Brittney Griner Isn’t Alone: Here’s Why Pro Athletes Are Using Cannabis
Over the weekend, Russian officials announced they had arrested an American woman after discovering cannabis vape cartridges in her luggage. Russian news later revealed the woman was seven-time WNBA All Star and two-time Olympic gold medalist Brittney Griner.
Professional athletes who use cannabis are no longer the exception. You are the rule.
While Griner remains locked in a Russian cell — and her wife and family are pleading for her release — her arrest uncovers a secret truth: most professional athletes use cannabis. If Brittney Griner has used vape cartridges as part of her professional regime to stay mentally and physically at the top of her game, she’s no exception. She is the rule.
While writing my recent book, Runners High: How A Movement of Stoned Athletes Is Changing The Science of Sports, I met dozens of top athletes from all walks of life who told me that they use cannabis not just during their workouts, but theirs Recreation and Sometimes Used even have competition, but so do most of their peers.
“Most ultramarathoners use it,” elite long-distance runner Avery Collins told me. Olympic rugby player Andrew Durutalo estimated that around 95% of his teammates and competitors used cannabis. Former Denver Nuggets power forward Kenyon Martin put that number at around 85% for the NBA, and retired Dallas Cowboys tight end Martellus Bennett said it was 89% for the NFL.
No surprise to those who have tried
While this may come as a surprise to some fans, team owners and World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) regulators, it makes perfect sense to anyone who’s tasted the magic cocktail of weed and training. I myself was a backpack-a-day, sedentary waif before I started eating 10-20mg of THC and running up mountain trails. Last spring I tackled my first 50 km.
The endocannabinoid system regulates nearly all human functions, allowing cannabis to act as a Swiss army knife to health.
While cannabis use is remarkably consistent across professional sports, there is no single affliction that all athletes seek to alleviate, or a single effect that they are pursuing. Because our body’s endocannabinoid system regulates nearly all of our human functions (sleep, mood, appetite, fertility, and more), cannabis can act as a kind of Swiss army knife to health.
An interesting thing happened last fall during the promotion for my book. Mainstream media just wants to ask me about cannabis as a pain reliever. That’s fair, given that opioids and other pharmaceuticals have been wreaking havoc on players’ minds and bodies for decades. As former NFL player Martellus Bennett once explained, “This shit ruins your liver. There’s a lot of these anti-inflammatories that you take for so long that they start eating at your liver or your kidneys and things like that. And a human did it. God made grass.”
Cannabis provides many anti-inflammatory properties and shifts our mind’s emotional relationship to pain (which no other painkillers do, as they simply erase the sensation completely). But cannabis offers so much more to athletes.
Rest and recovery are key to a pro career
There’s a reason CBD has become the newest darling of the sports supplement world — inspiring celebrity products from Megan Rapino, Mark Wahlberg, and Mike Tyson — and it’s more than just CBD’s anti-inflammatory properties. As a sleep aid, CBD is the most important phase of recovery, and research shows that CBD reduces muscle spasticity, a condition that seriously compromises the recovery process.
Most professional athletes travel extensively and will often follow that journey with multiple competitions in a short time frame. This is a dynamic familiar to deployed military personnel. It forces an athlete to go into rest and recovery mode at all times and grab it whenever they can find it. Depending on the schedule of the day, these periods may be available at 2:00 am or 2:00 pm. A non-toxic substance that can quickly get an athlete in and out of this state without leaving them disoriented afterwards has great appeal to traffic-weary professionals.
The World Anti-Doping Agency removed CBD from its list of banned substances in 2018, but unfortunately THC is still banned. American sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson’s Olympic hopes were famously dashed last summer when a drug test came back positive for marijuana. Richardson had turned to cannabis to help her cope with her grief at the sudden death of her mother.
Break the “lazy stoner” stigma.
THC is often overlooked as a sports aid because it can be mistakenly associated with the “lazy stoner” stigma of yesteryear. Radio ads for some CBD brands even boast that their product contains “no THC,” as if THC were a poison.
In fact, THC is anything but. Not only does it enhance the effects of CBD (renowned cannabis scientist Ethan Russo once told me, “There is nothing CBD does that is not enhanced by the addition of THC”), but it is said to induce athletes into a myopic state of flow , where all the side chatter from sponsors, fans, judges and competitors disappears and they focus solely on the task at hand.
I experienced this myself as a trail runner. I’ve heard it countless times from skiers, bodybuilders, cyclists, yoga teachers, basketball players and even golfers.
If you already have the muscle memory for the task—my rule has always been “don’t try new things stoned”—then a bit of cannabis euphoria can bring a childlike playfulness to an otherwise painful discipline, merging the two into a state that is the Athletes reminded why he fell in love with the sport in the first place.
WADA is rethinking its cannabis policy
Following the Sha’Carri Richardson debacle, WADA officials announced they were reviewing their cannabis policy. They are expected to announce their results in 2022. They have no evidence that cannabis is a performance-enhancing drug comparable to steroids or blood doping and that it is harmful to athletes’ health pales in comparison to the effects of approved drugs.
Brittney Griner’s arrest goes well beyond a mere suspension from the competition. Griner is involved in both archaic drug laws and the international conflict surrounding the Russian invasion of Ukraine. She faces years of imprisonment in a Russian prison.
But like Sha’Carri Richardson and thousands of other professional athletes, Griner managed her health, career, and athletic performance simply with a substance that most professional athletes take for granted.
World champions, Olympic champions and good people
The horrific consequences they face are driven by politics and stigma, not science and health. As former US Attorney General Jeff Sessions once put it, “Good people don’t use marijuana.” This worldview demeans all cannabis users as lazy stoners, incapable of hard work or focused discipline.
But if you look at the athletes who use or have used cannabis – Sha’Carri Richardson, Michael Phelps, Martellus Bennett, Carmelo Anthony, Tim Lincecum, Ricky Williams, Nate and Nick Diaz, Brittney Griner – there is a consistent thread of incredible achievements . These are world champions, record holders, top scorers, Olympic gold medalists, Cy Young Award winners. If the vast majority of athletes use cannabis – and research shows that people who use cannabis are much more likely to exercise than those who don’t – there is a strong case for the close relationship with physical activity.
If Brittney Griner was indeed traveling with cannabis vape cartridges in her luggage, there’s no shame in her game. As with most other professional athletes, cannabis can maintain their performance and protect their health.
More about cannabis and athletes
Josiah Hesse
Josiah Hesse is an investigative journalist who has written for Vice, The Guardian, Politico, and Esquire, as well as cannabis-specific outlets such as Ganjapreneur, High Times, Big Buds, The Fix, The Cannabist, and many more. He lives in Denver, Colorado.
Check out the articles by Josiah Hesse
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