Pubdate: Mon, 12 Sep 2016
Source: Fort Collins Coloradoan (CO)
Copyright: 2016 The Fort Collins Coloradoan
Contact: http://www.coloradoan.com/customerservice/contactus.html
Website: http://www.coloradoan.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1580
Author: Matt L. Stephens

PLAYING HIGH: MARIJUANA LED CSU RUNNING BACK TO QUIT FOOTBALL

If college athletes want to smoke marijuana, the NCAA probably won't
catch them.

Treyous Jarrells is proof.

The running back signed with CSU because of Colorado's legalization of
marijuana for recreational and medicinal purposes, and he was high in
all but one game he played in across two seasons.

Jarrells, 23, left the Colorado State University football team early
in the 2015 season due to concerns he'd fail a drug test and risk
losing his financial aid.

Medical marijuana is legal in 25 states, and Jarrells has one of
102,620 medical licenses to legally grow the drug in Colorado.

But Jarrells' use of marijuana, which he smokes to relieve chronic
pain caused by playing football for 16 years, conflicts with NCAA and
CSU's list of banned substances. It's a thorny issue that's further
complicated by the fact that the rampant use of university-administered
opiates can have severe side effects. Jarrells says cannabinoids treat
his pain in a safer way.

"I practiced under the influence. I played games under the influence.
This is my medicine," Jarrells said. "I've seen players at CSU pop
five, 10 ibuprofens before practice. Daily. You think that's good?
Over the course of two, three years, that's eating your liver away."

"I am not ashamed of what I did."

arrells' house looks no different than the others on his Northern
Colorado block.

There's a long front porch with a lush, green lawn and detailed
landscaping.

He's waiting outside when we pull up, making a business call on the
sidewalk. As we get out of the car, he hangs up, smiles and says,
"You're going to love this."

He leads us through the front door and downstairs to his basement
apartment. His laundry is zipped in temporary closets to protect his
clothes from the smell, and the carpet - littered with stems - doesn't
look like it's ever been vacuumed.

We walk past his queen-size bed where a half-hidden .45 caliber pistol
sits on the nightstand, kept nearby as growhouses have been targets
for theft, which is also the reason the Coloradoan decided not to
publish the location of Jarrells' residence.

He continues the tour, and we enter an unfinished room with
ventilation tubing, gardening supplies and barely recognizable hemp
plants in tiny planters scattered across the floor.

"Those are the clones," he says. "Just wait."

Before unzipping the curtain into the final room, he straps on a pair
of white painter's overalls, throws on his yellow, marijuana-themed
shades and reveals his most prized possessions. Rows of Pineapple
Express and Blue Haze cannabis stretch from wall to wall, in a
10-by-10 grow room set at 83 degrees. The tallest, which Jarrells
named K. Michelle (because "she's tall and thick"), towers at more
than 6 feet.

This is where Jarrells has been the past year. Until now, he didn't
want anyone to know.

His basement serves as a daily reminder of the life he could have
lived.

His five pairs of green-and-white cleats dangle by the laces from the
ceiling. The two CSU helmets, with receiving gloves on the crowns,
rest in opposing corners of the room. His walls are checkered by
letters from Utah State, Georgia State and Marshall, reminders of his
options coming out of junior college, and newspaper clippings that
paint a picture of the athlete he once was.

It also reminds him why he left football. He was good enough to earn a
Division I scholarship to CSU, where he averaged 5.2 yards per carry
and scored six touchdowns as a sophomore and where as a junior he
could have been the starting running back.

He entered his first season at CSU in 2014 with lingering ailments,
though he never showed it. Playing running back for 16 years, dating
back to Pop Warner football in Florida, took a toll on Jarrells'
knees. A 2015 surgery to repair a torn meniscus helped, but the pain
never went away. His body ached.

Concerns about addiction to narcotic prescription painkillers and the
long-term side effects of over-the-counter remedies such as
acetaminophen led Jarrells to self-medicate. He'd done so since high
school.

It was a calculated risk to use marijuana, but Jarrells said had he
not, he wouldn't have been able to endure the pain football caused.

CSU student-athletes sign a university drug policy consenting to being
tested at any time for any number of reasons, including position on a
team, year in school, exceptional performance, reasonable suspicion
and random selection.

A first positive test requires the athlete to undergo counseling. The
second is a mandatory suspension for 15 percent of the season (two
games in football). A third positive test results in dismissal from
the team.

Jarrells appeared in 10 games as a sophomore in 2014 and one as a
junior before leaving the Rams. Not once was he tested, he said,
despite being under the influence in 10 of the 11 games in which he
played.

