Comedian Darcy Michael discusses his diagnoses of ADHD and autism.
For 20 years, Darcy Michael has been a powerhouse in comedy, with a voice unlike any other. Lauded by the Montreal Gazette as one of their favorites at the prestigious Just for Laughs Festival, Darcy has graced its stages over ten times. His meteoric rise continued in 2021 when he launched a TikTok account, quickly garnering 4 million followers and over 150 million likes, proving his humor resonates across generations and platforms.In 2018, Darcy made history with Darcy Michael Goes to Church, Just for Laughs’ first-ever one-hour stand-up special, now streaming on Crave and available globally via YouTube and Facebook Watch. This partnership cemented Darcy’s status as a leading voice in comedy. His latest stand-up album, Family Highs, debuted at #1, further showcasing his comedic brilliance.
On screen, Darcy’s charisma has shone in roles opposite Dave Foley in CTV’s Spun Out, as well as in hit shows like Legends of Tomorrow, Lucifer, The Twilight Zone, and the film Rapture-Palooza. A finalist in the national XM Top Comic Competition, Darcy toured with Russell Peters and was handpicked by NBC as a finalist for the Stand Up for Diversity showcase.
In 2023/24, Darcy and his husband Jeremy took their hilarious and relatable banter on the road with their co-headlined tour NO REFUNDS. Their dynamic chemistry, candid humor, and infectious energy made the tour a smash hit. Adding to his achievements, their acclaimed comedy special, NO REFUNDS, and a behind-the-scenes documentary, HAPPILY EVER LAUGHTER, are now available on Crave and World of Wonder. Darcy recently announced his debut book, ATTENTION SEEKER: A Neurodivergent Comedian’s Guide to Thriving with ADHD, and has already hit the best seller list on Amazon for pre-orders. Up next, Darcy and Jer will be seen on their upcoming 2026 stand up tour, AVERAGE AT BEST, at theatres across North America.
For more about Darcy’s work: darcyandjer.com
For more about host Shawn Smith: ddmacs.ca
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FULL TRANSCRIPTION
Note: the following transcription was automatically generated. Some imperfections may exist.
SHAWN SMITH (SS):
Hello and welcome to Exploring Different Brains. I’m Shawn Smith. I’m your host for today, and our guest is amazing. I can’t wait. I first met Darcy Michael a few years ago. My wife surprised me with VIP tickets to show with Jer. It was hilarious. I laughed my butt off. Became Facebook friends with with Darcy and recently reconnected and super pumped to have you onto the podcast, one of the leading voices in Canada in comedy and fellow ADHDer Darcy Michael, welcome to the show.
DARCY MICHAEL (DM):
Hey, hey, good to see you again. I have to tell you right off the bat that you know like not to brag, but we meet a lot of people on tour, and when Candace, our assistant, mentioned this to me, I instantly remembered, because you had a t shirt right at the show. What was it? Was differently able?
SS:
Yeah, it’s my brand, which is, “Don’t dis my ability”.
DM:
That’s the one.
SS:
And, and if you haven’t checked your PO box yet they’ve arrived.
DM:
Oh, have they? Oh, okay, amazing. Okay, it’s probably at our Vancouver one, which I’ll get in. I think I go back to Vancouver next week. So that’s amazing. I’m super stoked. I know I remember meeting you and your wife and just vibing with the energy, you know, like the one, the one, the one benefit of our of our world now, is we get to meet so many people. And because of the parasocial part, we also just get people coming up and telling us their life story right away. And I love it, because I’m like, fuck small talk. Give me the gossip. Give me the things you’re that shirt that branding was just stuck with me. So thanks for reaching out and having me on.
SS:
Well, we really appreciate it, so let’s get right into it. First thing I want to ask is, How did you get your ADHD diagnosis, and Was there some kind of pivotal event that led you to want to seek a diagnosis?
