How to test steroids?
This version has been translated from Polish and links to the relevant test kits have been added. In a life-threatening situation call 112. This article is informational and serves harm reduction. It does not encourage the use of psychoactive substances and does not replace medical advice.
You test them with a colorimetric kit, on a scraping of the tablet or a few drops of the oil, and it takes about five minutes. The harder part is knowing what the answer means. "Is there oxandrolone in this tablet?" is a question a home test answers well; "is there 20 mg of oxandrolone in this tablet?" is one it cannot answer at all, and it is usually the question that matters.
Nobody else is testing steroids
European drug checking services have published 9,374 lab-tested samples into the alerts database. Cocaine accounts for 767 of them. Anabolic steroids account for 13. Those services are funded to reduce acute harm at festivals and in cities, and a vial of testosterone enanthate does not kill anyone this weekend, so it is not what they are set up for. That is a defensible priority and it leaves an entire market with no independent testing behind it, which means whatever you test yourself is all the data there is.
What the test actually does
ROIDTEST is colorimetric, the same principle as the reagents used on powders and pills: each vial holds a reagent that produces a specific colour reaction with a particular anabolic steroid, and you compare the result against the supplied chart. It is presumptive, so a matching colour indicates the listed steroid is present rather than proving it. It is sensitive, needing under 1 mg of active substance. And it says nothing about quantity, which is the important part, because underdosing is the most common form of counterfeiting in this market, far more common than an entirely different compound.
Which test for which compound
| Test | Identifies | Sample |
|---|---|---|
| ROIDTEST for Testosterone | Testosterone cypionate, enanthate, propionate, Sust-250 | A few drops of oil |
| ROIDTEST for Oxandrolone | Oxandrolone, sold as Anavar | A scraping of tablet or capsule powder |
| ROIDTEST for Methenolone | Methenolone enanthate, sold as Primobolan | A few drops of oil |
Oxandrolone and methenolone have their own tests because they are the two most faked compounds on the market: both are expensive to synthesise, both are sold in a form you cannot check by eye, and a cheap substitute produces enough of something that most buyers never question it.
Testosterone, 31.40 EUR · Oxandrolone, 31.40 EUR · Methenolone, 31.40 EUR
How to run it
Oil goes into the supplied vial a few drops at a time; tablets and capsules are crushed to a fine powder and a small scraping is used. Follow the sequence in the instructions, because some tests use more than one reagent in order and the order changes the result. Reactions appear within minutes, so photograph the vial against white in daylight if you can, judge the colour where the reagent has most contact with the sample rather than at the thinning edges, and disregard anything that develops after the time window in the instructions, since all colorimetric reagents keep reacting with air and light.
What it will not catch
Four things, and between them they are the whole risk profile of this market. A vial containing a third of the labelled concentration gives exactly the same colour as a correct one. A testosterone test indicates the ester group, so cypionate substituted for propionate, with a completely different injection schedule, reads the same. Non-sterile compounding, bacterial contamination and particulates produce no colour at all. And a tablet can contain the labelled oxandrolone plus something else, because a presumptive test for one compound is not a screen for others.
For any of those, the answer is a laboratory. Full lab analysis runs GC-MS, HPLC, NMR and FTIR, takes 4 to 10 days, and returns a number rather than a colour.
What we would do with a new source
Test one unit from the batch for identity, and if the compound is wrong, stop there, because you have learned everything you need to know about that source. If it checks out and you plan to stay with the supplier, send one unit to a lab for quantification once, which costs less than a cycle. Re-test identity every time the packaging, the batch number or the supplier changes, and do not extrapolate from one vial to a case, because batches vary and that is the whole reason to test rather than trust.
Questions?
What is ROIDTEST?
An at-home steroid testing system based on colorimetric reagents, designed for presumptive identification of more than 20 anabolic steroids and needing under 1 mg of active substance.
Can it tell me the concentration of my vial?
No. It indicates presence, not quantity or purity. Concentration needs a laboratory.
Does it work on tablets and oils?
Both. Oils by adding a few drops, tablets and capsules by scraping powder from a crushed unit. The oxandrolone test is the tablet one; testosterone and methenolone are for oil.
How accurate is it?
It is presumptive, in the same category as the field kits police use. It identifies many counterfeits, not all, and it cannot assess whether a product is safe.
Why is Anavar the most faked steroid?
Cost. Oxandrolone is expensive to make and is sold as a plain white tablet, which is the cheapest thing in the world to counterfeit convincingly.
Is there a database of steroid results like there is for pills?
Not meaningfully. Thirteen records against 9,374, which is the reason to test your own.