HIPAA legislation prevents CSU from confirming if Jarrells was ever
tested.

At Friday team dinners, players were given Rice Krispies treats;
Jarrells would swap the team-issued dessert for a homemade version and
chow down at his locker on Saturdays. He was ingesting marijuana in
plain sight before games without raising suspicion from coaches and
teammates.

Jarrells knew his luck would eventually run out. And yet he refused to
stop.

With less than two semesters until he graduated college - an
accomplishment few in his neighborhood back home in Sanford, Florida,
ever achieved - he didn't want to leave his financial aid to chance.
So he lied.

He walked into then-first-year coach Mike Bobo's office following
last year's Rocky Mountain Showdown - a game in which he was benched
despite running for 121 yards and a touchdown against the University
of Colorado a year before - and told him their relationship wasn't
working. Jarrells came to CSU because of former coach Jim McElwain,
and Bobo wasn't what he signed up for.

A coaching change coupled with his godfather's murder over the summer
was taking its toll on classwork, Jarrells said, and he needed to step
back from the game. Jarrells said Bobo understood, and let him leave
the team while remaining on scholarship through the end of the
academic year.

Jarrells admitted he stretched the truth, but he didn't want to be
remembered as a stereotype - an athlete who burned out of football
because of marijuana - and he felt if Bobo knew what was really
happening, there was no chance he'd allow him to stay on
scholarship.

Jarrells says his decision to leave the team is the reason he was able
to graduate.

"I've seen people before me, my brothers, who got kicked out of school
for marijuana. I've seen people from CSU who got kicked out recently
for marijuana. In my mind, I'm thinking, 'I can't do it any more with
the pain. I can't take it. I have to get my body right.' I knew if I
stepped back from the game, they wouldn't drug test me, but I could
still get my degree."

Although marijuana is on the NCAA's list of banned substances, the
only time athletes are tested for THC, the primary psychoanalytic
ingredient in marijuana, is at championship events. The random drug
tests the NCAA administers throughout the year are only for
performance-enhancing substances, said Brian Hainline, the NCAA's
chief medical officer.

"Every institution oversees marijuana as it sees fit," Hainline said.
"Some schools test regularly for marijuana, and others don't. Just as
some schools test for alcohol, and others don't."

Colorado State University tests its nearly 400 student-athletes for
marijuana. It does not test for alcohol.

The program is designed to test every athlete an average of once a
year, head trainer Terry DeZeeuw said. The school tests for all
substances banned by the NCAA.

The National Center for Drug Free Sport, which handles testing for the
NCAA and more than 300 of its member institutions, performed 447 tests
for CSU during the 2015-16 academic year and 1,903 since 2010-11.

Twenty CSU student-athletes tested positive for THC last year. The 4.5
percent rate of unique positive tests was significantly higher than
the average over the previous five years (3.2 percent) but below the
national average for college athletes of 6 percent, said Gene Willis,
a spokesman for Drug Free Sport.

The low rate of positive tests is "a strong indicator that our
(testing) program is having a positive effect," CSU athletic director
Joe Parker said in an email.

By comparison, CU has conducted 111 tests since 2011-12, with 19
percent of athletes testing positive for THC. CU does not perform
random drug tests, electing to only take urine samples when reasonable
suspicion is involved or as required by the NCAA. The university did
not test for street drugs, such as marijuana, in 2010-11.

Parker and DeZeeuw declined to be interviewed in person for this
story, and a CSU spokesman said Bobo would not comment because coaches
are not involved in decisions about testing, despite a drug policy
stating the contrary.

A study conducted by the NCAA and released in July 2014 found that 22
percent of student-athletes at its 1,200-plus member schools had used
marijuana in 2013, down 1 percent from a previous study four years
earlier. Marijuana use by Division I athletes was at 16 percent in
2013, also down 1 percent from 2009.

There's no way to know how many of those athletes are using the drug
to treat chronic pain.

Despite its legalization for medical use in 25 States as well as the
District of Columbia, Hainline said there is no science backing the
use of marijuana for pain management.

"There are anecdotes of some people who say marijuana helps my pain,
and there's other anecdotes of people who say I tried marijuana for
pain and ended up being hospitalized for a psychiatric, psychotic
breakdown," Hainline said.

The only options available to NCAA athletes are over-the-counter
medications with known long-term side effects including
gastrointestinal bleeding and liver failure, or opioids such as
hydrocodone (or Vicodin), which can lead to organ failure in addition
to being addictive.

Vicodin is labeled as a Schedule II narcotic by the Drug Enforcement
Agency; marijuana is a Schedule I, which is defined by the DEA as
having the highest potential for abuse and which has no currently
accepted medical use.

