Choking Out the Lazy Stoner Stereotype

July 17, 2026
By Stoned Ape

The lazy stoner stereotype is propaganda. I’m here to choke it out. This is your brain. This is your brain on… cut to the most decorated Olympian of all time, Michael Phelps, doing bong rips with 23 gold medals around his neck.

You can call that anecdotal evidence. You can choose not to believe your eyes. You can keep saying that what they say about weed making you dumb and lazy is true. You can argue that the science doesn’t support that cannabis is actually a performance enhancer. But there’s a reason there’s no science.

How The Lazy Stoner Stereotype Began

In 1973, Tricky Dick Nixon created the DEA and made cannabis a Schedule 1 Narcotic against the recommendation of his own advisors. He did it to use cannabis as a political weapon against the Black Panthers and the anti-war movement. That political power play also shut down all meaningful cannabis research for 50 years. Thanks, Dick.

Ready for that real real? Elite athletes use cannabis as a performance enhancer. True story. Look around. Believe your eyes and ears. It ain’t just Michael Phelps at a frat party. NBA players use cannabis on the daily. NFL players use cannabis. UFC fighters use cannabis. Ever see the notorious Diaz brothers blaze one in a post-fight press conference? Well, there you go. Those dudes strangle people and run triathlons.

For a moment, as fun as it all is, let’s forget Cheech and Chong. Jeff Spicoli. Cartoons and couchlock. I’m not saying that’s not part of the culture. Cannabis is fun. It makes people laugh. It brings people joy. But that’s only part of the story. Another part of the story is about humans using cannabis and performing at the highest level.

The Proof Against the Lazy Stoner Stereotype

I speak from experience. I’m an ex-Army Ranger. I’m a 3rd-degree Jiu-Jitsu Black Belt and a 4x Pan American Champion in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I have spent a lifetime pushing my mind and body to the outer limits of performance, and Cannabis is part of my training and recovery regimen. The same is true for countless elite Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu competitors.

Most of the Mundials, Pan Am, and Abu Dhabi champions I’ve trained with over the years use cannabis. They did not get lazy. They did not quit training and melt into the couch with a bag of Taco Bell and Rick & Morty. No. They trained more. They recovered better. These are champions in a sport that would break most people.

Here’s why…

JP Donahue_Choking Out the Lazy Stoner Stereotype

Cannabis Before Training: Enter the Flow State

In Jiu Jitsu, overthinking is death. The best athletes aren’t thinking about what to do; they’re reacting. They’re present. Fluid. Creative. They’re in flow state. For many competitors, cannabis helps unlock flow state.

Used before training, it may help athletes relax and stop forcing things. Movement becomes more instinctive. Experimentation increases. Athletes become more playful, which translates to fewer injuries and improved skill development.

Cannabis After Training: Recovery Is a Real Performance Enhancer

Championships aren’t just won during training. Recovery is just as important. Jiu Jitsu is a brutal sport. It involves using the strongest parts of your body to attack the weakest part of your opponents – the neck, the shoulders, the elbows, the wrists, the knees, the ankles. It uses the crushing pressure of weight and gravity. Explosiveness. Endurance. Balance. Coordination. Reflexes. You are trying to solve the puzzle of the position while your body is pushed to capacity by an opponent trying to kill you.

After hard sparring, over time, joints ache. Knotted muscles throb. Everyone is nursing a few injuries. That’s the nature of the beast. Cannabis helps many athletes manage pain, reduce inflammation, relax the nervous system, and recover without the use of pharmaceutical anti-inflammatories or pain relievers that are toxic to the body and can create dependency problems.

If you can’t recover, you can’t progress. You can’t stay on the mat. Cannabis helps the best in the world do both. This powerful first-hand experience with cannabis and elite performance was what inspired me to launch StudioCEL next to my dispensary, Tropicanna.

The StudioCel Experiment

The vision was simple: Create a space where cannabis, performance, recovery, and martial arts could coexist without stigma. Not in a LinkedIn post. Not in a podcast discussion. In real life.

