Cognitive performance recovery following marijuana cessation in NCAA division I athletes.
Frontiers in sports and active living January 1, 2026 Brandon A Ally, Paul A Mentele, Scott A Wylie
Chronic THC use slows game-speed cognition in NCAA football players. Eighteen Division I athletes who tested positive for THC completed the S2 Cognition Football Battery at baseline and after 12 months of verified abstinence. At baseline, users showed approximately 20% slower reaction speed compared to their own post-abstinence values, consistent with an 80-100 ms delay in decision execution. Significant improvements after abstinence occurred in Decision Complexity, Distraction Control, Impulse Control, Multiple-Object Tracking, Speeded Target Detection, Improvisation, and the overall S2 Composite. Effects persisted after controlling for reaction speed, indicating domain-specific recovery beyond global speeding. The findings suggest that chronic THC use imposes a measurable performance cost that is partially reversible with abstinence.