President Trump's recent golf partner and Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre is the latest athlete to jump on the CBD bandwagon.
On August 7, Favre announced that he's partnered with Green Eagle, a CBD company based in West Eatonton, NJ. Green Eagle offers a line of pain and muscle relief products (creams, sprays, roll-ons, sticks, capsules) that are "made from hemp-derived CBD and are 100% THC free," according to their website.
Favre suffered from opioid addiction during his 20-year NFL career. He admits to taking as many as 15 Vicodins per day until he had several seizures in 1996. Favre spent six weeks in rehab and now claims to be clean of opioids since 1998.
Pro Football Hall of Famer Brett Favre: "I can speak volumes on the risk of taking pain medication."
Favre spent the vast majority of his career with the Green Bay Packers, where he won Super Bowl XXXI in 1996 and was selected the league's MVP three times.
"The first quarter of my career I had a dependency on painkillers," he has said. "This went on for four years. I had two seizures - one two days before one of our games. The other was right after our last game the year before we won the Super Bowl. Normal, healthy people typically don't have seizures. That really set the stage for the treatment and overcoming it. It can be done."
Favre elaborates on his drug use as a Packer to CBS Sports:
So, basically the seizures were a result of not sleeping. I was taking 15 Vicodins every night. I took them all the time - in season, out of season, it didn't matter. I was addicted. It kept me up. A normal person takes two Vicodins, so they're out like a light and don't feel anything. Well, it did the adverse effect to me, it felt good and I stayed up all night and never slept.
"I took two for a while and graduated up to 15. So after a game, if you had something bothering you (taking Vicodin) wasn't uncommon - it was legal. Whether it was Vicodin or Percocet or whatever. When the two didn't work, I asked somebody else to get two more. And when four didn't work, I was just going to the guys and getting more and more pain pills. The guy that gave me two, he didn't know I was getting two from the next guy. That's how it worked back then.
"I probably slept an hour a night. Basically my brain short circuited is how the neurologist explained it to me. I really wish there was a different alternative at the time."
Favre wishes he knew about CBD as an NFL player from 1999-2010. "I've heard a lot about hemp and CBD," he explains in the promotional video below. "I found Green Eagle. Zero THC, 100% drug free. Green Eagle's roll-on, cream and spray all prove effective using patented nanatechnology for faster and better absorption."
What's Nano CBD?
According to Creating Better Days: "Nano CBD is a new type of hemp isolate. The extraction process removes the terpenes to leader a purer CBD. That’s the opposite of 'full-spectrum' CBD which retains the terpenes. In the manufacture of nano hemp CBD products, the process extracts oil through a CO2 process to eliminate impurities and toxins with no leave-behind chemicals. The extraction is pure and clean. The oil can then be introduced to oils, edibles and other hemp CBD products where they go through more filtering processes."
Favre and Green Eagle
In the CBS Sports interview, Favre explains why he decided to team up with Green Eagle:
"About six to eight months ago, Joesph Smadja, CEO of Green Eagle, reached out to a friend to get to me about his product. Like most people, I hear CBD - it's like THC, it's a drug. I listened to what Joseph had to say how they were very successful in France.
"You can't go anywhere without seeing a CBD store or some product that's not CBD related - it has taken off. He just wanted me to be a spokesman and endorse a product. I needed to use it first and I was pleasantly surprised... If you've got chronic tendonitis in your right elbow that flares up from time to time, Green Eagle works perfect on that. Charley horse or spasms, it works fine. So I was pleasantly surprised.
"I'm still learning. I didn't realize the body reacts to some of the chemicals in CBD - the healing qualities. I didn't realize that was the case. I'm not a science guy, that's not my expertise, but I can speak volumes on the risk of taking pain medication."
Favre and Trump
On July 15, the quarterback and the president were photographed together playing golf at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, NJ. “I would've played golf with any president because I respect the office of the United States,” Favre told USA Today on August 7. “It's an honor. If Barack Obama asked to golf with me, I would have taken the invitation.”
Athletes & CBD
Cannabiodiol aides in recovery from a game, practice or workout by reducing inflammation and pain. Among the professional athletes to advocate for CBD are Marvin Washington, Eugene Monroe, Megan Rapinoe, Terrrell Davis, Rodney Wallace and Adam Kemp.