In 2019, I launched StudioCel, a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu academy next door to Tropicanna, my dispensary. It’s more than a dojo. It was proof of concept built to shatter the myth that cannabis makes people dumb and lazy.

What happened was remarkable. Athletes came. Lots of them. Word spread quickly through the Southern California Jiu Jitsu community. Open Mat Sundays became legendary. The mats were packed with athletes from all over Los Angeles and Orange County who wanted to blaze and roll.

The atmosphere was unlike anything I’d ever experienced in combat sports. Athletes would step off the mat, share a joint, then step back on the mat and roll. Learning. Keeping it playful. Flowing. Competing. Laughing.

Above the mats, industrial carbon filters hummed, quietly pulling air through the facility. Their low whir became part of the soundtrack of a new community and culture. It felt like a glimpse into the future. The cannabis industry noticed too.

Companies including ABX, Care By Design, and Rove stepped up as sponsors, recognizing that something different was happening. Authentic cannabis lifestyle with serious athletes using cannabis to get better at what they do. Not talk. Action.

At the same time, we began developing StudioCel-branded products built specifically around Cannabis as a performance enhancer. Pre-workout. A recovery drink. A sleep aid. All cannabinoid and terpene-based. The goal wasn’t to create another recreational cannabis line. The goal was to formulate performance-enhancing products for movement, recovery, focus, to reduce pain & inflammation, and improve sleep and longevity.

For a brief moment, it was all working. The community grew. The conversations grew. The stigma started to crack. Then COVID hit. No more gym, and all the energy we poured into that and the product line was forced to shift to launching delivery to help our dispensary survive.

The experiment ended, but the idea never died, and it feels like just maybe the world is beginning to catch up. Cannabis is Schedule III now. Many in our industry are unhappy about it. I do not have a prediction. I’ve been in this industry long enough to see the strongest winds turn on a dime. Let’s just see what happens. I see hemp the same way. I do not have a crystal ball, and anything can happen.

The Evidence Against the Lazy Stoner Stereotype Is Everywhere

I hate to repeat myself, but propaganda is persistent. Open your eyes. Michael Phelps won 23 Olympic gold medals. In the NBA, insiders know cannabis use is widespread. Kevin Durant famously shrugged off the controversy with a simple observation: “Everybody does.” Duh. Moreover, many current and former NBA stars now own, invest in, or publicly advocate for cannabis brands.

The UFC? They removed cannabis from the list of substances fighters are penalized for using. Why? Because athletes themselves pushed for the change to manage pain, improve recovery, and sustain careers in one of the most punishing sports on earth. Oh yeah, and if getting punched in the face for a living isn’t demanding enough, consider ultramarathon runners. Many endurance athletes openly discuss using cannabis to help maintain focus, tolerate discomfort, and recover from races that push the human body to its limits.

Real Talk: End the Lazy Stoner Stereotype

Critics love calling this evidence anecdotal. Maybe it is. But it’s still compelling.

From my POV as an elite athlete and the fact that elite performers across the spectrum reached the same conclusions about cannabis independently, the case for cannabis as a performance enhancer merits consideration. It’s not magic. It’s not a substitute for discipline. It’s not a replacement for hard work. But for many athletes, it’s a legitimate tool. A tool for focus, recovery, longevity, and for staying in the fight longer.

Bottom Line

Cannabis culture isn’t just about good times. For a growing number of elite athletes, it’s about getting better. Better recovery, performance, and longevity. That’s not stoner culture. That’s performance culture. Or maybe we got it wrong the whole time. Stoner culture is performance culture.

Facts: The slacker stoner stereotype is getting crushed one champion at a time, and I’m back to doing my part to finish the job. I recently opened Jaco Jiu Jitsu and Jaco Fight House in the surf hostel Room2Board in Costa Rica. We’re training every day, and I host retreats for anyone who’d like to come down, train, surf, practice yoga, and experience all the Pura Vida life has to offer.

Cannabis is still medical down here, but I know a guy…

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