Kathleen Graham is not a stereotypical steroid user.

She is not a bodybuilder or a power lifter, and has never been an athlete.

But, fed up with being overweight, the 22-year-old from Worthington, Ohio, decided to do something about her 5’4″, 145-pound stature.

She began going to the gym four times a week, eating six healthy meals a day and even after two months, saw no results.

Then in March 2006, her boyfriend, a bodybuilder, suggested she try Human Growth Hormone and steroids. She conceded.

“I had always been flabby,” Graham said. “I just didn’t want to be flabby anymore.”

Within three months, Graham had dropped from her normal size 12 to a size six and she’s maintained it.

Despite the recent attention given to professional athletes for the use of performance-enhancing drugs, young women like Graham have also increased their usage. Some studies show young women are using steroids as early as junior high and high school to lose fat and get muscle tone, not to bulk up or add muscle mass.

Accurate numbers for steroid abuse are difficult to obtain because steroid usage is generally self-reported in surveys. The National Institute of Drug Abuse and the Centers for Disease Control estimated in 2005 that among young adults, between 1.9 and 2.15 percent of 19- to 30-year-olds have abused steroids, of which 12 percent were women. In high school-aged girls, estimates of steroid abuse range from five to seven percent.

It is also challenging to obtain accurate statistical information about Human Growth Hormone, better known as HGH, because of its recent entry to the market and because it is only occasionally surveyed, and often grouped with other performance-enhancing drugs like steroids, creatine, and protein powders and shakes. A 2005 study published in “Pediatrics,” the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said 1.6 percent of girls had abused performance-enhancing drugs including HGH but did not specify how many had actually used the drug.

In real figures, anywhere between hundreds of thousands to millions of females have abused these performance enhancers.

Most girls who use steroids are not athletes but rather psychologically troubled individuals, often with eating disorders, said Dr. Diane Elliot, a professor at the Oregon Health and Science University and a specialist in sports medicine. A 2005 survey led by Elliot found that two-thirds of the high school girls who admitted using steroids were, like Graham, not involved in sports.

Developed in the 1930s, anabolic-androgenic steroids are artificial male sex hormones, testosterone, which promote both muscle growth (anabolic) and the development of male sexual characteristics (androgenic). A third group of steroids, corticosteroids, used to treat asthma, control inflammation and are not abused for body shaping.

Steroids are a Schedule III controlled substance, a group of drugs, like codeine and ketamine, accepted for medical use but with high potential for mental addiction. Side effects range from kidney and liver tumors and cancer to high blood pressure, severe acne and, in women, the development of potentially permanent androgenic characteristics (such as facial hair and voice-deepening).

HGH, a naturally occurring hormone produced in the pituitary gland that controls metabolism and promotes childhood growth, differs from steroids in that it breaks down the fat stored in fat cells and promotes muscle and bone growth by allowing the growth of new cells. Although once harvested from cadavers, HGH has been made synthetically since the 1980s and is FDA-approved to treat children with stunted growth and adults with pituitary disorders or degenerative diseases, like AIDS.

Although some case studies suggest HGH use may quicken the spread of cancer, consistent side-effect information for HGH is rare because there are few, if any, reliable long-term studies. Some side effects may include low blood sugar, diabetes and enlarged organs, although it is questionable as to whether any can be proven.

Recently marketed as a controversial treatment for anti-aging, synthetic HGH has found yet another new market among young, healthy adults for weight loss, said Dr. Charles Yesalis, professor of kinesiology at Pennsylvania State University who specializes in health policy and administration, and exercise and sports science.

Graham began her HGH cycle with a two-month kit her boyfriend bought for $500 (HGH kits typically cost from $500 to $2000). In addition to adding daily strength training and high-impact cardio sessions to a her workout regimen, Graham mixed 10 milliliters of bacteriostatic water with two milliliters of HGH powder in a vial each weekend and injected two milliliters of the HGH fluid into her abdomen with a diabetic needle Monday through Friday at 6 a.m. She took the weekends off to give her body a break.

Since the 1990s, a semi-muscular athletic physique is now in vogue for young women, and since then, women have been going to great lengths – such as anorexia, bulimia and pill-popping – to obtain that physique, Yesalis said.

“Why wouldn’t you think that they wouldn’t use steroids,” Yesalis said, adding that while he decries the use of HGH and steroids to lose weight and gain muscularity, “they sure as hell work for that purpose.”

And for Graham they did work. She said she saw the results immediately.

“Every single morning I woke up, I looked better, I felt better,” Graham said. “You do not know what that is like to look in the mirror and think, ‘Jesus Christ, I can actually see the difference from yesterday.'”

After dropping four dress sizes in five weeks, Graham replaced HGH with ingesting Anavar, an anabolic steroid. The HGH was a fat flush, she said, that made her thinner but didn’t give her the muscularity she wanted.

In the three weeks she took Anavar, Graham’s muscles began to “pop out” and her veins bulged underneath her skin.

“I had definition lines everywhere,” Graham said. “It was a little intimidating at first. You put on so much muscle so quickly.”

Her results were bolstered by the fact that steroids work dramatically better in women because males already produce 16 times more testosterone than females, Yesalis said.

The drugs, however, did cause some problems for Graham.

The HGH caused severe mood swings, making her easily agitated. When she restarted HGH injections in July because she had gotten “lazy and just wanted to look good,” hormonal acne breakouts that have not yet relented sometimes left five or six pimples in a square centimeter of her face.

Then, in May, when she first tried Anavar at bedtime, she was awakened at 4 a.m. in pain.

“I felt like I had just stuck my finger into an electrical socket,” Graham said. She said she could feel the blood pumping through her veins and her muscles tingled violently.

The Anavar also made Graham, who usually never raises her voice, more quick-tempered. She began frequently yelling and picking fights.

“I got in (my boyfriend’s) face. I threw his phone at him,” Graham said. “I just got aggressive. I felt the way that men feel.”

Afterward, her boyfriend refused to continue supplying her with Anavar.

Even so, Graham is satisfied with her results. She said she will wait at least a year before she uses HGH again, but she is done with steroids.

Despite her “success”, experts like Chuck Kimmel, president of the National Athletic Trainers’ Association, cautions against HGH use, saying that there are not enough adequate studies currently available. He fears the fallout of HGH use could parallel the steroid craze of the ’80s, and consequences are only now being seen in retired athletes from that era who once abused the drugs.

“If you look at the history of steroids, HGH follows sort of a similar track where (steroids) was seen as a panacea,” Kimmel said. “(Steroid) use increased and then we saw people who died too young, who evolved all sorts of side effects as a result of their use, but it was too late.”