Seizures of steroids and other image enhancing drugs are on track for a significant rise this year, adding weight to the idea steroid use is on the increase.
It's an idea familiar to University of Queensland psychologist Scott Griffiths, who moved from Sydney on the weekend to start new research including the largest ever survey of steroid users.
He said the figures weren't surprising because data out of needle exchanges had been showing an increase for years.
"If you've got a six-fold increase in use in the needle exchanges, you've got to expect some degree of increase in terms of police seizures as well," he said.
As of January 1, Customs and Border Protection officers had stopped 3056 attempts to bring steroids into the country.
If that trend continued for the rest of the year, it would see more than 6100 detections, well outstripping the 5327 seizures for all of 2013-14.
That would be a roughly 13 per cent jump and bring numbers closer to the all-time high of 6814 detections in 2012-13.
The national figures come on the back of anecdotal claims of an increase from Queensland's anti-bikie taskforce.
In February, Taskforce Maxima Detective Inspector Brendan Smith said steroids were increasingly tied to outlaw motorcycle gangs along with drugs such as methylamphetamine.
"Anecdotally, we're seeing more than what we did 12 months ago, whether that's because we are becoming more effective I don't know but we're certainly seeing more seizures," he said.
"Because of how we work, we're seeing a lot of CMG participants and their networks involved in its manufacture."
But State Drug Squad Detective Acting Inspector Sasha Finney says in her long experience the numbers were cyclical.
Mr Griffiths said seizure figures didn't tell the whole story, partly because they didn't track what was getting through to actual users but also because of some users taking so-called "steroid holidays".
The practice involves men (mostly) travelling to a country such as Thailand, where steroids are legal, and taking a course of the drug while exercising intensely for as long as 20 weeks or more.
It's one of the areas of steroid use Mr Griffiths, whose research focuses on muscle dysmorphia and eating disorders in men, hopes to explore further at UQ.
Little data was available for now but he said numbers of Australians taking part in the risky practice would be "in the hundreds at least".
"Steroids are illegal here but over in Thailand they're a prescription kind of medicine," he said.
"Pharmacies can stock it, you need a doctor's prescription but a lot of these places are pretty happy to hand it over if you're paying cash.
"That removes one of the biggest barriers to guys using steroids here in Australia, which is the legal penalties and the risks of getting caught."
Mr Griffiths warned the practice could be risky because Thailand's health system wasn't as well equipped as Australia to deal with potential problems.
"It's a less forgiving place to do steroids if things do go wrong," he said.
"These are powerful hormones and things can and do go wrong."
Steroids fall into the performance and image enhancing drug category along with other hormones, which also appear to be on track for a large increase in detections.
Customs figures show 967 detections of other hormones to January 1, about 62 per cent of what officers found in all of 2013-14.
