Salah Ibrahim: There are rotten apples in the sports supplements business

Salah Ibrahim: I can't afford to screw up. Photo / Facebook

Nine months on the meth pipe was all it took for Salah Ibrahim to go from champion athlete and successful businessman to drug dealer and aggravated robber.

Three years in prison was more than enough to convince him to change his ways.

He still disputes some of the details associated with his convictions but, ultimately, the 32-year-old Kurdish Kiwi is glad he fell foul of the law when he did.

"If it didn't happen, I would probably be dead," he says. "When I went inside everything stopped. I started thinking 'what the hell am I doing here'?"

A lot went wrong for Ibrahim very quickly. He owned a supplement store and, under the guidance of friend and mentor Moe Moses, had honed a physique worthy of a place on the prestigious International Federation of Body Building (IFBB) circuit.

There was no shortage of pride preceding his fall.

"I was doing really well but, as I started doing good things, I went downhill. I started meeting bad friends, bad people and had a bad relationship with my first wife. I ended up going down the wrong path and smoking all sorts of stuff. My business went downhill and next minute I wake up and I've got seven convictions."

He traces his descent, in part, to a vicious attack in a Henderson carpark in 2007 after a "family" dispute that left him with seven stab wounds.

"I went from being Mr New Zealand three weeks [before] that to be being a nobody. I dropped to 70kg from over 100kg. It made me feel like I didn't even exist."

Revealed: The seedy underbelly of sports nutrition

The P pipe promised salvation. In a warped way, perhaps it ultimately delivered. After doing his time for aggravated robbery and drug dealing, Ibrahim insists he is a changed man.

He'd heard the Herald was investigating supplement sellers - particularly those who'd fallen foul of the law - and wanted to tell his story.

"I've paid my debt to society, five years of it," he says when we meet at Wolf's Gym, the location of his Beauty Orr Beast store. "I've made some mistakes in the past but we all do."

There are rotten apples in the business, no doubt, he says, but there are also plenty of straight-up operators.

The recent case of supplement store own Khalid Slaimankhel kidnapping another supplement store owner, Marven Yacoub, over a steroid deal was a bad look for the industry.

Slaimankhel had opened his store two months before embarking on a short-lived career as a drug dealer that netted him over a million dollars.

"It's unfortunate that there are one or two cases like that but that doesn't mean every supplement store does that," says Ibrahim.

"Unfortunately you get guys who f*** things for everybody. They get done, they are in the same industry and it and just gives everybody a bad name.

"There are other people where you don't know what the hell they are doing. They could be doing anything, money laundering, doing it just to cover up the s*** they are doing. But for me it is a livelihood, it's a business. And I depend on this. It's all I have. And I can't afford to screw up."

Despite his past, Ibrahim says he can be trusted. He's spent his entire working life in the fitness industry and knows his stuff. If anything, he can be trusted more than many people in the industry because he has so much to lose.

He's gone from being on a benefit when released from prison to re-establishing a profitable business. He recaptured his national body building title and is now a bodybuilding judge. He has a new wife and wants to start a family.

Yes, steroids are prevalent in bodybuilding, but he doesn't sell them. Anyone who comes into his shop asking for them can expect a slap in the mouth.

"My life depends on this job," he says.