On paper, Mentzer's original HIT makes sense. Brooks Kubik's Dinosaur Training does too but I recall being so depleted I didn't want to train again for a week or more. And that from 2 or 3 HIT sets or a single "death march" set such as 50 reps with 315 on the squat.
Whatever works for each of us is best for each of us. I know that with PEDs, most any reasonable training method will produce astounding results and the only difference is that off the drugs you lose it all much quicker than a natural who stops training will. But yes, we still lose the muscle. But we also still train. 
And regardless, it is difficult accepting being a "regular" person again.
Dinosaur training fucked me up. I eventually got to doing all singles after doing 5x5, 54321, 321 for a full year and a half. My shoulders ached constantly and I couldn't lift one arm over my head for sometime. I thought I was permanently fucked physically but after a few years recovered.
Brooks wrote another book on calisthenics and sold it for over $200 and then after was trying to convince men over 50 to go into Olympic weightlifting.
