What’s so funny about ADHD? (Comedian Jim Tews’ story)

Jim Tews is a comedian, Coast Guard veteran, and New York Times bestselling author who’s not shy to talk about ADHD in his stand-up act. Jim shares how he went from doing admin work in the Ohio Coast Guard to community college, where panic attacks finally led to his ADHD diagnosis. Jim shares what it was like trying medication for the first time and why he thinks he wasn’t diagnosed sooner. (“I had girl ADHD.”) 

These days, he’s channeling all of it into comedy. With a new special (With Pictures) and album (Without Pictures), Jim talks about how stand-up keeps him grounded and what he’s learned along the way. He also looks back on a childhood full of distractions — like hiding behind doors and watching squirrels — and how those moments still show up in his life and work.

• Jim’s book: Felines of New York

• ADHD and distraction in the military

• ADHD and the brain

(01:52) Starting out in the Coast Guard in Ohio

(05:51) Jim’s doctors dismiss a possible ADHD diagnosis

(07:30) How college made ADHD more obvious

(15:29) Going alcohol-free with ADHD

(16:45) ADHD stories from childhood

Jim Tews: I was doing stand up at night. I was writing, you know, submitting to writing jobs for television and things like that. And everything was kind of working. So it was like, I'm in a world where all these other people are kind of in the same boat, but then you do start to see like a lot of the people that aren't dealing with the things that you are dealing with are doing better.

Laura Key: This is "ADHD Aha!," a podcast where people share the moment when it finally clicked that they have ADHD. My name is Laura Key. I head up our editorial team here at Understood.org, and as someone who's had my own ADHD aha moment, I'll be your host.

I'm here today with writer, animator, and comedian Jim Tews. Jim is also a Coast Guard veteran and author of the New York Times bestseller, "Felines of New York." He recently released his first comedy special, "With Pictures," and his third comedy album, "Without Pictures." And as a comedian, Jim has never been shy to talk about his ADHD.

Jim: Having ADD is like having a, like a shitty assistant, but the assistant is just you from two hours ago. You from two hours ago is like, "I know how I'll help future Jim. I'll put all the files in a folder called 'files'."

Laura: Today we'll be talking about the twists and turns of Jim's ADHD diagnosis, his relationship with medication, and his many colorful observations of how ADHD has impacted him throughout his life. Welcome, Jim. How are you today?

Jim: I'm good. How are you?

Laura: Good. I'm happy to be here with you. And I think we're going to start where all great stories start, which is in Ohio.

Jim: [Laughter]

Laura: I'm an Ohio native. So why don't we start there with you explaining what you were doing in Northern Ohio?

Jim: Well, so I'm not originally from Ohio, but I ended up there because I joined the Coast Guard after high school to just earn money for college and to just kind of go do something and have some direction. And I was stationed on a ship for about the first seven months after boot camp, and then I went to school for my training, which was just like administration, human resources type stuff in California. And then I got stationed in Cleveland.

Laura: And when you told me that I'm like, they have a Coast Guard in Cleveland?

Jim: I have a joke about it. I say like, yeah, it's a maritime border between us and the terrorist nation of Canada. But it is, you know, it is a maritime border between us and another country.

Laura: Yeah, shout out Lake Erie, you know?

Jim: Yeah, Great Lakes, and they're huge.

Laura: How was the Coast Guard for you? Let's start there.

Jim: I have a somewhat of a family military background. I was in ROTC in high school too. So the idea of joining the military after high school was very normal to me. I wasn't like super into it, to be honest. It was just kind of like, you're bad in school, you're smart, your grades aren't good, your family's not going to pay for college, pick a branch.

And then it was kind of like, well, I don't want to end up in combat. You know, this is pre-9/11. So everything was relatively chill. And I had a great uncle that was in the Coast Guard and then, you know, some other folks I met through ROTC and it just sounded like something that was a little more in line with my personality. They had a, you know, a little more of a humanitarian focus.

