Singer Lewis Capaldi has opened up about suffering “out of control” bodily twitches and panic attacks while performing live in a new documentary about his rise to fame.
Speaking in his upcoming Netflix documentary the singer, 25, admits that he physically and mentally struggled during his 2020 tour.
In the film, Lewis Capaldi: How I’m Feeling Now, the singer describes how he was suffering from uncontrolled shoulder twitches while performing, adding he was concerned because he “didn’t know what it was at the time”.
“The twitches became out of control – it was awful, absolutely horrific,” he says. “I started to get in my head about it – you know these pressures about things. Rather than just me singing my silly little songs, other people are depending on me.
“My twitch gets worse when I sit down to play the piano; physically painful. And I get really short of breath and it’s like my back f*****g kills me when I go to do it.”
And speaking about his panic attacks, he adds: “It feels like I’m going insane. Completely disconnected from reality.
“I can’t breathe. I get dizzy. I’m sweating, my whole body starts convulsing. Either I feel like I’m going to be stuck with it forever or I’m going to die.”
Capaldi details how he got help from a therapist and was later diagnosed with Tourette’s Syndrome – a neurological condition that causes sudden twitches, movements, or sounds that people make repeatedly.
“I’ve since learned that I have Tourette’s,” he says in the documentary. “That makes complete sense now, when I look back.”
The Grammy-nominated star added: “It’s good to be like, ‘I’ve got this thing by the way, this is what it makes me do.’ I know I’m not dying.”
Capaldi revealed last year via an Instagram Live that he had been diagnosed with Tourette’s and following his diagnosis he received Botox treatment in his shoulder to help control his tics.
Around the same time, he told ITV daytime show host Lorraine Kelly: “I got told like seven months ago or something like that, really recently.
“It made a lot of sense. To me, I am quite a jittery individual. A lot of people think I am on drugs when they meet me.”
Jokingly, he added: “I am not. At least, not right now on Lorraine…”
Capaldi said the diagnosis “made a lot of sense”, adding: “I raise my eyebrows quite a lot. I do this shoulder thing. I take these deep breaths every now and then.
“I thought I was dying because I am a hypochondriac, so I thought I had some degenerative disease. But I don’t, so good news on that front.”
Asked about the public reaction to him talking openly about his diagnosis, the chart-topping musician said: “People have reached out and they have said that I am an ambassador, which was great.
Capaldi said that “sometimes you feel you are alone in these things and it is nice to just see that you are not so isolated in all this stuff”.
He added: “It has been a bit of an eye-opener but it is nice.”
The singer’s 2019 debut album Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent went on to become the biggest album of the year, according to the Official Charts Company.
His second – Broken By Desire To Be Heavenly Sent – will be released on 19 May.
