TOP 10 greatest athletes who use marijuana.
Until recently, the use of CBD in sports was prohibited by the rules of the World Anti-Doping Agency Code (WADA). The slightest trace of marijuana in the athlete’s body was followed by long disqualification. Recently, however, anti-doping fighters in sports have noticeably softened their attitude towards marijuana. WADA announced a tenfold increase in the threshold for the prohibited substance traces in the bloodstream, which could lead to sanctions for athletes. And this decision can only be applauded! However, this is not the finish, but only an intermediate stop, since marijuana can make a real revolution in perspective with great achievements in the sport.
Chronic pain and depression are the most faithful companions in any professional athlete life. Sports-related injuries or overwhelming workouts over the years would break not only the body, but the soul as well. The strongest analgesics, such as Vicodin which is prescribed to athletes literally in megadoses, would somehow calm down the pulsating body. However, Vicodin is poison! It’s a killer of delayed action. An unprepared person may experience shock due to great number of adverse effects. But those effects are all miserable against the fact that the use of Vicodin can lead to death.
In the long run, having been well studied by science, analgesics and relaxing properties of marijuana would be able to force analgesics to make room to it in the sports pharmacology market. For example, since the mid-1990s, NBA and NFL players have been fighting for marijuana legalization at the state level and for removing it from the list of prohibited substances in the professional sports. The players’ arguments are quite reasonable: Why should they kill themselves by Vicodin, if they can use a absolutely safe CBD for the same purpose?
However, many people may wonder: Will the common use of CBD affect sports results quality?
Well, you will be surprised at how many great athletes who combined the grueling workouts with smoking marijuana, and at the same time showed amazing results (many of them haven’t been overcome to this day).
1. Mike Tyson.
One of the greatest heavyweights in boxing history. In his biographical book, “Undisputed Truth”, Mike wrote that he had smoked marijuana almost before every fight, and to avoid detection of metabolites in his body, when he needed to pass a doping test, he used an artificial penis pre-filled with someone else’s urine.
Only once Tyson failed the test for marijuana – after the fight against Andrew Golota in 2000. That’s why the fight results were annulled. Tyson explained the positive test for marijuana by the fact that the man from his team had not have time to give him an artificial penis. Tyson’s passion for marijuana before the fights is not without meaning: It is believed that people under the influence of this plant are more difficult to knock out, so combat sports representatives will be quite frequent guests in our rating.
Nowadays Tyson is an active promoter of marijuana legalization, both in sports and in society as a whole. He even has his own hemp ranch, and the boxing legend grows medical varieties of marijuana which quality was recently noted by our next hero, Conor McGregor.
2. Conor McGregor.
The former champion in two weight categories of the UFC at once, and the highest paid athlete in the history of MMA, has never been caught using marijuana during the competitive period. However, in instagram, he hinted unambiguously that he, too, is not averse to removing post-training stress in this way. Recently, Mike Tyson gave McGregor a tour of his hemp ranch and even shared a product he grew up with love on this land. “Your Marijuana strain that you grow on your own ranch ‘KO Kush’ is really nice. It was an honour to taste it…”, the Irishman appreciated the quality of the product in his instagram, and, without knowing it, he secured a second place of honor in our rating, so we congratulate him!
3. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The greatest bodybuilder in history, the 7-time winner of Mr. Olympia, the most prestigious title in this sport. Thanks to the documentary “Pumping Iron”, it became known as early as 70s that the former owner of the most pumped body in the world had used marijuana, both during preparation for competitions (marijuana helps burn excess fat during the so-called ‘drying’), and during recovery after the competition. It was shown in the film that Schwarzenegger, who had just won the title “Mr. Olympia 1975”, relieved stress by marijuana. After nearly half a century, having finished his sports career and after building a political career, Iron Arnie did not forget the help petals that this plant stretched to him at the height of his sports career, and repaid thanks, following the example of Mike Tyson, becoming a popularizer of hemp legalization (with an amendment – legalizing hemp in medical purposes). While still the governor of California, Schwarzenegger not only declared that “Marijuana is not a drug, it is a plant!”, but also supported its words with deeds: The final step as governor was the signing of a decree on decriminalizing the storage of marijuana weighing up to one ounce.