The military, obviously, it's known for structure and discipline, and I've never been great with those things, but I've also found a lot of relief in forced structure. If I don't have to worry about where I have to be Friday because it's going to be the same place I had to be on Monday at the same time, and I don't have to worry about what I'm going to wear to work, and I don't have to worry about where I'm going to get food. All those like weird little things, while they are certainly restrictive, there is also some like comfort in that part of it.

The downside was there's no room for questioning or imagination, kind of things or like being, you know, it's not a lot of like creative problem solving things that pop up.

Laura: Really by the book, right?

Jim: Yeah. And being admin, it was very like repetitive. When you're in a situation like that, for me, it's always been like, you know, squeezing the toothpaste kind of thing where if those parts of my brain aren't satisfied, it'll come out in a bad way. And for me, that was just being distracted, being slow in doing my work, and then being a little more crazy in my civilian life, I guess.

Laura: But you hadn't been diagnosed with ADHD at this point?

Jim: No, I guess like self-diagnosed. That was when I became more aware of it. I was getting in trouble at work with just like being behind on things. And there's a lot of factors there. The big thing was I was a 19-year-old kid and I had a pretty adult job. You're handling paperwork and like personnel records, health care things, insurance, payroll for these like 45-year-old men with families and women with families.

And it's like you slip up, you have an adult on the phone screaming at you, "Why did you forget to file my retirement orders?" or whatever it was.

Laura: Oh wow. Yeah.

Jim: I don't think I ever forgot to file anyone's retirement orders, but I definitely...

Laura: Well I have someone on the line who'd like to speak to you right now, Jim. No, I'm just joking. I'm joking.

Jim: I did bring up ADD to a primary care person because I was dealing with anxiety, depression related kind of thing, and I thought it might be ADD. And when I did go to a primary care doctor, I had just gotten a dog, which was like obviously a terrible idea being who I was in my situation. But I wanted a dog. And I had this book about training the dog, and I was reading it in the waiting room. And when I had told the doctor, you know, we were going through some issues that I was having at work and other symptoms of like, you know, like grinding my teeth and like anxiety related things.

I said, I think this might be an ADD thing. And this was probably like '99, 2000, somewhere around there. And he was like, "Oh, you don't have ADD." And I was like, "Oh, okay." He's like, "You've got that book. You're reading that book. You, if you had ADD, you wouldn't be able, you wouldn't come in here sitting here reading a book." And I'm like, "What's he talking about?"

Laura: What? I don't, I don't like that at all.

Jim: No, and I didn't, you know, obviously like this guy's a doctor. I'm like, I'm not. Right.

Laura: And you're 19 or, yeah.

Jim: And I'm also like, maybe I should tell him I read the book four pages at a time. Like, I've never sat down and read for an hour unless I've been like forced academically. And even then it's like, you know, now I can find ways to do it, but it's still like trying to keep a freight train on a street.

Laura: So you got a fuller picture, though, of what was going on with you when you went to college. You're at Cleveland State. Tell me about that.

Jim: I mean, basically I got out of active duty. I got into some trouble because I also turned 21 while I was in and I started drinking and I was not good at it for a while.

Laura: Takes practice. No, just kidding. No, there's, yeah.

Jim: I got into some minor trouble with that just like showing up late and getting written up for it. And over time it was just like, this job is getting worse. I had a supervisor who put a target on my back. So by the time I got out, I was like, I'm not reenlisting. I'm done.

I was going to community college for a while for graphic design. I excelled in that environment. And then went, transferred to Cleveland State for film. And I was about a year into the program, and I started getting panic attacks. There was like a lot of things in my personal life that were happening that led to a lot of stress. I was like almost married and then called it off and was dealing with that. Then my dad and his wife were having difficulty, and my grandmother had died, and it all happened in this like six-month span.

So I had a panic attack. I had a couple. I had one in class, and the way the seats were laid out, they were like long table seats. I had walked into the classroom first and sat in the back corner. Everyone filled in, the professor filled in and closed the door, and the room started spinning. And I was like, "I can't get out of here. I'm not going to be able to get out of here."

And then I freaked out.

Laura: Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. Yeah.

