Sports

Only a few years ago, marijuana and sports represented worlds that were not only mutually exclusive but mutually hostile as well. Indeed, the topic of marijuana and sports was initially not considered for inclusion in this book, but the relationship between the two activities was mentioned so frequently that it clearly merits attention.
    Our concern here is with amateur rather than professional sports. While a growing number of professional athletes are using marijuana and other recreational drugs,[2] it is among those who enjoy sports as a hobby that marijuana is especially popular. The college jock who smokes—or even sells—marijuana may be far more common a figure than is generally realized.
    In 1978 an informal survey at a prestigious New England college revealed that over half of the players on the school's various athletic teams were regular users of marijuana. "That's much higher than it used to be," comments a senior on the school's highly regarded basketball squad. "Jocks used to be a lot straighter than everybody else, but now that the rest of the world has smoked, the jocks have tried it too."
    College athletes who play team sports will sometimes come stoned to practice, but actually to play in a game under the influence of marijuana is considered risky. One football player at the college referred to above says he enjoys getting stoned before the workouts because it makes him feel less pressured by the drills—and the coaches. "I get more psyched and invigorated," he says, sounding a little like a character from "Doonesbury." "It's the next best thing to skipping practice altogether. If they're going to keep you there all afternoon, you want to make the best of it."
    The main problem with engaging in athletic events while stoned is not that they can't be done well but that the result is so often unpredictable. A guard on the basketball team explains:

I can't take the chance of playing high anymore. I've done it twice. The first time I played out of my mind, scoring twenty-seven points, a team record. The other time I made a complete fool out of myself, and scored only three points. I don't dare try it again, since there's no telling what will happen.

    His teammate says that offense is easier to play stoned than defense is. But basketball requires both sets of skills for each player:

There's just no way I can play defense when I'm high. I can't think straight. I can't play out a strategy or guard my man properly. All I want to do is steal the ball and get a break. But when I do get the ball, I want to do so much and make so many good shots that I try to accomplish everything at once, and generally screw things up.

    Coordination is yet another problem. "I get a pass from another player and the ball goes right through my hands." A forward adds that when he plays high, he thinks he's doing well, but the game statistics usually suggest otherwise.
    In more casual, less competitive situations, basketball and marijuana appear to go together more easily. A man from the Midwest who plays with his friends describes how it feels when he is stoned:

You run with the ball, bouncing it and dodging about on the floor. But you aren't just running; you're pumping forward and feeling your muscles enlarging and pushing you on, with the sweat pouring out of you. You can feel this because you have never felt it before. When you leap with the ball to shoot, you've had it all planned and you are moving more slowly. You know that you can do it well, shoot more accurately at the basket, as your whole body is warmed up, your blood is shooting through your veins, and you seem to have the game in your body, not just in your mind.

    Marijuana is used more often in individual than in team sports and is particularly popular among swimmers, skiers, and runners. Smokers rarely claim that marijuana makes them perform better, recognizing, rather, that it often reduces their athletic skills. But they also find that smoking helps them to enjoy and appreciate the total experience of a sport or other activity. A Minnesota woman observes:

If you're moving when you're high, it's the greatest experience. Take a sport like downhill skiing. God, what a trip. Or canoeing. You feel so many sensations in depth when you're stoned: the wind against your face, the muscles that you use becoming visible in isolation. Marijuana enlivens the sensations around you, and you notice even the tiniest of nature's beauties when you're gliding along in that canoe. Everything appears fascinating, everything envelops you with happiness.

    Feelings and sensations resulting from a specific physical activity are likely to become intensified and frequently more personal with marijuana. A teacher from Brooklyn recalls being stoned during one day of a week-long bicycle trip: "I felt at one with that bike, as though the bike and I were a unified machine operating under a unified power."
    The most popular stoned physical activities appear to be downhill skiing in the winter and going to the beach in the summer. Many smokers say that marijuana makes them feel more energetic. When one man described how he goes surfing high, I brought up the question of danger. He explained that he simply doesn't get stoned on days when the waves are bigger than he can handle. Evidently, he has internalized a sense of proportion with regard to marijuana and the potential dangers of being stoned in the ocean. "You learn to make adjustments," he said, and several other users made a similar point.
    Stoned swimming is especially popular, less as a competitive sport than as a pleasant outdoor activity:

I felt as though I were weightless and suspended, especially while I was underwater; that fear caused me to submerge for shorter periods than I normally do. But I also liked that feeling, and the sense that the water had a texture that I could really feel as I moved my arms and legs through it, like soft butter.

