On Athletics: Making a case for legalising the runner’s high

We were sipping on the usual Thursday night pints, The Blue Light Smugglers playing softly from across the bar, when I asked if anyone fancied smoking a joint.

“No, never really my thing,” said Gav, slowly nursing his Guinness, as he’s currently in training for his 40th birthday blow out.

“Maybe years ago, but not now,” said Will, who’d just ordered a Jameson on ice to go with his Hop House 13. Although he’s in training too.  Not that we’d think about rolling up a joint in The Blue Light, even if we did fancy one. In another lifetime it might have been that sort of place – the blue light in the mountains actually a secret beacon to the off-shore smuggler – although these days it offers little more than the best pint outside of St James’s Gate and the most perfectly panoramic view across Dublin Bay.

So that was more or less the end of that conversation. Although we all agreed that if or when any of us ever did fancy smoking a joint, then it should definitely be legal. Or at least somewhat decriminalised – as recommended by the Oireachtas justice committee report, published earlier in the day, and the reason we were talking about smoking a joint in the first place.

According to the Minister of State with responsibility for drugs, Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (no relation, incidentally), the report has added momentum to the case for decriminalising small-scale drug use, calling it “a different approach to tackling the drugs menace”. Ó Ríordáin wasn’t just talking about marijuana, although there are plenty of people who believe that smoking a joint has never been any menace to society. Especially now that there’s new evidence to suggest it’s no better or no worse than the good old runner’s high.

My body being a temple, there's never been anything particularly attractive about smoking a joint. That doesn't mean there hasn't been some second-hand experience of it. Just a couple of weeks ago, actually, when joining up on the latest leg of Bob Dylan's Never-ending Tour, it felt like the entire Tempodrom in Berlin was at least a little stoned. Possibly even Dylan himself, even if he's long since given up singing Rainy Day Women. And it couldn't have been a more touchingly calm and contemplative concert.

The runner’s high, however, I do know all about – or at least thought I did. Even after all the countless miles of track and road and country path, there is no mistaking that gently euphoric sense of well-being that comes after a run. There are no goals anymore. There is no specific distance, and definitely not pace. All that matters is the continuous and reliable pleasure of it all – which even the non-runner will know has been generally explained by the release of the exercise-induced endorphin, that morphine-like substance originating from within the body.

Good reason

Only now is seems that cannabinoid is also at play – exactly the same substance that is found in marijuana. I am not making this up. A study just published in the US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has being doing the rounds on all the popular running websites, and for good reason: it suggests that the runner's high has as much to do with cannabinoid as it does endorphin, at least when it comes to reducing anxiety and the sensation of pain.

Because the study was carried out on mice it was impossible to prove how the sense of euphoria was influenced, but running on a wheel clearly increased their blood levels of cannabinoid – so they must have been feeling some sort of buzz.

Whatever about the Government’s pending decision on any legalisation of marijuana – and the Oireachtas justice committee report doesn’t actually go that far – there’s already been a considerable softening on the legality of its use in sport. For years, the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) was pretty strict on marijuana use, not because they considered it performance-enhancing, but because they felt it violated “the spirit of sport”.

Then, two years ago, Wada raised the threshold for a positive test for THC (one of the active ingredients in marijuana) from 15 nanograms per milliliter to 150 ng/ml – which effectively means athletes are free to use it except when in competition. The next step, inevitably, will be to completely remove marijuana from the banned list, especially as it’s now legalised for medical purposes or decriminalised for personal possession in 25 US states.

Physical fitness

Last month, writing in this newspaper, Eamonn McCann also pointed to a recent report in the journal of the American Academy of Actuaries, advising members to reconsider the weight they were giving to marijuana, when calculating premiums, as the current evidence suggested recreational users "enjoy better physical fitness and get more exercise than non-users" and "have even been shown to have higher IQs". There is also anecdotal evidence to suggest marijuana offers far more natural (if not popular) pain-relieving properties in some of the heavy-hitting sports, such as American football, compared to the otherwise purely chemical painkillers.

All this may or may not impact on the ultimate outcome of the Oireachtas justice committee report, although committee chairman, Fine Gael TD David Stanton, was right in saying the stigma of having a criminal record could have “massive implications” on a person’s future, “for maybe making one mistake, having a joint at a concert for instance”. Or indeed going for a long distance run.