4. Rob Van Dam.
The multiple WWE champion and genius of staged sporting fights known as wrestling, was recognized as the best performer of the planet by PWI in 2002. For a long career, Van Dam was repeatedly excluded from participation for use of marijuana, however, it did not break his spirit and has made him one of the most active popularizers of legalizing cannabis in sports by now. In 2016, a documentary film about wrestling entitled “9 legends” was released, and it was dedicated, in addition to Rob Van Dam, to such iconic personalities as boxing legend Mike Tyson and Randy Couture, the Greco-Roman wrestling and MMA legend.
On the eve of the film release, Van Dam granted a great interview to The Washington Post, in which he confessed that he considered neither training nor performances without marijuana.
“If I want to relax and just chill out, consuming cannabis can help with that. If I want to be active, if I’m going to go work out or have a match, then it can help with that, too. I’ve been known to apply smoking to everything throughout the day. And it helped me a lot. It may not help everyone, but now the government for the first time is seriously looking at the medical possibilities of marijuana. This is an incredibly interesting plant about which Jack Herer told in the 70s. Everyone thought he was crazy, but now many studies confirm his assumptions, though the conservatives think that there are still not enough facts provided by scientists, and therefore they continue to fight against cannabis and still want to stop the legalization of medical marijuana.
In childhood I was told that acid and marijuana are the same thing. Now, in 2016, the government still classifies them as the drugs on the first list. It does not fit in my head, and it should change.”
5. Michael Phelps.
The greatest swimmer in history; the only 23-time Olympic champion in the history of sports, 26-times world champion in the 50-meter pool, a multiple world record holder, and an absolute record-holder in the number of awards in the history of the Olympic Games, he was disqualified in 2009 for three months for using marijuana. Photos of Phelps with hemp oil published in the ‘News of the World’ edition became the main sports sensation of the year, after which they even spoke about the likelihood that an athlete would be deprived of all regalia. However, to his happiness, the story ended only with public resonance and the comparably short disqualification. To calm down the conservative public, Phelps promised not to use marijuana anymore, and as we understand it, he just began to use it more carefully.
6. Usain Bolt.
The greatest sprinter in history; the eight-time Olympic champion and the 11-time world champion (it is a record in the history of these competitions), who set 8 world records during his sporting career!
Actually Usain Bolt repeated the Phelps’ story, but the only difference is that no one caught him using marijuana (who would catch up with the fastest man on the planet?), and he short-sightedly told Bild in an interview about his love for this plant. Further development of the situation turned out to be completely identical: Again there were public hysteria and appeals of populists of all stripes about the inadmissibility of finding such people in sports. And again, the main character had to climb down and retreat under the onslaught of the angry and nothing understanding crowd, disowning his statements and bringing his apologies on incomprehensible basis with the promises no longer to do it. By the way, in the case of Phelps, as well as in the case of Bolt, the main instigators of hysteria were the various sports commissions, which are known to be tightly tied to sports pharmacology. This “minutia” leads to the obvious thought that someone is very afraid of the fact that marijuana could force the harmful pharmacological drugs taken in sports to make room for. Maybe this is the reason why they have fanned hysteria in the press about the inadmissibility of even positive statements about marijuana by great athletes? However, not all athletes cravenly go back under the conservatives pressure. Some of them go to victory, and one of them is Ross Rebagliati.
7. Ross Rebagliati is the most famous snowboarder in the world, the gold medal winner in this discipline at the Olympic Games in 1998.
Unfortunately, Ross’ phenomenal instant advancement has become an equally phenomenal fall for his sports career: After he won the gold, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) was detected in his circulatory system, and he was automatically disqualified and stripped of the medal. However, Rebagliati did not intend to put up with such an absurd state of affairs, and proudly planting the victory flag over his head, rushed into a new battle for another victory, that was in many respects not less important than his victory in the Olympic Games. And he was rewarded for his efforts: Many months of desperate struggle against the arbitrariness of sports officials had eventually led to the cancellation of the disqualification and the returning of the gold medal to its rightful place! After such a victory, Rebagliati became a symbol of the struggle not only for the legalization of marijuana, but also for the struggle with the official marasmus of sports officials who deliberately refuse to notice the obvious things: Marijuana plays a positive role in sports, not a negative one.
