‘This is the Renaissance.’ Ricky Williams speaks at cannabis conference in Miami

Ricky Williams landed in Miami Thursday night time and in the course of a blunt, he couldn’t assist however suppose again to twenty years in the past.

“A big majority of my story with hashish” began about two blocks from the place he spoke on the sixth annual Hashish LAB Convention & Expo on the Hyatt Regency in downtown Miami Friday morning.

The previous Dolphins operating again was traded from the New Orleans Saints to Miami in March 2002, proper when “I simply actually grew to become a smoker” and he was searching for a “hookup” in a brand new metropolis.

And so this seek for marijuana led Williams from his residence in Fort Lauderdale to the parking zone of a dentist, the place “some man got here out with an enormous bag.”

Williams’ use of marijuana throughout his NFL profession has been effectively documented and for many of his enjoying days carried a adverse stigma, as he left the sport shortly earlier than 2004 coaching camp and was later suspended for a complete season for violating the league’s substance-abuse coverage.

Years later, he returned to Miami to talk about the constructive results of the plant for him, not solely as a participant — serving to his bodily restoration and nervousness — however post-retirement.

“My private expertise with hashish is that it was one thing that was enhancing the standard of my life,” he stated throughout his 11-minute keynote tackle.

Williams, who legally modified his identify to Errick Miron, spoke in regards to the crossroads he confronted when he landed within the league’s drug program for repeated failed checks and the way he “rolled the cube” along with his determination to retire from the NFL.

Williams, now 45, spent that point away from the sport touring around the globe, together with India, the place he discovered about yoga, meditation and astrology.

“What I discovered was, I didn’t throw my life away,” he stated. “It was truly the other. …. We develop up. As time goes on, we be taught extra about ourselves. We often come to sure moments the place we get this flash about who we actually are. … This was a spot I used to be in. I assumed that is what I needed to be however clearly I gave all of it up so there have to be one thing extra.”

Williams returned to the Dolphins in 2005, serving a four-game suspension for his failed drug check after which was banned for the whole thing of the 2006 season for an additional violation. He returned to play 5 extra seasons, his last with the Baltimore Ravens, and introduced his retirement after the 2011 season. Williams completed his profession with 12,615 complete yards and 74 touchdowns.

Within the years that adopted, Williams continued to smoke, very happy to remain “low-key” and free from the specter of the league’s drug-testing program.

However then Kyle Turley, a former offensive lineman and Williams’ teammate in New Orleans, invited him to talk at a 2015 hashish convention in Phoenix.

After wrestling with a call, Williams agreed, seeing it as a chance to “come out of the shadows” and “be extra my genuine self as a substitute of compartmentalizing and hiding elements of myself.”

Williams, who now lives in Los Angeles, stated telling his story publicly was “cathartic” and the reception was constructive.

“In all probability 20 folks got here as much as me and mainly advised me I used to be their hero,” he later advised the Miami Herald. “I had by no means knew this as a result of it’s been on the hush. However talking publicly about it, I began to get suggestions about folks that have been going by the identical struggles I used to be going by. And due to my story, they have been inspired to maintain on pushing by. And so I noticed, wow, I have an effect on extra folks after I share my story than after I cover it. And I felt the strain then to maintain telling the story.”

Final 12 months, Williams took his best leap within the hashish business, launching the approach to life model Highsman, a play-on-words to the Heisman award he received because the nation’s high faculty soccer participant. The model sells “personally curated hashish merchandise” together with hashish, associated equipment and streetwear merchandise. It first launched in California, Nevada and Oregon — all states that enable leisure use — and is transferring into Pennsylvania and Massachusetts within the fall.

“You may’t take the soccer participant out of me,” he stated. “The best way that I’m going about enterprise is identical manner that I used to be educated to go in regards to the soccer subject. And a lot about that’s the crew.”

“Ricky is definitely the proper spokesperson for hashish,” stated Robert Friedman, the founding father of the expo which brings entrepreneurs, traders and authorized specialists collectively. “One, as a result of lots of people within the business have suffered to get to the place it’s now. And nobody could also be greater than Ricky by way of being kicked out of the NFL … And now stadiums are being named after him.”

Lately, extra athletes, present and former, have continued to talk about the advantages of marijuana use, with Brooklyn Nets star Kevin Durant lately likening it to a glass of wine.

The NFL has additionally softened its stance on marijuana. Within the collective bargaining settlement handed in 2020, the league eradicated suspensions for constructive marijuana checks, diminished the testing window to the primary two weeks of coaching camp and elevated the edge for a constructive check.

“A lot of our conditioning round this plant has been adverse … however there’s nonetheless lingering items,” Williams stated. “Even the entire concept of medicinal marijuana. I honor the concept marijuana is nice, it helps us really feel higher. However to me, there doesn’t need to be one thing improper with you so that you can really feel higher.”

In March 2019, Florida handed a invoice permitting smokable medical marijuana to be bought in therapy facilities to sufferers with a medical marijuana card. Leisure use stays unlawful however native regulation enforcement has softened their prosecution of minor possession circumstances.

Williams predicted that when made absolutely authorized, Florida will probably be “one of many high three states” for the business.

“Sadly, 1937 till about 20 years in the past, there may be huge Prohibition, Darkish Ages,” he stated. “And now we’re popping out. And that is the Renaissance.”

This story was initially printed June 4, 2022 12:26 PM.