DM:
Yeah, I hilariously, and I’m not going to keep referencing back to my own book, which is available for pre order at Darcy and jay.com the very first chapter of my book is about that pivotal moment, and it is true Canadiana, for anyone that is a fan of Canadian comedy. I was sitting in LA in a overpriced mansion in the Hollywood Hills with my writing partner, two producers and someone we had hired as a show runner to help me. I was in the midst of developing a sitcom for CTV based on my life. This is back in 2017 2018 and the show runner I hired was Bruce McCullough from Kids in the Hall, who is longtime icon and hero of mine, really excited to get to work with him, and long story short, because you have to read it in the book. But during this writing process, at one point, Bruce asked me how long I had had ADHD for, and I just was frozen by the com because it had never been suggested to me. And I was just like, I remember, like, in my head being like, Who the fuck does this guy think he is? Who is he to tell me that I have, just because I’m a little energetic and a little excited and blah blah. And it, it stuck in my head for weeks. And I, you know, eventually I got home from this writing project, and I mentioned it to Jer, and we both kind of laughed, and I just, I couldn’t shake it, so I started looking into it, and I started to, you know, like, have those moments when I was reading about it, going, Wait, like, ADHD isn’t just some kid eating glue and running around the the room in Grade Two. Like, you know, like it can affect your emotions and it can affect your relationships and your ability to remember things and and it just kind of got the ball rolling. And so, you know, like, I did what everybody does. I started taking tests online, you know, just to, like, ease into it. And then my tests were, were coming back that I didn’t have it. And then jer had the audacity to say, Why don’t I take it as you because I’m going to be more honest with the answers. And sure enough, it came back. I was, not only had ADHD, but I was also a flaming homosexual.
SS:
They do an assessment for that?
DM:
Yeah, yeah. They did. They did. Typically, when you bring your husband to your appointment, they go, “Hey, you might be gay”, but yeah, we so I started. I started with, like, just talking to my GP, and then from there, I got a referral. And, you know, like, I will always say that we I realized that I come from a place of privilege that not everyone gets access, especially. Actually, in a post covid world where mental health is harder to access because people the wait lists are crazy long, I was really lucky within within three months of my conversation with Bruce, I was fully diagnosed ADHD, and since then, have also been diagnosed with autism. So it continues to climb. I continue to unravel the mess. But, yeah, it was, it was just like an eye opening experience to kind of, you know, like, at first, I just got diagnosed, got some drugs, and then carried on with life. But it wasn’t until, like, probably, yeah, covid, 2019, 2020, when I really started to learn about things like rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria, time management. The ADHD iceberg really blew my mind when I saw, when I saw, like, what we see above the surface and what was going on below. So it kind of was like, it not that it gives you permission to live a messy life, but it definitely gave me permission to forgive myself for the first 40 years of my life. You know, because you go through that grieving process, yeah, which is, which is wild. It’s so sad to be like, Oh, who could I have been had I had this knowledge 20 years ago? I don’t think I would have been a comedian. I don’t necessarily know if I would be in the arts at all, but it’s where, you know, it’s where I followed the I followed the distraction, I followed the squirrel of life to be where I am now, and I don’t regret that, but it is something that I always tell people when they’re going through the diagnosis. It was like, prepare to grieve, prepare to be mad that it wasn’t sooner.
SS:
Yeah, absolutely, is the autism diagnosis like, more recent than the ADHD diagnosis?
DM:
Yeah, funny enough, it was about this time last year, we started looking at it for Jer, my husband, and we talk about it a lot in our new tour, because one of the things was, I said to him, I was like, you know, like, I think it’s time we start looking at some things for you. And so I started taking the tests for jer this time, and it was around question seven on this one test, and I go, “Well, what the fuck does that have to do with autism?”, like thinking about myself and being like, Nah, no. And so I switched to a new test, and question 10, I was like, “Well, no, no, that’s that’s ADHD.” And like, “no, that’s not anything. That’s just how people live” and through that Jar was like, I think we both might need to, like, Look at this. And so I’m still very much, you know, like, I think a lot of it was when I started taking medication for ADHD. It really heightened my sensory issues, because the noise was gone from my brain that I could really realize, oh, like, this isn’t just an ADHD thing. Like, there’s more going on in my brain. And through that, found out, yeah, like, I got a little touch of the ’tism.
SS:
Welcome to the world of uniquely gifted and often misunderstood.
DM:
Amen.
SS:
Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting. So one of the other questions I had was, you know, what did the diagnosis do for you, and did it help? Like, you already kind of alluded to how it changed your outlook on things and gave you permission.