Jim: There was no real trigger to it. Just an abundance of anxiety. I went to the bathroom for a while, and then a friend of mine came and checked on me. When he was like, "Oh yeah, it sounds like you're having a panic attack. Do you know the school has free counseling?" You know, we had psychology students. So I figured out the panic attack thing, then found out that my dad used to get them too. My mom told me about it. She was like, "Yeah, I had to take him to the hospital once 'cause I thought he was having a heart attack." And I was like, "Well, you could have told me that at some point earlier in my life," but I guess no point in loading my head with things that haven't come up yet.

So I started going to the counselor.

Laura: And how did that go?

Jim: It was great. It was very helpful. And then I talked to her about the ADD stuff because when it came down to doing things that were like not very active and rapid, like being on a film set, you know, student film set, but still coordinating a lot of people, organizing things, and it's very active and hands-on, and there's some energy to it, I'm fine in those situations. But tell me to sit down and write a research paper on a David Lynch movie or whatever, and I'm like.

I told the counselor like, this is an ongoing thing. I haven't had the chance in a long time to talk to anybody about it. Could this be an ADD thing? She said, "Let's send you to a psychiatrist on campus that she would come like once every couple of weeks or whatever."

Laura: A traveling psychiatrist?

Jim: Well, I guess, yeah. I don't know how it worked, but I'm like, "I don't have to pay anything, right?"

Laura: Did she have an apothecary bag? I just, I like this idea.

Jim: Yeah, yeah, she came in on a horse and buggy, which I thought was weird. But um, she was like, "Well, we could give you this thorough test to see, but from what you've explained to me in your history and your life, I'm going to tell you, you know."

Laura: Yeah. Was it helpful to find out officially that this was something?

Jim: Oh for sure, 'cause then it was like, okay, so I'm not crazy. I'm not stupid. All the things I already kind of knew. The talk therapy helped with the panic attacks. I just kind of finished my degree, ended up moving to New York in 2011. My stand up career had kind of progressed to at least a little bit of a point where I was working all over the Cleveland area and like hitting the road beyond that and then also working on local commercial things or doing video editing, you know, having three jobs like a lot of people with ADHD do. I had like a blogging job.

Laura: I remember blogging.

Jim: Right?

Laura: I blogged for a bit there too, Jim. Yeah.

Jim: Yeah. And it paid like a little bit more than my rent was going to be, and I'm like, "All right, well I can fill in the blanks." And then I got a job at Viacom, and at the time, Viacom gave their freelancers health insurance for very low money, and it was great. Then I had a friend that came to visit, and they had just been diagnosed not long before with ADD. And we talked about it some more, and they're like, "Oh, I'm on Concerta." And I'm like, "I've never heard of that, never tried it." And they were like...

Laura: That's a stimulant medication.

Jim: Yeah. They were basically like, "Do you want some?" And I'm allowed to say this.

Laura: Just don't try this at home. We recommend here at "ADHD Aha!," that everyone always gets a proper prescription from a doctor.

Jim: Yeah.

Laura: You learned from this experience, right, Jim? That's what we're talking about.

Jim: I did. I did, honestly. And then they gave me some of that medication, and I think I tried it for, it was like a week or two. I didn't notice much of a difference, but I did notice a difference. Then I went to the primary care doctor, told him truthfully what the deal was. And he's like, "Okay, you know, same deal. Well, don't do that. But yeah, here you go. Here's a 30-day prescription."

Tried that for 30 days and it was pretty eye-opening. At the time I was making a documentary on the Cleveland comedy scene. And, you know, it's a lot to organize. It was like a Kickstarter-funded thing that I worked with another friend who had never produced anything before either. And we arranged a shoot of all these comics, then I decided to turn it more documentary style, so I had been arranging all these interviews and all this stuff. And it was at the time I was in that 30-day window, and I'd been like traveling to Cleveland, shooting these interviews, doing all this stuff, organizing things. And I was like, "Oh, this is working."

Laura: Yeah, this is what it feels like to feel normal in quotes, right?

