Royce White (41:20)
Yeah. Yeah, man, I was sick. I. I got Benzo sick, too, one time real bad. Luckily, I ran into a. A doctor who. Who had helped some veterans with ptsd. And for anybody out there who's on benzos, a great alternative is Visceral, which is like the prescription version of Benadryl. Now, now, you got to be careful with the visceral, because if you take it too often, then it'll, you know, just like Benadryl to raise your blood pressure. But I was able to. I was able to get off of Xanax and then Klonopin with Visceral. So. But anyway, so, you know, these are the type of conversations that the NBA didn't even. You didn't even know about. They were just telling me, hey, if you're anxious about flying, which I was. I used to get really anxious about flying, which we can talk about, and I think, in retrospect, is warranted. That's another one of those conspiracy theories we. We'll touch on. But if, you know, if you get anxious about flying, just take the Xanax. And I'm like, well, guys, it's a hundred flights a year. You know, you want me to be taking Xanax? I Mean that doctors will tell you, you know, you should only take Xanax on a very temporary basis to, to deal with anxiety symptoms. Anything more than probably, you know, four to six weeks is pushing it. You start getting into the realm of inner dose of withdrawals, which means that you're having withdrawals on the schedule that the doctor's telling you to take the medicine. And so I said, you know, the alternative is just let me drive when I can drive. If we're going from Minneapolis to Chicago, just let me drive. And everybody was like, well, yeah, that seems like a problem. And I'm like, why? I mean, 40 years ago, the NBA players only drove the games. You weren't flying everybody first class when Dr. J was, you know, was, you know, stomping around. So like, you know, people still drive places, it's okay. And they were like, nah, nah. And it became a power trip. And what they, what they used was the fans, you know, lack of awareness and lack of interest in, in the nuance of, of that story. And most of what are the fans gonna say? Everybody would love to play in the NBA. I mean, it's one of the most, you know, sought after type of celebrity job positions that every young boy would love to play professional sports, let alone the NBA. And so your average American citizen that looked at the story was like, dude, just get on the plane. Why are you afraid to fly? Like, that's stupid, especially for millions of dollars. And I probably could have made hundreds of millions of dollars, but it was on principle that the, the NBA is a, a watering hole for a global corporate community. And, and they really are, and that their neglect of having any mental health conversation, you know, language whatsoever in their collective bargaining agreement was a sign that they just didn't really give a, you know, you can talk NBA cares and all of this, you know, fancy propaganda, but they are a great example of the rest of the media establishment that talks about Karen for people. But then they got, you know, Pfizer selling, selling products that they know aren't safe. And, and they all, you know, close their mouth and turn their, a blind eye for their own, for their own benefit and profit. So, you know, I had to take a, take a stand there and I end up essentially getting blackballed for that to the point where I, I didn't even get invited to training camp. And it wasn't because I can't be at training. I mean, every year there are still guys who are like 37 who are invited to training camp just to be at training camp because they need extra bodies at training camp, let alone a 22 year old who was a top five talent and very versatile and had a game that was perfect for where the game was progressing. You know, you talk about positionless basketball. You know, my game was, was that before it was really popular. So I was, I was essentially blackballed and I was told I was going to be blackballed. Like I was sat in the back room with the powers that be and told, hey, listen, you know, you want, you, you think mental health is important, we agree. And you could be the spokesperson for mental health. You could be anything you want to be. You could be as big as you want to be. We could help you. But you got to play first. And if you don't play, who's going to listen? Well, you don't, you don't tell, you don't tell a young black man who comes from a, a workingclass blue collar community. You know, if, if you don't sell out, then, then what good are you going to be to humanity? Because I just took that as a challenge and it's like, okay, I told David Stern, the late David stern, and he did a lot for the game, but I told him, I'm going to outlive you. And, and I did outlive him. Now he was 70 plus years old and I was 20, so it wasn't hard to figure that one. But, you know, and, and the point I was making to him is you guys can keep the money. And, and that really was the basis of like, people say, what? Why are you good for a public office? Like, why would you be good in the u. S. Senate? Because I would never sell out. I've already proven that there's not a United States senator that I could name who I think would turn down a quarter of a billion dollars or maybe more on principle alone. In fact, the conventional wisdom in our American political culture is take the money first, then do the, the moral and good thing later. And it's just like, that's how the country got up. So as far as my plane anxiety goes, I was just talking to somebody the other day and it was, it's, it's funny, I kind of trace it back to when I was in fourth and fifth grade. It's the first time that I ever really got on a plane to go to a national basketball tournament. They used to have it down in Orlando at the, the Disney complex every year. And I remember not liking it then, but again, I'm only 8, 9 years old, so it wasn't that big. Of a deal. But when I was in the sixth grade, 911 happened. And, you know, my mom always tells the story of me taking. Taking 9 11. Way different than my other cousin. You know, cousins in the family and the other students in the class. Like, my teacher called home that day, and I was very concerned, like, deeply disturbed by what was going on. It wasn't just like, oh, my God, planes are hitting buildings. Oh, what's gonna happen? It was like, no, something right here. This. This is. This doesn't seem right. And at a young age, I was already very, you know, into history and you could say politics. And my mom was, you know, a single mother, and. And she did a great job of putting a lot of books in my. In my house, you know, as many books as she did, toys and, you know, so I understood how the world worked at a young age. Right. Like, I was. I was thinking about world at a young age. Yeah. As weird as that may sound or crazy as that may be, might have been bad for me. But in retrospect, I say that all to say in retrospect, 911 is a huge question still. And that's one of those conspiracy theories, right?