DM:
Yeah, you know, like, I think it gave me insight more than anything. Like, it gave me a — and through our success online, it gave us a community to learn from. And you know, like we we always joke. We have these pop quiz for my stoner husband videos that are pretty popular, but really, when you start like, when you remove the stoner part from it, you start to see like, this has got nothing to do with weed and everything to do with ADHD. And it was really through the comment section that we started to flag other parts of my ADHD that were we always kind of put off as me just being a stoner. And it was like, no, actually, like, That’s just you being completely overwhelmed. So, yeah, it’s, I think it’s been, it’s been an awesome experience to to just learn about myself and kind of find you know like you have to work hard to find the tools.
SS:
Yeah, absolutely. Do you think having a career that involves you sharing so much of yourself helps more than it hurts your career?
DM:
Yeah, here’s the thing, if you watch my stuff before my diagnosis, it’s not me, it’s a character you know, like. Very much this bravado that I had on stage, this wall to protect myself. And I think, you know, like you saw our live show, we’re pretty raw, like we’re pretty honest in that show, and wait until the next one. But you know, like, I think it’s definitely I’ve found freedom in not putting on airs anymore and just being like, Hey, listen, if you don’t get my vibe, you don’t have to be here. But this is what I’m putting out in the world, you know, I think there are times in the last 12 months that we’ve really struggled with our you know, like, opening up your life to people the way we have has been really great until jer got sick this year, and then we really went, Oh, fuck. Like, how do we navigate this while still maintaining privacy? You know, like, because, without jumping the the lily here, like you know, we were supposed to be on tour last January for our second show, and chair got diagnosed with with cancer, and we didn’t want to just put out that statement. Going due to unforeseen circumstances, the tour is postponed for next year because we owe it to our audience. We know that we’ve, we’ve created this mess, so we had to be public about it. And then it’s just like, trying to find that fine line of like, you know, like we try not to post a ton about jair’s process or anything, because we really are trying to, like, protect ourselves a little bit more, but at the same time, sometimes something hilarious happens and we’re like, Okay, well, that that’s definitely shareable. So it’s, yeah, it’s that constant, like, Battle of what is available for you to share with the world, and what are you going to hold back? And when it comes to ADHD and, like mental mental health, we really do try to lean more towards the positive side, because we all know how fucking terrible it is. I, you know, like, no one needs to see those videos of me being shut down for three days because I’m overloaded and I can’t actually get off the couch and I’m stuck in the sit pit. Like, that’s not content. That’s helping people, you know, like, that’s just other than it’s relatable, for sure, but we, I always just say to Jer, whenever we go to post something, is it joyful? Is it hopeful? Is it funny, or is it informative? Like, that’s, that’s all we care about.
SS:
Yeah, it’s interesting, because I kind of operate the other way. So for me, like being a psychotherapist, when I have clients who say, like, I’m having difficult, difficulty getting out of bed, like, I’ll share with them the time where, like, you know, when you talk about the sit pit, right, like days in bed, yeah, right. And the highs will get us high, and the lows will sink us.
DM:
It’s, it’s a tricky one, because, you know, like, we want people to know that those things are normal, and we’ll allude to them, but we also know what our job is. When people are when people are coming to watch our content, it’s because they’re already in the sit pit, and they need to be pulled out, and they need to, they need to be reminded, like, there’s joy outside of this little machine that we’re all so fucking addicted to.
SS:
Well, I can tell you from personal experience, like when I came to see you and Jar, I was in that funk, like I was recovering through burnout, and you guys did help me. You didn’t know it. It’s always an ingredient, you know, like a recipe of ingredients that that helps, right? And for sure, guys were definitely one of the things. I just got goosebumps were definitely one of the experiences for me that helped pull me out. For sure,
DM:
I’m glad, you know, like, it’s something magical when you’re in a room full of 1000 people that are all of the the same mind, you know, like, I think my favorite part of that tour was having people with ADHD stand up. Because it was always like, 60, 70% of the audience would stand up, and they’d look around each other. And it was, it wasn’t even the joy it brought me. It was seeing the joy it brought everybody else in the theater to be like, okay, like, welcome home. You know, we found our safe space. Like, it’s like, musical theater kids finding other musical theater kids. It’s like, oh my god, I can be myself one day more.