Jim: Yeah. And then I went back to the doctor and he was like, "I'm not going to write you another prescription till you see a psychiatrist."

Laura: Oh, okay, yeah.

Jim: And I was like, "Cool, I'll get right to that."

Laura: Yeah, right. Yeah. This is kryptonite. It's so hard when people have ADHD because all the steps you have to take, the taking of those steps is why you need the medication, the difficulty in taking those steps.

Jim: And also, I was working this job at Viacom as like a photo editor. I was doing fine. The job was not hard. I was doing standup at night. I was writing, you know, submitting to writing jobs for television and things like that. And everything was kind of working. So it was like, I'm in a world where I'm not crazy. All these other people are kind of in the same boat. But then you do start to see like a lot of the people that aren't dealing with the things that you are dealing with are doing better. It's just like school again where it's like, I'm as smart as everyone here, but something's missing. Something's not clicking for me that seems to be clicking for a lot of other people.

Laura: So you never went back to medication, is that right?

Jim: No, but I was really, I was working full time as a standup. Before that even, I had sold a book, which again sounds like if I went back and told that doctor, like...

Laura: Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

Jim: ...he'd be like, "Oh, if you wrote a book, you certainly don't have ADD."

Laura: You're too, forget it.

Jim: Right.

Laura: Yeah. You were having success, right? You were achieving things. It's just that you know you could have been in a different space maybe mentally, emotionally, in your career.

Jim: Right, or things could have felt a little less like a runaway train.

Laura: Yeah, kind of like grabbing things as you go, right? Yeah. I get it. It's really hard to get treatment and the regimen in order when you have ADHD.

Jim: Yeah. And you just develop like other tools and better habits, and you learn what makes it worse.

Jim: More recently I, back in September I decided to stop drinking, maybe not permanently but just to break that habit. I wasn't a binge drinker, but it was like, you know, in comedy, you typically, if you do a show, you get drink tickets. You might get paid a couple bucks, but you might not get paid at all.

Laura: Right.

Jim: So my life was two to three drinks a night. I started to realize that was affecting me. So I stopped back in September to prepare to tape the special 'cause I was like, I'm going to go a couple months and see what happens.

Laura: Yeah, good for you.

Jim: So I went from September to November and noticed a big difference.

Laura: Yeah, it impacts your sleep. There's so many things that it impacts and sleep is so important for people with ADHD.

Laura: Last time that we chatted, you, you shared a few vignettes, I think was the word that you used from growing up. You've talked about how you have known for a long time, even pre-diagnosis, that you struggled with ADHD symptoms. So I was wondering if you could share a few quick little stories from childhood where you remember struggling with attention and other stuff.

Jim: I have a joke in the special about having ADD. There was a part that I didn't include in that joke, and I don't remember why. I think I might have just forgotten it, which is another weird, cool thing about ADD where you're just like, "I forgot to say that thing that I was supposed to say."

I was not a hyperactive kid. I was the stare out the window kid. I was born in '81. So when I was in my prime staring out the windows of the classroom years, ADD was, you were the kid like bouncing off the walls. Nothing below it, nothing around it, nothing different. And then I found out later that the daydreaming type symptoms are more ascribed to women and girls.

Laura: Yeah, women and girls, yeah.

Jim: So the joke was that I, they didn't catch it because I had girl ADD. But when I was in kindergarten, they had, you know, sent home a report card, and we were trying to find this report card 'cause it's been talked about for so long. But they couldn't find me in the classroom.

Laura: Oh no.

Jim: Okay. You know, just during some like open play activity time. And then one of the teachers found me behind the door just chilling. And they asked what I was doing, and I said I was picking my nose. I don't have children. I would never claim to understand children's behavior to any great degree. But if there was a kid while everyone was playing was sitting behind a door picking his nose, I would definitely be like, "We need to investigate this a little bit further."

Laura: Aw.

Jim: But that was one of the, and I still, I can picture it clear as day. First, second, and third grade, we had like these gigantic windows. If you looked out the window, it was the Pepsi plant. So all it was was just like trucks full of soda coming in and out all day. And then there was like a lot of pockets of pine trees, so there's like animals. So it was like, why am I going to look at this teacher when I can look out the window and watch, you know, these guys unload soda from trucks and watch squirrels run across the fence or whatever.