Rebagliati’s beliefs were reduced to the simple: “I have been using and will continue to use that what harms me in no way; no one dares to forbid me, to blame me for this, and to say more, no one dares to deprive me of sports awards.” And such a courageous position has found a response in the hearts of the fans – Rebagliati had became one of the most famous and supported athletes in the world at that time.
As Rebaglati said, cannabis would improve performance and its use could be beneficial for some activities, especially for extreme sports, as it improves muscle relaxation and reduces anxiety. Cannabis also improves sleep quality and helps to recover from injuries more easily, and that improves performance when an athlete encounters several competitions for a short period of time.
In addition, Rebaglati emphasizes that the CBD has very powerful anti-inflammatory and analgesic properties. Today, Rebagliati is an active popularizer of cannabis in Canada where he owns a company for cultivation and production of medical marijuana.
8-9. Nick and Nate Diaz.
Being among the brightest and most expensive UFC stars, Nick and Nate Diaz not only failed to test for marijuana metabolites presence in the blood, but they themselves never hid their addiction to the relaxing properties of CBD when they had been so irreplaceable for recovery after exercise.
However, elder brother Nick paid heavy price for his uncompromising attitude to this matter, and after the fighting with Anderson Silva in 2015, once again failing the test for marijuana, he was disqualified for five years. This is an unprecedented case in the world of sports – never has anyone been so severely punished, especially considering that brothers Diaz have got official permission to use medical marijuana.
However, the brothers keep good hearts. During Nik’s forced vacation, his younger brother Neith Diaz became a star of the most prestigious UFC championship, and during that time he managed to fight with Conor McGregor three times (and once he won). After fighting against Conor McGregor at UFC 202, the younger Diaz appeared in front of reporters in the T-Mobile Arena under the stands, literally smoking marijuana. He inhaled the smoke several times while answering questions, and then one of the reporters asked him to clarify what kind of “magic vapors” the Stockton native had inhaled. “This is a CBD.” – Nate confidently answered, – “It helps to recover, helps against irritation, inflammatory processes and so on… so it can be taken before or after the fighting, and used in the training process. This thing makes life better!”
In an interview there was a question about the total use of doping by rivals, and he replied that as long as he had got a CBD, he didn’t care what his rivals use, because nothing else had been invented better than marijuana: “‘I do not really care. Take your steroids, wile I will smoke my medical marijuana, and we’ll meet in a fight.” By the way, in the fighters’ informal environment there is a conviction that people who regularly smoke marijuana are harder to knock out (apparently, due to the pain threshold lowering). If it’s interesting to you, either Nick or Nate have never been knocked out once in their entire career! And only one person can compete with them in this aspect, as well as in matters of ardent love for marijuana. And his name is…
10. Jon Jones.
Jon Jones, the undefeated light heavyweight tyrant of UFC, holds a similar opinion with brothers Diaz regarding CBD. He has repeatedly told that he smoked marijuana throughout his sports career, and almost no one training was without this. Today, great majority of world experts consider Jones the greatest fighter in MMA history, regardless of weight. He is called a genius, if not a god of fighting, and the world doesn’t know anyone to be equal to him. And as you can see, if the use of marijuana somehow affected his sporting success, it was clearly not in a negative way.
We, in any case, do not call for anything, but we just try to show the reality behind the scenes. Over the century of active aggressive campaign against hemp, this useful plant has acquired a lot of unverified rumors and legends from the horror stories category. They say that it inhibits, dulls, impairs the blood vessels activity, impairs coordination, and so on and so forth. But how could all the above-mentioned stars achieve such a success if only one of these points was true? Of course not. Who, if not they, are a living confirmation that the tales of the marijuana terrible harm are just tales, and their place is on a bookshelf, exactly between the stories about Pinnochio and Pirates of the Caribbean!