SS:
When, when you were referring to, like, the bravado that you would put out, like that different personality, when you reflect back, would you see that now? Would you consider that masking now?
DM:
Oh, yeah, I would. And I think it was, it’s different, you know, like you got to think when I was first starting to tour comedy in in small towns in Canada, and talking about my husband and stuff, like, back in the day, and like, you know, 20 years ago, I’d be in Medicine Hat doing 10 or 15 minutes of stoner joke. And then I’d ease into this gay lifestyle stuff. So I think I learned early on that masking in I think I learned when I was five years old and had to be, you know, like, hold back my gayness. Like, I think when you’re queer, when you’re ADHD, like, neurodivergent and queer, you learn masking is not just to save yourself from awkward conversations. Sometimes it’s literally to save your life. And so for me, I felt like for the longest time on stage, I would have to put on this tougher masculine persona to enable straight people to enjoy my comedy, and you know now I just don’t give a fuck, you know, like, if I’m too gay for you, that’s on you. Like, my favorite thing lately, like Jar. I don’t think he’s posted it yet, but he filmed me the other day. Someone left a nasty comment, and we normally ignore them, but he was like, Oh, this person’s got a complaint for you. And I was like, Oh, well, then they can just call me and talk to me about it. And Jar is like, well, they don’t have your number. And I was like, exactly, and that’s not mine. Yeah, you got a problem with me. Give me a call anytime. Oh, you don’t have my number, then you don’t have a problem with me. You have a problem for yourself.
SS:
Yeah, put in the non existent suggestion box.
DM:
Exactly, yeah, yeah, I don’t. I definitely learned, Learned to Stop giving zero fucks on people’s opinions. Yeah, it comes easier with success. I will say.
SS:
Absolutely, yeah. So you’ve been really open about, you know, your cannabis use and psilocybin. I’m curious to know, because we haven’t talked about this on Different Brains before, what it does for you as someone with ADHD, and I’m also curious if you’re open answering. You know, is it more CBD? THC? You know what, if you’re open to talking about what kind of stuff?
DM:
I’ll talk about drugs all day long, I have a really, I like to think I have a really healthy relationship with drugs, and it took me a long time to find that that thing about 15 years ago, I started what I called the Oprah rule, and that was I wasn’t allowed to smoke or ingest weed until Oprah came on, which was at the time four o’clock. And I was like, That is a reasonable hour to smoke a little weed, because I’ve gotten because, I will say, ADHD and weed, it’s different for everybody. For me, I am not productive when I am when I’m stoned, I can’t be create, I can’t write, I can’t do emails, I can’t create content or any of that stuff. If I’m stoned, I’d never perform stoned. That was something I started super early on in my career, because I just knew, however, weed is a beauty for shutting my brain down. And I need that. I need that recharge. I need that time you can’t escape your brain. I’m always amazed. I’ll ask chairs like, what are you thinking about? And he’ll be like, nothing, and I’m and I’m just like, What do you mean? Nothing like I have 47 thoughts going on in my brain right now while I’m having this conversation, like, what is that? What is that like? And so I learned when it came to weed and pots, was that it is my it gives me my calm space to just kind of digest my day. And so my favorite time of day is usually like, now that Oprah is not on, I just, you know, decide when Oprah would be on in this day, but like, I like to smoke a joint while I’m cooking dinner, I’ll have a little edible I really CBN is a big part of my nighttime routine. I’m sure you’re aware sleep is really hard for people with ADHD, so I do, I do a little combo of melatonin and CBN and THC about an hour before bed to really help me get into the La la zone. And then Now, mind you. You know, I’m not saying there aren’t days where I wake up and go, we got fuck all the do today. Let’s get stoned and see where the truth takes me. I have a golden retriever, and I live by the water, so you know, some days it’s just gonna be let’s go frolic in the ocean and and feel some joy. But I think the thing that really changed everything for me was psilocybin. I watched this YouTube thing around the same time as the Bruce McCullough conversation. And I’m not the greatest with memory, so it could have been a little before then, but I watched this, this doctor talk about the success they were seeing over in I want to say it was Norway. At the time with psilocybin, and they were showing how they were using people with depression, and they were doing brain scans of them