How Widespread Is Steroid Use?
Steroids use is widespread, but certainly not total. Steroid use also carries significant health risks. Different pressures will lead to different levels of adoption - relevance to your sport, legality, and economic incentives all have an impact on how willing people are to use steroids, and how likely they are to be willing to discuss their usage. Still, this should not impact your personal decision-making too much - regardless of whether or not someone else is using, this doesn’t impact what you need to do to make progress in your own training.
When Do We Physically Peak? (Peaking Part 2)
Olympic weightlifting is the main professional lifting competition, but Olympic athletes cannot be used to assess averages for lifters. The people who make it to the Olympics have genetic and social advantages that make them the best in the world.
The margin of winning at these high levels is so small that even the most dedicated and talented athletes may never make it to the Olympic Games and could quit trying to compete well before their physical peak.
Research in masters lifting has shown that most lifters were physically peaking between ages 30-35, and although their abilities do start decreasing, it’s at a much smaller and slower rate than people tend to expect.
Career peaking is a social construct and should not be used as the only way to measure expected performance and growth.