Joe Rogan - Dale Earnhardt Jr on How Concussions Ended His Career

So tell me about your book. Yeah, you What one of the things that was surprising that I had heard was your your experience with concussions? You know tell me about that. So When I've had concussions in that flip I was talking about 1998 at Daytona. I got a concussion from that crash I'd had concussions throughout my career at many different points and Didn't think anything of them I thought when you you know when you got a concussion you joked about it with your buddies about how it made you feel and you just rested until it was gone and You raced through it And eventually it'd go away and you were fine, you know It was just something that would go away and you never thought anything about You never thought about seeing a doctor. You never thought about getting treatment You didn't know there was even treatment available for a concussion. You just thought it was something like a bruise, you know So this is going on throughout my whole career. I was racing it. I was testing at Kansas motor speedway in 2012 blew right front tire hit the wall at 185 miles an hour and It screwed me up and so that was a really not you know That wasn't a typical crash not something that drivers deal with usually in their career. This was something that was unique to me and it was just a terrible impact at a bad angle at a very very fast rate of speed and I Got out of the car and I knew something was wrong with me and I couldn't you know, I couldn't I Felt you know, just like I'd been hitting the head with a bat Shocked and shell shocked in a way or just couldn't I couldn't Shake it off, you know, you just kind of wanted to shake your head and get it out whatever it was and you couldn't That's the way I'm I failed immediately immediately after that crash We went our test was done because the car was killed So we went over to this place to get some lunch and we're sitting there and I started getting sick nauseous before we ever you know, I wouldn't even We just ordered it. We just sat down and I started I'm sitting with my team all my guys and I'm Starting to I think I'm gonna throw up right there in front of them and I'm getting nervous and I don't I haven't said to Them that I feel this way, you know, so I don't want to tell them I feel this way But my crew chief Steve Latart is like my like a brother I was like Steve I Am getting sick and something's wrong with me. I don't know what's wrong with me, but I got to get out of this room It's a business lunch hour. It's full full of people noises talk and chatter Shit going on and I got to get the hell out of there And as I was getting up to leave my wife come walking in they were she was coming to get me We were going to Washington Redskins Monday night game and sitting on her box with Dan Snyder. Yeah, whoever else there so We had been plans to go. I Said Amy I'm gonna go lay down in the car. I just gotta lay down in the car for a minute and I laid down all the way in the car all the way to the airport. I'm thinking this is this is bad This is the worst and I've ever felt anything but hopefully it's gonna go away. And so We get the game we get we went to Redskins game. We watched the game Did that whole thing and I went about four weeks of feeling bad and sick for about four weeks and it finally went away And I was I knew that was unusual for it to be that long But in my mind, I wasn't thinking doctor. I wasn't thinking treatment I wasn't thinking anything like that It ain't crossed my mind to tell anybody or that I really needed I thought you know I thought that I had been dishonest and not You know, I hadn't I hadn't been honest with everybody by the way I was feeling but I didn't ever think that it was gonna cost Me anything so I thought all right. I'm feeling better. I'm good go to this race. I've been racing the whole time, right? Finally four weeks later. I'm great. I go to another race. I'm racing I crashed and It all came right back like as bad as it was If not worse, and that's when I said I gotta go to the doctor. This is bad I can't you know, I can't even you know, I Can't keep crashing like this Just putting these concussions so close together is a bad deal dangerous and my I couldn't bite my tongue like my Attitude and my emotions and shit was out of whack like I couldn't control my anger and I was like anybody be Anybody say something I didn't like I'm like, you know, I wanted to tell them to fuck off, you know, right and That was just not like me. I couldn't I couldn't like keep myself calm and Everything that I heard like made me angry it was the craziest thing Even people just talking about stuff would just get under my skin. I'm like Real impatient and there were some new symptoms, but finally I went to the doctor and and Got to I went to this neurosurgeon in Charlotte dr. Petty He's like I want you to meet this guy in Pittsburgh. His name's Mickey Collins. He works with the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Penguins and And I'm like, all right I go up there and I'm thinking I'm gonna meet this guy that works to works with the Penguins and the Steelers and he sees You know players But he's a he's a doctor that sees anybody and everybody like there's kids in there, you know They've got hurt playing on the playground. There's workers Con you know carpenters housewives