In the heat of the battle, the vials and bottles circulating backstage were not just simple liquids.
The pros could tell if it was real or fake just by the viscosity of the oil as it flowed inside the syringe.
British Dragon steroids became a household name among bodybuilders and anabolic steroid users.
Over time, British Dragon became known as perhaps the largest underground lab (UGL).
At one point in history, the black market for anabolic steroids was saturated with British Dragon steroids, and it was a brand listed by almost every source.
Starting as a small anabolic steroid import-export business run by two men in Thailand, the company grew over time into a massive underground lab manufacturing millions of injectable anabolic steroids, oral anabolic steroids, and ancillary drugs.
Thailand is well-known as a hormone paradise for bodybuilders worldwide using anabolics, where it’s easy to legally buy pharmaceutical-grade anabolic steroids.
This is still true today, but before 2010, importing (or exporting) anabolic steroids to other countries was much easier than it is now.
In the anabolic steroid using community, Thailand is also famous for a pharmaceutical brand known under the trade name Dianabol (Anabol, Methandrostenolone), manufactured by British Dispensary, a legitimate UK pharmaceutical company.
The start of British Dragon steroids began when one of its two founders, a founder named Richard, after being convicted and imprisoned for fraud in the UK, decided to move to Thailand, and after moving there, he entered the anabolic steroid market.
In Thailand, Richard met a friend named Mark (Mark is also known by the alias Justin), and the two started an underground lab called British Dragon in 1999.
The British Dragon label and name were specifically chosen because they are very similar to the name British Dispensary, the manufacturer of Anabol.
But this was a meticulous strategy that went beyond just making the name similar.
In its early days, British Dragon used a re-bottling method, buying large quantities of the actual British Dispensary Anabol (pink pentagon-shaped tablets) from the black market and selling them in bottles with their own labels.
This gave early users a strong sense of trust that “the quality was equal to pharmaceutical grade,” and this became the biggest stepping stone for the brand’s explosive growth.
They started with genuine pharmaceutical products to build trust, then transitioned to their own production.
British Dragon steroids began to gain popularity, and it also became known that the first British Dragon steroids were copies of the British Dispensary Anabol product.
Soon after, a third partner named Kenneth C. joined British Dragon, taking charge of stamping these tablets in the newly established underground lab business.
Following the successful launch of British Dragon’s Anabol copy, British Dispensary began stamping their logo on Anabol tablets (and sometimes using hologram security stickers on the bottles) to combat the copies and counterfeits.
In 2000, the United States pressured other nations to join an international crackdown on online pharmacies that were selling prescription drugs without prescriptions to customers in the US and other countries.
This resulted in a raid in Thailand that seized 2.5 million drugs and arrested 22 people for violating Thai laws related to drug import and export.
This crackdown caused Thai customs to become much stricter, making it much more difficult to move illegal products through Thailand.
This event ultimately became the catalyst for British Dragon’s growth from a small lab to a large-scale manufacturing plant and its rise to become the most popular underground brand in the bodybuilding and anabolic steroid world.
The drug crackdown in 2000 created a massive, profitable void in the market, and with no one to fill it, British Dragon jumped in to fill that gap.
British Dragon Grows
The 2000 crackdown primarily focused on the export of anabolic steroids and other drugs legally purchased in Thailand, which created a huge opportunity for underground products.
To fill this niche, British Dragon began manufacturing all kinds of oral and injectable anabolic steroids under its own brand, not just Dianabol tablets, and British Dragon steroids grew rapidly in record time and record quantities.
So why was BD loved more than pharmaceutical companies?
The answer was simple.
Pharmaceutical originals were clean, but their concentrations were around 50mg/ml, 100mg/ml.
When pros were running their chemical cycles, they couldn’t possibly peak with that stuff.
BD precisely targeted that gap.
They reliably produced high-concentration versions of 200-300mg/ml, which allowed users to achieve overwhelming density even with the same injection volume.
Reducing the number of daily injection sites by half wasn’t just a matter of convenience; it was a condition for survival for the muscles on stage.
Eventually, British Dragon steroids became so popular that they developed their own security measures, custom engraved logos, and hologram stickers to ensure the authenticity of their products.
In those days, conversations like this happened on stage.
“Hey, that’s from your side, right?”
“Yeah, the BD label had the hologram properly applied.
Authenticity confirmed.”
The security stickers and holograms weren’t just design decorations; they were codes for the pros to verify their supply lines.
If a BD product came from outside the official line, no matter how convincing the label looked, it was thrown straight into the trash.
British Dragon steroids evolved from what could be questionable quality, shoddy workshops to a level that could be considered pharmaceutical-grade drug manufacturing facilities.
Within just a few years, “British Dragon” became a household word among anabolic steroid users, and the two letters “BD” were widely recognized by everyone in the subculture.
So, back in the day on stage, BD wasn’t just a brand; it was military supplies for the battlefield.
By 2004, British Dragon had connected with multiple suppliers, opening up the market on multiple fronts, and by April 2005, due to different regions demanding supply, three different locations were manufacturing British Dragon steroids, each with different security codes, measures, and product sticker labels.
British Dragon grew significantly, especially in Eastern Europe, and a dealer named Alin, who partnered with British Dragon to supply product externally, worked to legitimize British Dragon as a legitimate pharmaceutical company.
British Dragon’s three partners and Alin worked to raise the funds needed to establish a legitimate pharmaceutical business in Eastern Europe.
However, not long after, things began to deteriorate when British Dragon steroids were delivered to a Ukrainian supplier named Vadim without the owners’ approval.
