Diaz Tests Positive For THC BFD

[cog]

So Diaz has tested positive from his fight with Condit,Dana says he is disappointed,I would like to hear what Joe Rogan would have to say.

[Talo]

Shocker ! haha :D



Even if welterweight Nick Diaz wanted another shot at the man who beat him in the Ultimate Fighting Championship last weekend, another positive test for marijuana means he won't get it.

Tests conducted for last Saturday's UFC 143 show in Las Vegas showed the presence of marijuana in Diaz's system, the Nevada Athletic Commission said Thursday. It's the second time for Diaz, who tested positive for the drug following a 2007 bout in Las Vegas.

Diaz lost a unanimous decision to Carlos Condit in last weekend's main event. UFC hoped to put together an immediate rematch for the close fight, especially after Condit agreed to a sequel.

But Diaz's manager and lead trainer, Cesar Gracie, this week dismissed the notion while hinting at his fighter's inability to compete any time soon. "Condit has accepted the rematch because he knows there's not going to be a rematch, bottom line," Gracie told USA TODAY on Wednesday.

Currently the No. 2 welterweight in the USA TODAY/MMA Nation consensus rankings, the enormously talented Diaz has seen career interrupted multiple times by marijuana-related incidents.

Nevada suspended him for six months following the February 2007 showdown with Takanori Gomi, who tapped out to a rare gogoplata submission. The official result of the fight was changed to a no-contest.

The California State Athletic Commission in August 2009 refused to license Diaz for a Strikeforce title fight after he did not appear for a random drug test. Diaz's camp thought it had a handshake deal with California regulators that precluded random testing, Gracie said at the time.

For beating Diaz, Condit became UFC's interim welterweight titleholder while 170-pound champion Georges St. Pierre recovers from a knee injury. St. Pierre doesn't expect to return until October or November, so UFC hoped to set up another bout for Condit rather than keep him waiting for several months.

A rematch with Diaz could have been a lucrative event for the promotion, especially given the controversial decision last Saturday. While UFC President Dana White and other observers scored the bout for Condit, several MMA pros disagreed, including UFC fighters Dan Henderson, Josh Neer and Joe Lauzon, as well as former UFC champion Pat Miletich. UFC broadcaster Joe Rogan also viewed Diaz as the winner after watching the fight again.

But this week's incident likely means another suspension for Diaz. While that ruins UFC's hopes for another Condit-Diaz fight, it might have little effect on the near-term plans of Diaz.

Immediately after the scores were revealed in favor of Condit at UFC 143, Diaz expressed disgust at the judges' decision and announced his intention to retire from the sport. Although Gracie believes Diaz will return to fighting eventually, the fighter might need a temporary break from competition, the trainer said.

Diaz has been a vocal advocate of marijuana use for years.

"I think smoking pot is good for mixed martial artists," Diaz told Sherdog.com in September 2007. "I'm going to tell all you fighters out there something right now, from my experience: If you have friends that you get high with, get them to train with you."

[tex]

im high right now...just my .02

[Praetorian]

Kinda silly...its not in any way performance enhancing
P

[cog]

Joe likely got high with him.

[cog]

Kinda silly...its not in any way performance enhancing
P

Are you certain about this Prae?

[JacktheThriller]

is this a surprise has anyone heard him and his brother speak lol

[Praetorian]

Are you certain about this Prae?

How would it be performance enhancing...besides being an appetite stimulant which would really not be beneficial to an mma athlete.
P

[cog]

How would it be performance enhancing...besides being an appetite stimulant which would really not be beneficial to an mma athlete.
P

Some people might feel it aids training?Many years ago a friend of mine,a geneticist from the interior moved in with me for the summer.I had a small room jammed with equipment with just one small window.He used to smoke these funny cigs and we had these madman workouts,he was a bigger guy than me and we really,really pushed hard.I didn't smoke any of these but there was a lot of second hand smoke.In a fairly short time I was unable to shave or brush my teeth with one hand and I was natty with a crappy diet.Do you think there's any connection or was this all in my mind?Just wondering.

[mouth]

Eddie Bravo thinks it really helps you concentrate and focus. I've never been high from pot so, I don't know first hand. Having said that, Diaz knew the rules....this wasn't the first time he's broken them and been caught...I don't feel bad for him.

[Talo]

As mouth said it would help with concentration,focus and timing

Personally I don't think he smoked it right before the fight ( but who knows) , but weed takes a long time to get out of the system so even if he smoked it 10,20 or 30 days before he would still test positive. With that said , he knows this and while he is training for a fight he should not smoke because they are tested for everything.

[Praetorian]

Eddie Bravo thinks it really helps you concentrate and focus. I've never been high from pot so, I don't know first hand. Having said that, Diaz knew the rules....this wasn't the first time he's broken them and been caught...I don't feel bad for him.