everybody's in that damn waiting room to see this man. He sees about 25 people a day and he's an expert on head injuries and he's got you know, he's just he's on the cutting edge of Whatever the hell the new shit is he knows and he's you know, his team and his people are Investigating it and so there He fixed me so I go there and I'm like this would happen. This is how it happened. I crashed. I hit it I didn't tell anybody about it. I was sick for four weeks. I got better I crashed in this race and I feel sick again, and he was like, well, these are two different injuries Two different parts your brain the first injury you you bruised this right front edge of your brain When you hit the wall he said this this second crash you twisted the base of your brain and injured some things in the back of your brain and that's why you're having the emotional and different things like that so But we went deeper into it than that. He was like, you know, we did all these tests and Tests and visual tests and all kinds of stuff for And I'd go back to me. We did this thing We did I went through the gamut for a whole day of doing tests and then I went back every week Before I you know and in two weeks I was back racing again. I was clear and so he He took an injury that I hid and took four weeks to heal and healed it in two weeks. What did he do to him? He gave me I Never took any medication on this particular Issue he gave me home exercises and I exercises there was a I had problems with Focusing and making my eyes work Tracking an object like a bird flying across the sky or anything like that. I couldn't my eyes couldn't stay on it If I looked at you my eyes would bounce off of you And they just wouldn't stay, you know if you said hey, man We'll take a picture and you held up a camera and I tried to look at the lens and smile my eyes would want to Jump off of that object. They would want they didn't want to to look at what I wanted them to look at and track anything Go on anywhere. And what was the cause of that? The the brain has the ocular stuff I mean you can have injury to that part of your brain or you can have an injury to the vestibular part of your brain that That may look like if you have bad balance then that your eyes and your balance work together and so if you have a vestibular issues that can create ocular issues and That can create that that can affect your Anxiety and depression and things like so all these you can have an injury to one part of your brain that affects four other areas and So and we talk about that in the book Mickey comes into the book and I'm I'll talk about you know, I'll say this is what I was feeling This is what I did and Mickey will come in behind me and say this is the medical science behind that and this is how we treated it and why but I Would have an injury to one singular area of my brain but I would have four different symptoms affecting four different parts of my brain four different senses and You know, he would have to hone in on the one that was broken and Then know to fix it and when he started fixing it all the other ones would start Communicating together the brain would start working again balance and visual and all those things would start to work Again and anxiety and all those things would you know begin to to come back in tune? Know when you said he fixed it like what is he doing? He well So he gave me Physical exercises to do I had some balance issues Basically if I was if I turn my head Or looked up and down I would get dizzy and sick like my stomach would turn if I turn my head left to right if I looked up and down Just sitting there like the best thing for me was to sit on the couch and not move and so like literally not move and I Felt fine then but if I moved an inch man, it was like my it make your stomach nauseous and So I did a lot of motion. I did a lot of exercises that created a ton of motion with my head lifting heavy balls up and Passing them over my shoulder this way or that way Taking a ball and turning around and hitting it this way Taking the ball turn around hand that just doing that for for hours and hours and hours and so I would train basically I was training myself to balance again, you know training my my training my my body to balance itself again and if and My if I couldn't see a horizon or a flat surface I couldn't tell which way was up and yeah, it was so bad and The visual stuff There was these I had a string with these balls on it And I would hold the string on my nose and hold it out here And I had to look at all those balls and it would my eyes are focusing Just all it's doing is really just making my eyes change focus From one to the next to the next and back I'm going to the next next and back and there was this I chart on the wall and it had all these letters and all These numbers on it and I had to I had to look at that I chart and turn my head back and forth this way But look at that I chart and count and count dude from A to Z But backwards knew the alphabet so I'd have to look for the letters Where's Z, you know and go backwards or one one to twenty, you know all why you shaking your head two three? Yeah, it's standing up and walking backwards and walking forward. And what is this doing to your mind? Like how does this fix your mind? What is the process? You know, I don't know what the real I don't know what