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Ok, definitely not a SEAL here, but as one of the few in the forum with any pointy-end experience, here's my take:
1: I'm weakly against the ban on PEDs in the military. During my time in, steroids were by far the most popular illegal drug, people pissed hot for that shit constantly. Every unit is different, but we were hard up for bodies and infantry NCOs tend to be a practical bunch. I never wrote a soldier up for steroids unless he was also a shitbird. My opinion at the time and today is that if you're taking stuff to get better at your job, I'm not going to stand in the way.
2: When we talk about very specialized schools, we're talking about a very perverse set of conditions. Any special forces unit gets a lot more applicants than they have slots for, so they set up "weedout" programs. For Green Berets, it's Selection, for SEALS it's BUD/S. This is key, these are not training. These are shitshows intended to get gung-ho soldiers to quit. Exhaustion, sleep dep, pain, cold, heat, etc. The cadre will choose targets daily and focus their collective efforts on fucking with one soldier to see if they can get him to quit. The pressure is intense. What they're selecting for is the mental and physical ability to continue suffering indefinitely.
3: For those who are worried about rules not being followed, allow me to set your mind at ease. Rules are never followed, war is a free-for-all. You can do anything your balls and guns are big enough to handle. The idea that soldiers in combat give the tiniest of fucks about back-home moralizing about drugs is ridiculous on its face, and clearly denotes someone who has never met a real soldier.
4: Going out for special forces is a bit like going out for a pro sports team. There's a brutal and brutally efficient weeding-out portion, the vast majority of people do not make it. The collective pass rate for all the schools, training and selections required to become an actual special forces operator is a very small fraction of one percent. Maybe three to five out of every thousand who start will make it to the teams, and even fewer will be able to serve out a career there. We cannot think of these jobs as something that most people could or should be able to do.
Not looking for particular source talk (though, I wonder if that would be allowed here; better if not). But how do deployed soldiers typically source their gear? Hookups back home, or locally? Or do they time their cycles to avoid having to deal with those logistics?
TBH, I stayed well clear of all that stuff, so I don't know much about where guys got it. I presume just had it mailed in, lots of guys were on creatine, supplements etc., so that sort of thing wouldn't automatically look suspect. I know a lot of other contraband got in that way, or in care packages from your people back home. I think the Army cared more about pornography than they did drugs, at least back in '05.
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