before psilocybin introduction and post psilocybin introduction. And specifically, I’d never heard the term microdose before. I was like, What is this? I’ve only ever done mushrooms as a macro dose, you know, like, just get me completely fucked up. Let’s rock and roll and in. In this while I was watching this video, I was like, wow, I haven’t actually done mushrooms in years, because it would give me anxiety when I would take, you know, if I took two grams in a tea, and I’d enjoy it for 10 minutes, and then I would have anxiety trying to come out of the high for four hours. And so it was like, I’m gonna, I’m gonna try this micro dose thing, like, I’m just gonna buy some mushrooms from friends. And so I did, and I would just, I had a little scale, and I would weigh out, like, point one, five of a gram. And it was instant, like, instantaneously. I was like, Oh, I get it. Like, this actually is a little bit of a reset for the depression, the darkness, the noise I, you know, like, I, I definitely was going through some hard times around then with a friend of mine being very sick from cancer, and I was trying to find my own joy. I was definitely done with stand up at the time. And so I would start, I’d start microdosing, like once every couple days. Now, it’s like, I dose, I dose maybe once a week i And that’s like a day off day for me, like, I’ll be like, I’m gonna take a dose and go into the woods and hike with the dog for a couple hours and just disconnect. I don’t take my phone. And I really just treat it as, like, I love feeling the lift of it. You know, the colors look a little brighter, the smells smell a little smellier, but I find it stays with me for days afterwards, just that, like peacefulness. And you know, that was the hardest part of our tour last time, when we were doing the No refunds tour was we were all over the world, and so I realized it was like, wow. Like, it’s been three weeks since I’ve been able to take a dose, and I am feeling the effect of that more than you know, like I can go days without taking five ants for ADHD and completely forget the irony of that being a control substance. But yeah, the psilocybin, I always like to tell people this story. I don’t know if I’ve ever told it publicly, but I got so into it that I decided I was going to pill my own. This is before pills were available. And so I bought a pound of mushrooms and I got a grinder. I got a pilling machine. This is before covid. But so Jerry’s working. I my friend Ashley had passed away, and I was like, I’m taking six months off to figure out my life. And like, I think day three of that was, I’m gonna make mushroom pills. And so I go up into my office, completely naive and so stupid, I grind up a pound of mushrooms, which is a ton…
SS:
Yeah, I’m trying to picture this in my head, it’s a lot.
DM:
It’s a lot like, it ends up being…
SS:
It had to be like, a huge brick, right?
DM:
It was a brick, and it ended up being like 3500 pills when it was all said and done. But the thing I did is I didn’t wear a mask, and I didn’t wear gloves, and I had all these, like, ground up — I inhaled this for five hours while I was pilling. I have never, never been close to religious until this day, but I met God, and we had a great time, because I was so high from touching it and from inhaling it, my poor cat, at the time, was just completely fucked for like three days, Jared came home from work, and I was just curled up in the bathtub with a duvet, just cry laughing. And he and he didn’t even, like, ask what happened. He was just like, Okay, I’m gonna, I’m gonna leave you to this, and we’ll talk about it tomorrow. And I was like, all right, buddy. But yeah, it was one of those things where I was like, this is working for me. I need to find a way to continue to make it work. And so I was pilling mushrooms and handing them out to friends like it was Halloween, like you got to try this. It’s great. And now it’s everywhere. I don’t know if it is for you guys, but out west, like there’s mushroom dispensaries in stores all over the place.
SS:
It’s not, we have it. It’s not mainstream yet, but on our First Nations reservations, they’re able to solve things that, yeah, other private businesses couldn’t, because it’s government run, yeah, but so they do, but it’s not, not a huge. Selection, but it is available, yeah.
DM:
And, you know, like, I think it’s gonna be like, how, you know, 10 years ago, weed was just weed, and now, what do you you know? And I think mushrooms are slow. People are slowly realizing that there’s so many different types and stuff. And, you know, like, if there’s anything that we should continue to learn from is the First Nations cultures know how to cultivate things that the land gives us to make us feel better. And mushrooms has been they’ve been around for longer than Molly and and there’s a reason for it. Like It, it helps.