It's the I've had the problem with me was my vestibular system. So my ability to understand balance and understand horizons and So I was putting my mind in a perplex In a complex environment or making my mind do complex things that you don't do every day and it's just firing up And it's yeah, it's kind of like stretching this muscle, you know It's like it's like they used to say when you would get hurt to go into a dark room and hide and or you know No, no electronics. No TV just sit in a dark room and wait Yeah, and what they're what they believe today is that exposure is what helps pushing yourself into these complex environments and doing things that are really challenging for yourself even doing that if I put you in front of that I chart made you turn your head back forth and walk walking Two steps forward two steps back and doing it would be difficult for you So but for an injured person it's super difficult it has to be really challenging But it just sort of tunes the mind or to retrains the brain to do balance to balance it retrains the eyes to Track on objects and to lock on objects and stay on them and what's crazy is it sounds like physical rehab It is you had a knee injury physical. Yes. There's a lot of physical rehab to it Yeah, there's a ton of it and don't think about that when it comes to the mind though I usually think of the mind is like something that needs to be healed with medicine. Yeah, I agree All The probably 85% of the work that I did was physical therapy Please change your diet or anything like that because they say inflammatory causing foods or yeah I did not I did not change. I'll drink strictly drank water. I didn't drink anything other than water and I incorporated bananas and things like that into my diet that I never ate before I didn't care because of potassium Yeah, yeah, what what effect does potassium have on I just I just hear that it's good for your brain It's just okay for your brain hurt. Yeah, I did not my doctor didn't say start eating this stuff Oh, it was just you know You got you get tidbits like when you go and get injured like that You're gonna get people texting you and giving you information here and there and you kind of take what you want and go out You know, I don't know about that. But Did you ever mess with CBD at all CBD? You don't know what that is. No, no interesting CBD is a non psychoactive form of hemp Yeah And it's a radical inflammation fighter and a lot of people that have like some pretty significant injuries to the brain a lot of fighters Take it like right after fights. It used to be It's still Questionable federally. Yeah, like they're trying that there's some pushes to try to make it illegal just because of pharmaceutical drug companies Kind of putting pressure on yeah doesn't do anything in terms of like get you high or anything. No, I actually I actually read a little bit about that Just a couple weeks ago because it Controls anxiety. Yes, and and and it's helped a lot of people with that One of my biggest one of the problems that I face just on a you know On the regular every day is is where my anxiety is like is that because of being famous? I Don't know I think it comes from like your childhood. Yeah, just things that you experience in life and what do you anxious about? Just general social situations. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I would avoid I would I I've gotten a lot better like I go I can't I I would avoid concerts even if I love the band I would Just cuz there's too many people there. Yeah, but is it too many people that are gonna bother you? No, no I don't think so and I like being bothered. I don't mind people coming up to me and saying man. That's cool I know you are. I mean that shit feels great, but It was more about like am I gonna be accepted? Is it my scene is I? Don't know man. I just always had a lot of anxiety over. Okay, so Anxiety about whether or not you're going to be it in fit in yeah, okay, so you felt like an outsider when you're younger Yeah, yeah, so that anxiety. I don't know I still feel I Don't you know so I that shit goes away hard takes a long time for that to go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah like my wife She likes ashwagandha you ever heard yeah, yeah, so she likes that and I take that every once in a while And I think that shit works pretty good. Yeah, kind of keeps you calm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah So but I've never tried the I've read about when I was reading about ashwagandha is when I read about that stuff You're talking about I'll get you some all right. It'll help CBD is amazing and you know, it's really good There's some muscle bombs that work really good on sword joints and stuff I mean but like and nothing I've ever used before better than anything CBD just gets right into the muscles and just relaxes all the inflammation and The best part about it is it's a hundred percent natural and no side effects There's nothing right but in terms of like there's a bunch of different CBD oils you can take He just they chill you out, but they don't get you high or anything You're not weird it out But they just just calm you down right and I wonder how much that calming down is because of inflammation just reducing Inflammation and just it just it seems that your body has your body knows what to do with it Your body's like oh, I know what this is. This is good. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, I mean I got Ted Nugent into it really man Ted Nugent before he came on here He was telling me how he's all anti marijuana and this and that and we had this conversation about it But makes people lazy. I'm like, I don't think it does man. I think people are just lazy Yeah, and I told him because I know he's got some serious knee problems had all these knee surgeries He's you know, he's a mad man He used to jump off the top of the fucking stage and land on the ground and blew his meniscus out Yeah, I got him on the CBD bomb now and he texted me the other day He said there's not a thing I've ever used. It's helped me like this before Really? Yeah, so now like I'm having cases sent to him like every week. Yeah, he loves the shit I mean, he's he wants to endorse it which is hilarious Yeah, like the Motor City madman Ted Nugent super anti marijuana wants to enjoy endorse a cannabis product That's helped his knee. Yeah. Yeah, but it doesn't do anything to you psychologically. It doesn't affect you. Yeah I'm as calm you down. Yeah, that's what I read about it. Yeah doesn't have that part of the Part of the drug my friend's son has It's a type of epilepsy Brendan Chob and he started giving his kid CBD oil and it stopped the epilepsy in the tracks Yeah, I think I read where they're It's been used for that for years. Yes. Yes. Yeah, yeah for Seizures and yes. Yeah for seizures. Yeah, it's just a radical information Decreaser it just figures out a way it does it has some sort of interaction with your body where it just reduces inflammation But it's just it like I said, it also calms people down alleviates anxiety and No side effects. That's the most important one some people it gives them a weird stomach They don't like the way but I think they're probably taking too much or maybe it's expired or something like that Yeah, yeah, I've never had those issues, but I'll get you something. I should look into that too, right? Yeah, so what else did they do with you? Did you do any cryotherapy or anything like that? That also would reduce information. No, no, basically I went and In this in 2012 we did mace basic basic physical therapy and I therapy I I tests and different eye exercises and in two weeks I was back in the race car raced for And that was in 2012. I raced all the way to 2016 two weeks. You felt 100% Yeah, that's amazing. So with all these crazy exercise you're doing when did you feel like it had settled in like wow? This is really working Pretty I mean if it was a two-week period it wasn't you know, it was a day or two I guess you know, I mean I can't even remember I can't remember that far back a day or two Yeah, I mean I imagine it was feeling pretty good after a couple days. I'd have to I Don't know. I mean, I don't know if it affected me right away or but I know I was by time we have I take an impact test which is basically kind of measures memory and things like that all kinds of different stuff and my Measurements had come back to my norm, you know my basic Your you know, they kind of make you take the impact test beforehand so that gets your your blueprint of how you are and And then whenever you get injured you take it again and they align that up against Against that and say okay. Yeah, you're deficient here. This is a problem Maybe it's not diagnosing a concussion, but it wants it's asking us to look in this area. Mmm, and So you have a baseline and then you have whatever post, you know your injury or post crash baseline is So I was matching all my normals on that impact test and that was kind of the trigger for them to go man If you feel good, you look good here. All the things are saying that you're back, you know, and I wanted a good race. So I felt pretty good. Is it a strange feeling Knowing that you can't see what the damage is like a brain injury is a strange one Right because it's affecting everything in your body But you don't you don't see it like if you have a broken arm, you're looking at it You know, it's in a cast it gets fixed, you know, you're you're aware of it. You're doing rehab on it You're looking at it while you're doing it. Yeah, there's something about the brain where it's all like you can kind of mindfuck yourself And say I think I think I'm okay. Yeah, that's why so in the in the book I talk about these notes I started taking after that crash in 2012 when I would wreck after that I would get sick and I wouldn't tell anybody and so I started writing these notes in my in a journal in my phone and from 2013 all the way to 2016 I had this long journal of crashes and how I felt and I would Crash on Sunday and I'd write in the journal on Sunday night Monday morning Monday at lunch Monday at night You know every three times a day every day until whenever I felt good which is usually either Wednesday or Thursday of that week and I was writing these notes because I couldn't tell if I was getting better than the the brain injury or any type of head injury I mean if you said how's it feel Monday, and then you asked me again Tuesday? I'd be I really don't fucking know man. It just it's there right. I don't know if it's better I just feels bad and so I would try to write as detailed as I could on a day on a Monday And then try to write as detailed as I could on Tuesday and