Doesnt matter what people say it matters what the pharmacological effects are...concentration and focus are not one of them...if anything its just the opposite. The perception of increase focus and concentration is what people are talking about...but measured effects are the opposite.
P

Taken from the British Journal of Psychiatry

ACTIONS OF CANNABIS IN HUMANS
Cannabis affects almost every body system. It combines many of the properties of alcohol, tranquillisers, opiates and hallucinogens; it is anxiolytic, sedative, analgesic, psychedelic; it stimulates appetite and has many systemic effects. In addition, its acute toxicity is extremely low: no deaths directly due to acute cannabis use have ever been reported. Only a selection of cannabis effects are described in this review; other actions are reviewed by Paton & Pertwee (1973), Pertwee (1995), Adams & Martin (1996) and many others.

Psychological effects
Effect on mood
The main feature of the recreational use of cannabis is that it produces a euphoriant effect or 'high'. The high can be induced with doses of THC as low as 2.5 mg in a herbal cigarette and includes a feeling of intoxication, with decreased anxiety, alertness, depression and tension and increased sociability (if taken in friendly surroundings). The high comes on within minutes of smoking and then reaches a plateau lasting 2 hours or more, depending on dose. It is not surprising that the overwhelming reason for taking cannabis given by recreational users is simply 'pleasure' (Webb et al, 1996, 1998). However, cannabis can also produce dysphoric reactions, including severe anxiety and panic, paranoia and psychosis. These reactions are dose-related and more common in naïve users, anxious subjects and psychologically vulnerable individuals. (Psychiatric reactions including aggravation or precipitation of schizophrenia are described by Johns, 2001, this issue).

Effects on perception
Accompanying the high, and often contributing to it, cannabis produces perceptual changes. Colours may seem brighter, music more vivid, emotions more poignant and meaningful. Spatial perception is distorted and time perception is impaired so that perceived time goes faster than clock time. Hallucinations may occur with high doses.

Effects on cognition and psychomotor performance
Not surprisingly, cannabis impairs cognitive and psychomotor performance. The effects are similar to those of alcohol and benzodiazepines and include slowing of reaction time, motor incoordination, specific defects in short-term memory, difficulty in concentration and particular impairment in complex tasks which require divided attention. The effects are dose-related but can be demonstrated after relatively small doses (5-10 mg THC in a joint), even in experienced cannabis users, and have been shown in many studies across a wide range of neurocognitive and psychomotor tests. These effects are additive with those of other central nervous system depressants.

Driving and piloting skills
These effects combine to affect skills related to driving a vehicle or flying an aeroplane. Numerous studies have shown that cannabis impairs road-driving performance and have linked cannabis use with increased incidence of road traffic accidents. In the UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand and many European countries, cannabis is the most common drug, apart from alcohol, to be detected in drivers involved in fatal accidents or stopped for impaired driving. A large proportion of such drivers have not taken alcohol or have concentrations below the legal limit. For example, in two studies from the UK Department of Transport (Everest et al, 1989; Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions, 1998), no alcohol was detected post-mortem in 70% and 80%, respectively, in road traffic accident fatalities testing positive for cannabis. In Australia (Road Safety Committee, 1995) only half of surviving drivers of vehicle collisions involving death or life-threatening injuries who tested positive for cannabis had also taken alcohol. In Norway, 56% of a sample of drug-impaired drivers negative for alcohol gave positive blood samples for THC (Gjerde & Kinn, 1991). From the USA, McBay (1986) had earlier found that 75% of a sample of drivers with cannabinoids in their blood were also intoxicated with alcohol. The World Health Organization (1997, p. 15) concluded:

"There is sufficient consistency and coherence from experimental studies and studies of cannabinoid levels among accident victims...to conclude that there is an increased risk of motor vehicle accidents among persons who drive when intoxicated with cannabis.... The risk is magnified when cannabis is combined with intoxicating doses of alcohol".

Piloting an aeroplane is an even more complex task than driving a car and cannabis has been shown in several investigations seriously to impair aircraft piloting skills. The results of one placebo-controlled study are shown in Fig. 4 (Leirer et al, 1991). The subjects were nine licensed pilots, highly trained in a flight simulator task, who were current cannabis users. They received a cannabis cigarette containing 20 mg THC (a moderate dose by present-day standards). This dose caused a significant decrement in performance compared with placebo and the impairment lasted over 24 hours after this single dose. Furthermore, most of the pilots were unaware that their performance was still impaired at 24 hours. Several pilots reported that they had actually flown while high on cannabis, and the authors noted that in at least one aeroplane crash the pilot was known to have taken cannabis some hours before flying and to have made a similar landing misjudgement (poor alignment on the runway) as was noted in experimental studies.