    A Harvard freshman who likes to smoke on the ski slopes said he was concerned that the mechanics are often stoned when they mount the bindings for skiers; for this reason, the student was working on a model for standardized bindings. He was fairly certain that marijuana is used more by skiers than by other sports-minded people, and other users agreed with this estimate. The most popular time to toke up, apparently, is on the chairlift. An Oklahoma woman describes this double ascent:

I want to mention the tremendous aid to skiing that grass provides. I am a secure intermediate skier, and I will take the expert trails when I have been on the slopes for a couple of days, and feeling limber again. But it was not until I got high on the chairlift that I actually discovered the necessity of "feeling the mountain" when I ski, and pot helps me in this.

    Running is becoming a popular marijuana-related activity.[3] One of the main effects of smoking on the runner is that it may distort his sense of time. For some, smoking makes the task more difficult, since time begins to drag; for others, however, smoking enables them to transcend their normal concerns about time and to concentrate instead on the running. A Los Angeles accountant described the effect of marijuana on his running routine:

I do five miles three times a week, always stoned. I've been able to run fastest that way. When I'm not stoned, I run slower because I'm nervous. Stoned, I'm more relaxed, and running is all I think about. There I am, listening to my heartbeat, feeling my legs and stomach growing tighter, and I keep pushing. I've timed myself, and grass increased my speed by about 10 percent.

    "There are two kinds of high," observes a Texas woman. "There's the feeling you get from going a long distance; that's the true runner's high. The other kind? You run—and then you go and get high." In fact, those who combine marijuana with running are more likely to get stoned before starting out.
    Some runners, including a Boston attorney, find the "genuine" runner's high so appealing that it becomes an alternative to marijuana. As this man describes it, running was an easier way for him to experience similar sensations to those he used to feel when he smoked:

I love running. It's nice, jogging along, the rhythm of your legs lulling you into a meditation. All your anxieties drop off. You feel like you do when you're high; everything's great, you're relaxed, and you want to embrace the whole world, you're so happy.
    And as you continue, you start to get into an altered state of consciousness. Colors may start to blend. Your vision can narrow; things are not as clear. Sometimes I run right past people I know without really seeing them, and they're always surprised.
    The weather makes a big difference. In fog, everything is more intense. On really hot days, you feel the heat intensely; on cold days, sounds are very crisp, and you feel tremendously alive. And the greatest thing about it, after forty minutes or so, are those flashes of problems which come through, solutions to problems you've been trying to solve. It takes time, though, to work up to that much running, where images start to appear from the periphery of your consciousness, and you get childhood memories, and things of that nature.

    Unlike other marijuana-related activities, where smokers routinely and with little effort compensate for various losses of ability resulting from the drug, most users who smoke in connection with physical activities must accept the marijuana-induced disadvantages. "When I'm stoned," says a tennis player in New York, "I can't hit the ball for love or money." Nevertheless, she sometimes prefers to play that way. An Arizona player had a different experience:

As I prepared to hit the first ball, my arm felt like lead and my feet like magnets. For both of us, the first few shots were awkward and heavy handed. But then, we played the finest twenty minutes of tennis in our memories: spectacular placements, crisp volleys, incredible shots. I remember one point in particular, a fifteen- or twenty-shot volley at the end of which we just looked at one another, acknowledged that something outrageous was happening, and agreed not to analyze it—but to keep on playing.
    My perception of the ball's flight was extraordinary; I saw it coming off Bob's racket like a grapefruit, and moved toward it instinctively. The racket had become an extension of my arm, over which I had total command. I knew upon making contact that the ball would land precisely where I had intended.
    After a short while, we came back down from our "tennis high" and dragged ourselves back home. I have never played as well as I did that evening, stoned or straight.

    But for most smokers, marijuana means accepting a certain falling off in ability, in exchange for a more relaxed state of mind, which may lead to a greater enjoyment and appreciation of the game. For those who play sports while they are high, winning isn't everything—and it isn't the only thing.
    This attitude, which strikes deep at the heart of the modern American sports ethic, carries over into spectator sports as well. For smokers loyal to that ethic, marijuana can lead to interesting conflicts. A Boston artist finds that he enjoys watching basketball on television, but says that when he is stoned, he isn't as concerned about his beloved Celtics winning or losing as he is in appreciating good play by members of both teams. "When I smoke," he says, "when the game's over, it's over, and I don't care so much who won."