But the British Dragon steroids sold to Vadim were only oral tablets.
Since Vadim only had tablets, strong suspicions arose that he began manufacturing fake (counterfeit British Dragon) injectables during this period.
Soon, rumors and conflicting information about the legitimacy of British Dragon steroids spread.
After that, many in the subculture began to doubt British Dragon’s quality.
The decisive reason BD’s reputation began to waver among pro bodybuilders was an issue of raw material consistency.
At that time, suppliers of steroid raw materials were springing up like mushrooms in China, and as BD rapidly increased production volume, they frequently switched to cheaper raw material suppliers.
This led to issues where even the same Testosterone 250 product could have different potency depending on the production batch, or frequently cause severe Post-Injection Pain (PIP).
The original BD oil was subtly smooth.
The faint characteristic scent of EO, and a viscosity that seemed to have been reduced for density, yet remained consistent.
That was the source of its absorption without lumps at the injection site.
In contrast, the fake oil pumped out by Vadim was obvious from the first injection.
The oil was stiff, and a few hours after injection, the muscle would harden and swell, with inflammation rising.
The pros called that the mark of a fake.
Top-tier bodybuilders are the most averse to such unpredictable risks, so from this point on, they began to leave BD and turn to other stable UGLs or pharmaceutical-grade products.
In 2005, it was officially confirmed that Vadim had indeed started selling counterfeits of British Dragon steroids in Hong Kong (the products were manufactured by BM Pharmaceuticals in India and sold exclusively to Vadim, who then attempted to sell them as counterfeit British Dragon products).
British Dragon quickly responded to Vadim by spreading information about the counterfeits online and maintained an aggressive promotional strategy whenever the quality of British Dragon steroids was questioned.
Those who secured genuine BD oil continued their injections smoothly, while those who got stuck with fakes saw their condition ruined by swelling and inflammation even before stepping on stage.
British Dragon Arrests
On December 15, 2005, the DEA seized several shipments of Mexican anabolic steroids, which led them to investigate British Dragon.
In August 2006, Richard and Mark decided to cut ties with the partnership with Alin and planned to either buy him out or be bought out.
In October 2006, the heat on British Dragon intensified when the DEA office in Vienna, Austria, received information about British Dragon from the DEA office in Bangkok, Thailand.
Subsequently, the DEA began its investigation into British Dragon’s steroids using wiretaps and computer and email surveillance.
By December 2006, British Dragon’s partner owners wanted to sever their relationship with Alin, and with the DEA closing in, British Dragon’s partners and employees began fighting over the company’s shares and how to handle the company’s assets following DEA raids.
Mark, one of British Dragon’s partner owners, decided in 2007 to contact the DEA office in Vienna to provide information to avoid prison.
But while staying in Vienna, at the moment he was to board his flight, the situation deteriorated rapidly when he was deemed too drunk to board.
Mark instead decided to leave the airport and check into the NH Hotel in Vienna.
Under extreme stress, fear of prison, and with Interpol having been tailing him for months, Mark decided to commit suicide.
Following Mark’s suicide, later that same month the DEA, with the cooperation of Thai police, raided Richard’s house along with another individual known by the alias Readycat (also known as Ashley), who had been selling oral anabolic steroids in paper form and working with British Dragon.
Since Richard was the second-highest partner owner of British Dragon steroids, the DEA focused almost exclusively on him.
Although not mentioned in the main text, immediately after Richard and the key figures were arrested, a fire sale phenomenon occurred in the market.
Intermediate dealers connected to BD dumped their stock at very cheap prices to dispose of it before it was seized.
At the time, a very select few with information even managed to grab the last chance to buy genuine BD products in bulk for a pittance.
But if you missed this period, most of what was left on the market were fake products that merely borrowed the name.
Richard decided to fight the extradition treaty, which can take years to finalize.
However, through other contacts arrested at the time, all information related to British Dragon was leaked to the DEA: over a decade of all purchase and sales lists, bribes, handouts, raw steroid materials purchased from suppliers, inventory purchases, everything.
Eventually, Richard sold the British Dragon website and, after a 3-year extradition legal battle, was finally extradited to the United States in 2011.
With all the evidence and informants stacked against him, Richard pleaded guilty.
He was incarcerated for a short period in the US but was released early due to pneumonia, as the US government did not want to pay his medical bills or have him die while imprisoned.
Richard, one of the founders of British Dragon, died of pneumonia on July 1, 2011.
The New British Dragon?
As the giant anabolic steroid empire of British Dragon fell, a hugely profitable gap was left to be filled, as one would generally expect, by labs of varying quality.
Around 2012-2013, rumors spread online and in steroid communities that British Dragon was back in production, but in reality, multiple labs were just putting the BD label on their products, so trust or purchase is strongly discouraged.
Even today, underground labs calling themselves the new British Dragon exist, but they are merely borrowing or modifying the old label; they are completely separate brands with no connection to the original BD of the past.
Many dealers and suppliers still clamor about selling old stock or new BD, but this is where warning lights must come on.
The original British Dragon met its complete end in 2006, and after the owners and manufacturing team were arrested and imprisoned, genuine BD no longer exists.
What is claimed to be original stock on the market now is an obvious lie, or even if it were genuine, it’s just expired liquid worth nothing.
So, the unwritten rule upheld by the veterans is simple.
“There is no BD after 2006.”
The New BD seen today is just a game played by merchants who’ve swapped the labels, and real pros just laugh and move on when they see that logo.
