Calvin Johnson Admits He Smoked Weed On His Way To The Stadium Before Playing: ‘I Never Had A Bad Game’

Calvin Johnson cemented himself as one of the best wide receivers the NFL has ever seen during the nine seasons he spent with the Lions. He played before the league relaxed its stance on the use of marijuana, but that didn’t stop him from smoking throughout his career and occasionally sparking up before he took to the field.

The use of marijuana has become normalized in the United States to the point where it’s wild to think about how much it was demonized even a decade ago, and there are plenty of NFL players who saw their career take a hit after testing positive for a largely harmless drug.

Ricky Williams is probably the first example that springs to mind, but other notable names including Randy Gregory and Josh Gordon (the latter of whom had his career repeatedly derailed by an array of substance abuse issues) were also forced to serve lengthy suspensions due to their use of the drug.

As things currently stand, you really need to make an active effort to be disciplined by the NFL for using cannabis. The league has raised the threshold for the THC levels that trigger what it deems a “positive” test, and suspensions are virtually nonexistent with a restructured approach that places an emphasis on fines.

A couple of years ago, Travis Kelce estimated upwards of 80% of NFL players partake in that particular pastime. Plenty of others were willing to risk retribution back when it violations were still handled harshly, and that includes Calvin Johnson.

Calvin Johnson says he smoked weed before games toward the end of his career and wasn’t adversely affected

As a general rule, consuming a mind-altering substance before going to work is a bad idea, and that’s especially true when you’re a professional athlete who gets paid millions of dollars a year to be at the top of your game.

With that said, you also deal with plenty of pressure and stress (as well as aches and pains weed can help with) when you’re in that line of work, and it’s fairly easy to understand why some people might decide to turn to marijuana in an attempt to take some of the edge off.

During a recent appearance on the St. Brown Podcast, Lions legend Calvin Johnson admitted he was a regular consumer of cannabis over the course of a Hall of Fame career that spanned from 2007 to 2015, noting the NFL structured its drug tests to make it fairly easy to avoid detection if you were able to exercise some self-control knowing one was on the horizon.

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He also said he started sparking up in his car while driving to home games as his time in the league was winding down when asked if he was ever stoned when he suited up, saying:

“Yeah. You can only be so faded, though.

**I didn’t do it until towards the end of my career because I was at this point where I was like, ‘Man,...