A lot of times I was, you know, doing classwork during lunch because I had, that was my punishment. Playing baseball, I mean, I was a passable Little League baseball player.

Laura: All right, good for you, Jim.

Jim: But I definitely was a daydreaming outfielder towards the end of my Little League career. I did become a catcher.

Laura: Career. Yeah.

Jim: And then it was like, but I really started to do well and I'm like, yeah, because this isn't boring.

Laura: Yeah, and you can't, if you don't focus, you're going to get clocked in the head. So...

Jim: Exactly. I mean there needs to be an injury at stake or just you know, just being involved in the constant action. I also think that that's one of the things that appeals to me about stand up and why it's probably the one thing that I've done longer than anything I've ever done is because you have to be present and alert and kind of know where you're going and paying attention to 12 things that are happening in the room, but then also not paying attention to them. And it's just like this mental exercise. You're either thinking about a thing you wanted to say or you're reacting to a thing that's right in front of you.

The downside is every once in a while you'll get too in your own head, and you'll hear and see things that other people aren't as aware of because you're just like hyper aware.

Laura: Probably like a lot of noise sensitivity for some people with ADHD.

Jim: Huge, huge part of it. I've had to kind of train myself to understand what people in the room can hear and what they can't hear, what's worth addressing and what's not. A week or two ago, I had overcaffeinated, and directly across from the performer, there were paintings on the wall. And one of the paintings that was directly across from me was Edgar Allen Poe. And it looked like it was looking at me. And I couldn't help myself. I had to address it, but it was in the middle of a joke. But I couldn't not address it. I also knew that nobody else could see it so that I had to make everybody look at it so that they could understand.

Laura: Did it get a laugh?

Jim: It did get a laugh.

Laura: Oh, good. There you go.

Jim: And then like a minute or two later, it looked like it moved. And I interrupted myself to be like, that I said that thing, that thing moved.

Laura: Jim, tell us about your new comedy special and comedy album and where people can find them.

Jim: So this is my third comedy album and first comedy special. The special is called "Jim Tews: With Pictures," because I just decided to make things more difficult to challenge myself and add visuals to this. So about half of this show, I use a slideshow, a lot of drawings and some photos and stuff.

Laura: I love that.

Jim: I had a lot of fun with it. And I'm glad I did it that way. It was just again, like adding that extra element of like another piece to make the puzzle a little bit harder to keep me interested. And then the album version is "Jim Tews: Without Pictures."

Laura: I didn't catch the "With Pictures" and "Without Pictures" until like moments before I read your intro and I kind of had a little chuckle myself. I'm like, that's clever. I like that.

Jim: Oh good. I'm glad it's translating.

Laura: And where can people find it?

Jim: The special is on YouTube, and the album is streaming wherever you stream, so you know, Spotify, Bandcamp, all that good stuff.

Laura: It's been really lovely to talk to you.

Jim: Thanks for talking to me about this. I don't get to go in depth about the background of this and it also helps me understand like what's been going on in my brain.

Laura: Thanks for listening today. As always, if you want to share your own "aha" moment, email us at ADHDAha@understood.org. I'd love to hear from you. 

And check out the show notes for this episode. We have more resources and links to anything we mentioned in the episode.

This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Understood.org is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences, like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, donate at understood.org/give.

"ADHD Aha!" is produced and edited by Jessamine Molli. Say "Hi," Jessamine.

Jessamine: Hi, everyone!

Laura: And Margie DeSantis.

Margie: Hey, hey!

Laura: Video is produced by Calvin Knie and edited by Alyssa Shea. Our theme music was written by Justin D. Wright, who also mixes the show. Production support provided by Andrew Rector.

Briana Berry is our production director. Neil Drumming is our editorial director. From Understood.org, our executive directors are Scott Cocchiere and Jordan Davidson.

And I'm your host, Laura Key. Thanks so much for listening.