Even on juice they bust their asses in the gym, you don't just hulk out on roids while eating chips on the couch.
A normal schedule of pt, Mother fucker you would probably puke out your shoes trying to do half of what some of these dudes do.
Exactly, people think Roids are some easy quick fix, when they mostly just allow you to heal faster. The simplistic overarching rule with steroids is that they cut your muscle healing time in half (a more complex picture would need to go into the different types of steroids, which each help achieve slightly different goals (such as mass building vs cutting vs stamina)). Some muscle groups require 2 or more days to fully heal, while others are less than 24 hours. While juicing, you can pretty much work the same body parts, every other day (depending on genetics and age).
In Arnold's weightlifting encyclopedia, he lists his lifting scheduled that he followed. He probably had fairly amazing recovery times due to genetics already, and the steroids turned it up to 11. He did hours in the gym in the morning, then hours in the gym at night; half of his muscle groups each day, some groups, like abs, were a pushed daily, along with building up a good sweat to release all the lactic acid his muscles would build up.
If you can afford the medical team that specialize in it, steroids and HGH are fairly safe (for males), as long as they follow the doctor's recommendations and the doctor has the right incentives (keeping the horse healthy VS getting paid by the studio to get the look, at whatever cost). I would imagine they get weekly blood tests and pay large amounts to get the tests pushed through a lab asap. This would allow them to catch any issues, and adjust their cycle meds, as needed.
The problem with steroids is that they have serious side effects for those who don't properly educate themselves on how to take them and diminishing returns once a person gets to their personal plateau; thus, lead to abusive behavior with the general public self medicating. People see the huge gains during a cycle, then watch part of that work fade away, between cycles. This leads users to stay on cycles longer and ignore proper down time procedures for recovery.
HGH has its own issues, but I never researched them, as they were 10 times as expensive when I was lifting. While I did a decent amount of steroid researched, I never actually used them, not because I think they are bad, but because I cant inject myself with a needle (growing up with weekly/monthly allergy shots have scared me for life).
They don't seem much harder to acquire than weed, and I have never heard of anyone getting busted for it. The kid who sold roids in high school basically had his own house with a keg on tap in his garage. His parents had multiple homes, and lived somewhere else. He would drive down to Mexico and get 4 or so different types every so often.
*This post is in regards to males only, as far as I have read, the female body is seriously and usually permanently fucked up by steroids.