The primary pain medication CSU gave student-athletes from 2013-16 was
Vicodin (48 tablets), per records obtained by the Coloradoan. However,
DeZeeuw said the majority of prescription medications for athletic
injuries are filled at a pharmacy in the same manner the general
public and would not be part of the school's logs.

It ordered a combined 19,000 over-the-counter ibuprofen, acetaminophen
and Naproxen tablets during the same window. With approximately 400
student-athletes practicing or playing on an NCAA-sanctioned CSU team
per year, that breaks down to an average of 1.3 tablets per athlete
per month.

CU distributed 93 Vicodin tablets and 2,529 nonsteroidal
anti-inflammatory drugs that required prescriptions from 2013-16. It
ordered 37,000 of the same over-the-counter pain relievers as CSU
during that time. CU has an average of 350 student-athletes per year.

DeZeeuw said all prescription and nonprescription medications for CSU
athletes are administered under the advice and consent of the
prescribing physician. But even as CSU tries to limit the exposure of
opioids to its athletes, addiction can happen.

As former CSU linebacker Myke Sisson can attest.

In an early-season game against the University of Northern Colorado in
2011, Sisson fractured his right ankle in the second quarter during
punt coverage. He underwent surgery to repair it and was prescribed
hydrocodone and Percocet.

"When I first got the hydrocodone, they told me to take one every few
hours or as needed. Then one stopped working, so I started taking two
every few hours. Then that wasn't enough so I bumped it up to three,"
Sisson said. "I started noticing I was addicted. I thought, 'I have to
stop this this. I have to just deal with the pain and hope it will go
away.' "

Concerned about the internal damage he was doing to his body by taking
six or more hydrocodone pills a day, Sisson stopped cold turkey. His
new drug of choice?

"I won't lie, I have tried medicinal marijuana to help with pain or to
cope with something that is going on with football," Sisson said. "The
difference was, with (opioids) I was actually getting addicted to and
the other would relax my body and not have to worry about pain.

"It was better than the alternative, going out and drinking after a
game or popping pills."

Sisson said he hopes the NCAA will consider marijuana as an approved
pain-management treatment for student-athletes, especially given the
organization's willingness to allow doctors to "prescribe hydrocodone
and Percocet to kids on a daily basis."

As the rules are written now, Hainline said, an athlete in a state
such as Colorado where medical (and recreational) marijuana is legal
would not be able to get a doctor's note to exempt them from NCAA
testing. Hainline said there's insufficient science to prove its
effectiveness as a pain reliever.

However, Hainline has been asked by the International Olympic
Committee to co-chair a panel with other experts around the world to
discuss pain management in elite athletes in November. There has never
been a consensus paper written on the subject, he said. One of the
subtopics the panel will review is the use of marijuana.

The panel's findings will be used as a springboard for the NCAA to
develop future plans for how to treat pain in athletes.

arrells will never make millions playing football like he dreamed as a
child. He believes that if he had wanted to play out his senior season
this fall, he'd have punched his ticket to the NFL. Maybe that's true.

He still plans on becoming a millionaire. He's bottling and selling
his own "million-dollar spray" to help cannabis and other plants flourish.

Regardless of if those financial goals are reached, he's happy. Happy
waking up at 5 a.m. to tend to his plants and smoke with them in the
afternoon. He's happy even though he rarely leaves the house. He's
happy with a life that, from the outside, appears mundane.

And Jarrells understands how he looks. He looks like the athlete who
dropped out of football to smoke marijuana. His May arrest for
suspicion of driving under the influence of drugs not helping that
perception.

He looks like a pothead.

"These two semesters I wasn't able to play ball, I was able to make
connections for my career," Jarrells said. "If I would have played
ball, I wouldn't have had those opportunities because I wouldn't have
been in the places to make those connections. Right now, a lot of
players who didn't get into the league, they're lost right now because
they didn't make connections. … That's the thing, you're not a
student, you're an athlete.

"I tell you right now that I thank God that I didn't play football,
that I chose to step away. I was able to heal my body, get my degree
and actually use my degree."

Jarrells knows he'll be judged. He's concerned he'll alienate family
and that CSU will no longer recognize him as one of its own. But like
playing under the influence, coming clean, too, is a calculated risk.
And change has to start somewhere.

He survived the NCAA's ongoing 30-year ban of marijuana and knows many
athletes in his situation won't be as fortunate. They'll get caught,
suspended or lose their scholarships. Even though ingesting marijuana
is a legal alternative to painkillers.
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