I think you're partly misunderstanding what I am saying and also significantly under-representing the benefits.
There's a common talking point in the gear community that gear in of itself doesn't produce the results. That's not only wrong in part but it's also wrong in totality.
Gear in of itself will get you results without even training. It is obviously far better to take advantage and train while running that gear. The flu like symptoms you're describing are somewhat common for certain steroids and prohormones. That's one huge downside. You feel like shit the whole day, your blood work is shit, but when you get in the gym you're beasting out. It's a trade off but generally those substances are not the preferred route for those that run gear from what I gathered.
Gear allows fast recuperation and supraphysiological muscle growth. There are people who are more atuned to gear which allows them to tolerate higher levels without the nasty side effects as well as potentially receive benefits far greater than the average person. This is why you see certain people like Joseph Tumbarello benching 725 at 250-260lb. No other person (of his size) on or off gear can do what he does. But it would be equally silly to pretend that he could even touch what he does off gear and especially life time natural (because even a single cycle changes your physiology).
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“In one study
2, 35 young men were randomised to one of five groups to receive weekly injections of testosterone enanthate—a commonly used steroid—in amounts that varied from 25 to 600 mg/week. After 20 weeks, the men who received 600 mg/week had gained, on average, 8 kg of muscle, and lost, on average, 1 kg of body fat. These figures are impressive enough, but the real eye-opener is that the men were instructed not to participate in strength-training or endurance exercise during the course of the study. Essentially, these results could have been achieved while sitting on the couch.
In another study
5, Bhasin randomised men to one of four conditions: 600 mg/week of testosterone enanthate and no exercise, 600 mg/week of testosterone enanthate and standardised exercise, placebo and no exercise and placebo and standardised exercise. At 10 weeks, the men given 600 mg/week of testosterone enanthate who did not exercise had put on more muscle mass than the men who were not on testosterone and who did exercise. The implications of this research are hard to ignore: other things being equal, a person cannot out-train, out-diet or outperform steroids.”
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dar.12433
2 Bhasin S. Testosterone dose–response relationships in healthy young men. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab 2001; 281: 1172–81.
5 Bhasin S, Storer TW, Berman N, et al. The effects of supraphysiologic doses of testosterone on muscle size and strength in normal men. N Engl J Med 1996; 335: 1–7"
I ripped this off from a Quora post but essentially even a person sitting on a couch while running gear outperforms natural lifters. This in part explains why male silverback gorillas are so much stronger than even equivalent sized male humans. I doubt Brian Shaw or Thor at their heaviest will do much against a silverback gorilla.
swolverine.com