reread Monday and see is it better I can see in the comments or you know I can't really remember exactly what I was feeling Monday But in the comments it seems better, and I would write these notes right and so I kept doing this and I thought I was treating myself and Eventually it caught up with me like I had about a dozen concussions in a period of about two and a half years Wow, and I got to where I couldn't walk and I Called my owner, and I was like man. I need to talk to you. I can't race this weekend I can't hardly walk and My balance is so bad that I can't get up off the couch without holding on to something and walking across the room without grabbing stuff as I go and Jesus He was like we got to go back to the doctor. What are you doing? He was mad He's like you know what are you fucking doing getting to the doctor? Why aren't you at the doctor and I was like you're right. I need to go doctor I mean a concussed person doesn't have good judgment and self-awareness You know you're right you're just in a freaking you're in it. It's like being hungover. Yeah, the worst hangover You can't make decisions and so I went back to Pittsburgh and saw Mickey again And I had to stay out the entire whole half of the year in 2016 To get better it took me five months to get well Instead of two weeks Wow and that time I was on they put me on medication that would drop my anxiety Levels so the anxiety levels would stay down so that I could concentrate on The injury and what medications? I Don't know exactly the names, but It was a it was very very small Doses and it would take about three weeks for it to kind of kick in I'd have to take it for a while before it Started working But it just made me real chill, and it made me not Analyze myself every single day when I got up when I got up I wouldn't go hmm is it still there is it as bad as it was let me walk across the room and see how I feel Let me go do this and test this and try this and try this and try this all day long and see how I feel It made me stop doing that because I was driving myself crazy and He gave me a lot more physical therapy basketball movements anything that got my head moving I Do those exercises for about two weeks some of them would stop triggering Symptoms I'd go back to his place in Pittsburgh We'd go through about 30 more exercises And I'd take home about 15 that made the symptoms trigger And I'd do them for about two or three weeks and some of them would stop working I go back to him we go through more physical exercises to you know kept doing that process over and over and over I took the medication for about a year and a half and I had a lot of they gave me this computer program for my eyes, and I was wearing these I would wear these 3d glasses and This computer program would try to take these 3d objects and go to 2d and back to 3d and my eyes Would literally try it would felt like it's trying to rip my eyes apart It hurt like physically hurt when this object would try to go from from 3d to 2d and it was going very very slowly And it felt like it was trying to rip my eyes apart and imagine your eyes are tethered together So when you look left they both go there right and they both go wherever you look they go together like they're supposed to And mine didn't want to do that mine you couldn't physically see my eyes towed out or going the wrong way You couldn't see that but when I try to look over here. They both didn't go to the same place and That was that action or that that computer program was strengthening that activity of my eyes trying to do something together and I would walk so if I I've got these buffalo on my property and They're across the field weight You know 200 300 yards out across the field out the back window of my living room and if I walked across the floor Every step I took would knock my eyes off of the buffalo like they're way out there and I could look at them But if I took a step my eyes would shake and I couldn't I'd have to find them again You know and so that would that computer program would strengthen my ability. It's called gaze stabilization It would make it to where when I walk I don't you know if I'm walking or bouncing across the room I'm I could still look at you in the eyes and and you know Like a normal person right and if I when I was in my at my worst I couldn't do that and so but that took a long time to fix and The book basically is me admitting making those mistakes. I should have went to him as soon as I got sick again the first time instead of trying to document it myself and and hide it and and Manage it myself and trying to get to whatever the end of my career was whenever that moment was and retire thinking I was Gonna walk away without anybody ever knowing And it and I had to retire after that after that 2016 year of missing half a season and going through all that I didn't want to go through it again I had one more year on my contract in 2017 so I finished that season and that was that were you apprehensive while you're finishing that yeah, I didn't want to get hurt I didn't want to go back through that whole process again and go through that rehab again I didn't want to get sick again me and my wife just got married on New Year's of 2016-17 So we are newlyweds we're getting she's pregnant We're gonna have a baby You know, I didn't want to go through any of that stuff sick