as fit as I used to be and I decided to take steroids.

I didn’t want to be some huge muscle-head, I just wanted to keep playing rugby at the level I was used to — I guess it was as much about my ego as anything.

I knew a few bouncers in the area, all of whom took steroids to get big, and through one I trusted got hold of some tablets and some liquid to inject.

Of course my wife Dawn, who’s a nurse, objected strongly but she knew I was going to do them whatever she said.

Within a matter of days I felt bigger and stronger and after my first course, which lasted about six months, I was up to 14st and loving my rugby.

I was lifting huge weights and knocking over guys almost twice my size. There were downsides, of course — I got really bad acne on my back and I noticed myself snapping all the time at the smallest irritation, although I knew never to snap at Dawn, who’d warned me I’d be out if I did.

But that all seemed a price worth paying.

 When I got my second course of steroids, through the same doorman, that all changed. This batch was a mix of four different steroids but because I trusted the guy who got them for me I went with it.

It was almost the opposite of the first time — I got the shakes, almost like DTs or having flu.

I couldn’t eat, I felt utterly terrible and lost more weight than I’d put on in the first place, going down to just 10st.

I came off the steroids pretty quickly, but it was like they’d put my body into shut-down mode, and I didn’t recover.

I had to retire from playing rugby almost straight away.

It’s one of the main problems with steroids — they’re always imported and you never know what you’re putting into your body, so when it goes bad it goes really bad.

It doesn’t seem to matter what I ate or did, that weight wouldn’t come back on.

Coincidentally I also developed the rare eye disease uveitis then. Within months I was almost completely blind in my left eye and had to stop work as a chef.

Since my eyes have gone bad I’ve made it a real mission to work out ways people with disabilities can play sport — through the charity Fight To Walk I raise funds to provide prosthetic limbs.

Of course I wish I’d never taken steroids — but through all the people I meet now with disabilities I know life is too short and precious to wallow in self pity.