Fig. 4 Effect of smoking a cannabis cigarette containing 20 mg tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) on pilot performance in a flight simulator landing task (Leirer et al, 1991), [double dash, black square, double dash], 20 mg THC; [horizontal bar, black circle, horizontal bar], placebo.

There is evidence that similar longlasting impairments apply to motor cyclists, train drivers, signal operators, air traffic controllers and operators of heavy machinery. However, a problem is that because of the very slow elimination of cannabinoids, there is no accurate way of relating blood, urine, saliva or sweat concentrations to the degree of intoxication of the driver or pilot at the time of an accident, no way of telling exactly when the last dose was taken and no proof that cannabis was actually the cause of an accident.
Long-term effects of chronic use
There is considerable evidence, reviewed by Hall et al (1994), that performance in heavy, chronic cannabis users remains impaired even when they are not actually intoxicated. These impairments, especially of attention, memory and ability to process complex information, can last for many weeks, months or even years after cessation of cannabis use (Solowij, 1998). Whether or not there is permanent cognitive impairment in heavy long-term users is not clear.

Tolerance, dependence, withdrawal effects
Tolerance has been shown to develop to many effects of cannabis including the high and many systemic effects, and a cannabis withdrawal syndrome has been clearly demonstrated in controlled studies in both animals and man (Jones, 1983; Kouri et al, 1999). The withdrawal syndrome has similarities to alcohol, opiate and benzodiazepine withdrawal states and includes restlessness, insomnia, anxiety, increased aggression, anorexia, muscle tremor and autonomic effects. A daily oral dose of 180 mg of THC (one or two modern, good-quality joints) for 11-21 days is sufficient to produce a well-defined withdrawal syndrome (Jones, 1983). The development of tolerance leads some cannabis users to escalate dosage, and the presence of withdrawal syndrome encourages continued drug use. Thus, chronic cannabis use can lead to drug dependence, and reports from the USA, UK and New Zealand (Roffman & Barnhart, 1987; Stephens et al, 1993) indicate that many cannabis users are now seeking treatment for cannabis dependence.

Systemic effects
Cardiovascular effects
Cannabinoids produce a dose-related tachycardia which may reach rates of up to 160 beats/minute or more, although tolerance develops with chronic use. There is also a widespread vasodilation and reddening of the conjunctivae, a characteristic sign of cannabis use (Paton & Pertwee, 1973). Postural hypotension and fainting may occur. These and other cardiovascular effects may carry a risk for individuals with preexisting cardiac disease, and several cases of acute and sometimes fatal cardiac incidents have been reported in young cannabis smokers.

Effects on the respiratory system
The smoke from herbal cannabis preparations contains all the same constituents (apart from nicotine) as tobacco smoke, including carbon monoxide, bronchial irritants, tumour initiators (mutagens), tumour promoters and carcinogens (British Medical Association, 1997). The tar from a cannabis cigarette contains higher concentrations of benzanthracenes and benzpyrenes, both of which are carcinogens, than tobacco smoke. It has been estimated that smoking a cannabis cigarette results in approximately a fivefold greater increase in carboxyhaemoglobin concentration, a three-fold greater amount of tar inhaled and retention in the respiratory tract of one-third more tar than smoking a tobacco cigarette (Wu et al, 1988; Benson & Bentley, 1995). This is mainly due to the way a cannabis joint is smoked, with deep and prolonged inhalation and no filter. In addition, cannabis has a higher combustion temperature than tobacco.

Chronic cannabis smoking is associated with bronchitis and emphysema. It has been calculated that smoking 3-4 cannabis cigarettes a day is associated with the same evidence of acute and chronic bronchitis and the same degree of damage to the bronchial mucosa as 20 or more tobacco cigarettes a day (Benson & Bentley, 1995). Prospective studies of the long-term effects on the lungs of chronic cannabis smoking are lacking, but some authors suggest that chronic airways disease and bronchogenic carcinoma may be as great a risk as with tobacco smoking. In addition, there appears to be an increased incidence of rare forms of oropharyngeal cancer in young people who smoke cannabis chronically.

Effects on other systems
Cannabis also has immunosuppressant and endocrine effects although the clinical significance of these is still not clear. Chronic cannabis use appears to carry reproductive risks, both to the mother during pregnancy and childbirth and to the foetus and neonate, although these areas need further study. The full extent of long-term health risks of chronic cannabis use (if today's young smokers continue the habit) may require a latent period of 10-20 years to be revealed

[tex]

i would sometimes smoke before cardio....and my heavybag time would increase from 25 minutes to near an hour and id be throwing heavy for the duration.....

[cog]

That's what some eggheads observed.I could go on about many points there,those would include time frame after ingestion and genetics....I don't recommend it but the whole story is certainly not understood by those scientists.

[cog]

i would sometimes smoke before cardio....and my heavybag time would increase from 25 minutes to near an hour and id be throwing heavy for the duration.....

Which is what I experienced in that little room.