Lewis Capaldi shared Monday during an Instagram Live that he had been recently diagnosed with Tourette syndrome.
“I have Tourette’s, I’ve always had that part of me,” said the “Someone You Loved” singer, 25. “I do that shoulder twitch a lot and… underneath every TikTok and stuff people are like, ‘Why is he twitching?,’ which is fine. Curiosity is fine, I get it, you’re like ‘What is that?’”
The Mayo Clinic defines Tourette syndrome as a disorder that “involves repetitive movements or unwanted sounds (tics) that can’t be easily controlled.” These tics usually manifest by age 15. Males are three to fours times more likely to develop Tourette syndrome.
Capaldi clarified that his twitches were not due to drug use, as some online had speculated.
“Some people are like, ‘He’s definitely taking cocaine.’ Do you think before I play to 20,000 people, as an anxious person, I’m gonna take a big line of cocaine? Never gonna happen,” he told his 5.4 million followers.
Capaldi revealed that he has received treatment to reduce some of the twitching.
“It’s a new thing, I haven’t really learned too much about it, I’m learning. I’ve got Botox in my shoulder to stop it moving. It worked for a bit,” the “Before You Go” musician said.
“The worst thing about it is that when I’m excited I get it, when I’m stressed I get it, when I’m happy it happens… It happens all the time. Some days it’s more painful than others and some days it’s less painful. But yeah, it’s not that big a deal. It looks a lot worse than it is. Sometimes it’s really uncomfortable, but I guess that’s that.”
While the diagnosis was unexpected, Capaldi said it now “makes so much sense.”
“I look back at my interviews from 2018 and all the rest of it, I can see that I’m doing it,” he said. “But it comes and goes, I’ll go sometimes months without doing it.”
He assured his fans that he’s “healthy as f—” after getting results from a recently medical screening.
“Tourette’s affects 1 in 100 school aged children, however the public perception is that it affects only a minority,” Emma McNally, chief executive of Tourettes Action — a U.K.-based support and research charity for people with Tourette syndrome and their families — told the Guardian. “Lewis Capaldi speaking out about his diagnosis will hopefully encourage others who are in the public eye to do the same.”
In 2018, singer Billie Eilish revealed that she had been diagnosed with Tourette syndrome as a child.
“I have diagnosed tourettes. I’ve never mentioned it on the internet because nobody thinks I’m deadass,” the “Ocean Eyes” singer wrote in an Instagram story. “As well as the fact I’ve just never wanted people to think of tourettes every time they think of me.”
Eilish added that her tics are only physical and that the disorder makes “easy things a lot harder.”
“I’ve taught myself ways of suppressing my tics and certain techniques to help [reduce] them when I don’t want to be distracting in certain situations,” she wrote. “Wasn’t planning on talking about this on here maybe ever, but it’s gotten to a point.”
