Despite fifteen years in the fitness industry, I’m pretty sure I look more like a gym’s accountant than a trainer or coach at one. Even the most flattering descriptions I’ve ever gotten in the press — “a lean, athletic build developed from years of working out regularly—picture Bruce Lee, not Arnold Schwarzenegger” — make clear I’m not exactly intimidatingly large. So perhaps it goes without saying that I’ve never before taken steroids.

It was from that place of ignorance that I was so surprised by some recent anabolic steroid usage facts:

Surveys indicate that between 1-3 million Americans use steroids. For context, there are about 60 million people with gym memberships in the country, and 2/3 of those people never go to the gym, taking the number of actual gymgoers down to about 20 million. If we assume that the people using steroids are actually working out, that means that between 1 in 20 and 1 in 6 people you see in the gym are on steroids.

Especially given that survey response data tends to underestimate illegal activity —which people are understandably reluctant to report — it seems waaaaay more people are juicing than I would have assumed.

Years ago, when I lived in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen, I was a member at Mid-City Gym, an institution in the bodybuilding world. (If you’ve ever watched the classic documentary Pumping Iron – and I highly recommend it, regardless of your interest in fitness — all of the New York scenes were filmed there.) Though I was mostly doing weird functional fitness stuff in the corner, rather than leg pressing and bicep curling with the gigantic regulars, I was still offered steroids by some random dude in the locker room at least once a week. Still, in my CrossFit NYC days, and now at Equinox, I tend to assume almost nobody is on drugs. Yet based on the numbers, it looks like I’ve been naive.

Fortunately, given my own fitness goals, I don’t think I’m much missing out. I’m not looking to get huge, nor do I have any pro sports pennants I’m gunning for. Though, as one colleague here pointed out, if I do decide to do a cycle one day, I’m in the clear. At my advancing age, I can just call it “testosterone replacement therapy,” and pick up prescriptions legally from any number of overpriced and slightly sketchy anti-aging medical practices here in NYC.

As I said, I don’t have any immediate plans to that end. But if, years from now, I’m the only guy in the nursing home with 18-inch biceps and a six pack: you heard it here first.