Singer Lewis Capaldi revealed Tuesday that he is living with Tourette’s syndrome.
"I do this shoulder twitch quite a lot. You see it underneath TikToks and stuff, people like, 'why's he twitching?' Which is fine," he told fans during an Instagram Live. "Curiosity is fine and I get it.
"But then some people are like, 'he's definitely taken cocaine.' Do you think before I play to 20,000 people as an anxious person, I'm going to take a big line of cocaine? Never going to happen."
The 25-year-old Scottish singer said the diagnosis is "a new thing" and he has not learned much about the neurological disorder that causes tics – involuntary twitches, movements, or sounds.
"When they told me, ‘We think you’ve got Tourette’s,' I was like, ‘Do you know what, that makes so much sense.' When I look back at my interviews from 2018 and all the rest of it I can see that I’m doing it, but it comes and goes," said Capaldi. “Sometimes I can go months without doing it. And I thought I had some horrible degenerative disease so, I’ll take Tourette’s.”
Capaldi said he got a Botox injection in his shoulder to control the tics. "It works for a bit but it gets worse," he shared. "The worst thing about it is when I'm excited, I get it. When I'm stressed, I get it. When I'm happy, I get it.
“Some days it’s more painful than others … sometimes it’s quite uncomfortable but it's not that big a deal. It looks a lot worse than it looks. I guess that’s it."
In May, Billie Eilish said she is “incredibly offended” by people who laugh at the tics she experiences due to Tourette’s syndrome.
Speaking to David Letterman on My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, the singer – who went public with her diagnosis in 2018 – said her tics include wiggling her ears, raising her eyebrows, clicking her jaw and flexing her arm.
“These are things you would never notice if you’re just having a conversation with me, but for me, they’re very exhausting,” Eilish explained. “The most common way people react is they laugh, because they that I’m trying to be funny ... And I’m always left incredibly offended by that. Or they go 'What?' And then I go, 'I have Tourette's.'"