{"id":664583,"date":"2026-01-08T20:00:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T20:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/664583\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T20:00:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T20:00:16","slug":"lions-legend-calvin-johnson-admits-to-smoking-pot-before-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/664583\/","title":{"rendered":"Lions legend Calvin Johnson admits to smoking pot before games"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Detroit Lions<\/a> wide receiver Calvin Johnson sparked up an interesting discussion with current Lions wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown recently.<\/p>\n

In an episode of the “St. Brown Podcast” released on Wednesday, Jan. 7, Johnson admitted to smoking cannabis before games “a handful of times” late in his career, indicating that he used the substance to help deal with pain.<\/p>\n

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“I was at this point where I was like, ‘Man, I don’t know how how the hell I’m going to get through this game today,'” he said. “And I’d be like, ‘You know what, [expletive] it, I’m gonna spark this thing up.'”<\/p>\n

ROOKIE REVIEW: Lions DL Tyleik Williams a has clear top focus this offseason<\/a><\/p>\n

St. Brown asked Johnson if he ever played a game “faded,” to which Johnson confidently answered, “Heck yeah.”<\/p>\n

Johnson said he only smoked before home games and doesn’t believe the cannabis had a negative impact on his performance.<\/p>\n

“The funny thing is, more times than not, I had a good game, too,” he said.<\/p>\n

Johnson didn’t specify when he smoked and which games were impacted, but it may not be a surprise that Johnson used cannabis throughout his career. Johnson advocated for better pain management in his Hall of Fame induction speech<\/a> and founded cannabis research company Primitiv Group<\/a> in 2021 with former Detroit Lions<\/a> guard Rob Sims<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The Pro Football Hall of Famer is one of the most decorated players in franchise history, reaching the Pro Bowl six times and being named a first-team All-Pro three times in his nine-year career from 2007-15, all spent with the Lions. He eclipsed over 1,000 receiving yards seven times in his NFL career, including in each of his last six seasons before retiring in 2016<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Though cannabis remains a banned substance in the NFL, the league agreed to relax some of its drug policies<\/a> related to cannabis in 2024, including raising the THC threshold needed to trigger a positive result and lowering fines for offenders.<\/p>\n

Need\u00a0to catch up on the news during your lunch break?\u00a0Sign up for our Sports Briefing newsletter<\/a>\u00a0to get daily summaries of Detroit sports!\u00a0<\/p>\n

You can reach Christian at cromo@freepress.com.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Calvin Johnson, ex-Detroit Lions WR, says he smoked pot while playing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Detroit Lions wide receiver Calvin Johnson sparked up an interesting discussion with current Lions wide receiver Amon-Ra…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2071],"tags":[4566,19679,146,113,2506,7,147,6,96287,96286,1491],"class_list":["post-664583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-detroit-lions","tag-amon-ra-st-brown","tag-calvin-johnson","tag-detroit","tag-detroit-lions","tag-detroitlions","tag-football","tag-lions","tag-nfl","tag-rob-sims","tag-smoking-cannabis","tag-tyleik-williams"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115861259840596598","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}