SS:
Absolutely, yeah, and it’s not talked about a lot, so I’m really glad that that you did, because it, it kind of get, like, if people microdose and they do it correctly, it gives you, like, this melanchol and melancholy feeling, right? It’s kind of like, things are okay.
DM:
Yeah, it’s, it’s a warm hug. And I talk about it with my doctors very openly, like they, I took them study after study to be like, this is showing because, you know, like, there are days where I’m like, maybe I should be on an antidepressant, as well as vivants for my ADHD, and then I’m like, No, it just means I need a dose. You know, like, they, they’re seeing these, the with people with mania, manic depression, PTSD, the when they’re doing these brain scans, pre dosage, and then post dosage, they are seeing parts of the brain that were completely dormant during these depressive states activate again and they and then after the dose, they stay active for weeks or months or even years, like some people just need one macro treatment and they’re they’re fine. So I always say to people in like, don’t you know? Like everyone’s journey is their own. I’m not here to say, Hey, everybody, go take mushrooms, but I am going to say that when I embraced it, I found a happier life.
SS:
I think it’s a good message to share. Can you tell us about the tour you and your husband Jar have coming up for 2026?
DM:
Yeah, it’s called “Average at Best,” although I, I wish we could change it to not dead yet. This one is definitely this one’s definitely going to be a little more closer to home for Jerry and I, we originally took it as like it was written last year, as a celebration of the average life, and something that Jared and I have really learned over the last five years with our success is how much we yearn for simplicity. You know, like we could very much be living in LA and doing all the stupid things that, you know, like people with our success are doing. And we, we learned quickly that that was not the life for us and that we wanted, you know, like we moved away from Vancouver. We live on Vancouver Island. Now we have a little half acre of an orchard, and, you know, like half the time we’re in our pajamas, most of the year when we’re home, because we we really learned like that, hey, man, like average is best. Like it is the it’s and I think sometimes people forget, we get so caught up in this forward motion of like, you got to get the nicest car, you got to have the best house, you got to have money in the bank. And it’s like fucking none of that matters. If we’ve learned anything in the last year with everyone around me trying to die, is that none of it fucking matters. You are not laying on your deathbed thinking about the Range Rover that you could have had. You know, like you’re you’re thinking about those moments of like, looking across at your partner and watching them burst out laughing because they felt joy in a moment. I and so I think it was we really just want to set out to remind people that, like, you probably already have what you want, you know, like, and that’s that’s okay, like it, like we said for years, I spent 20 years chasing this dream in comedy, and in that time, it took me 20 years to realize I was actually leaving behind what I what the dream was, which was my daughter and my husband and so for me now it’s just about time time together. It sucks because jer will be in treatment during the the tour. We were really hoping that he would be, you know, like that, we’d be celebrating a cancer free chair on the road. It’s not the case, but he has been given clearance to tour, and so we’ll be touring for like, six weeks. We’ll go home for a few weeks where he’ll get treatment, and then we’ll have have another round of, round of tour. And I, trust me, you know how much I hate working. I want, I don’t want to go. And it’s Jared. He really is the one that’s like, we’re doing this. Like, I he needs it. I think he, yeah, he needs the joy right now.
SS:
Sure. Yeah. Well. I know, like for my wife and I following you guys on Tiktok. You know, we’re not religious people, but we’ve been sending positive vibes your way.
DM:
Appreciate it. Yeah, we’re, we’re pretty spoiled that way. Like we, we, we see people all the time, and it’s just like, anytime we see someone, they’re just wanting the best for Jared and and for my mom, you know, like my mom’s been, she was the one that got sick first last year, and she’s on, my god, she just had her 11th month of chemo, and is just this fucking warrior. But it’s such a weird it’s that weird just a position, like, I remember walking home from my mom’s hospital. I was walking from her hospital to jairs Hospital, of course, because they couldn’t be at the same one, and I was just sobbing, just like crying uncontrollably at how much my world imploded in a matter of you know, mom got sick, and within seven days of mum getting sick, Jer was sick, and I was just and that was, well, we were supposed to be leaving for this second world tour. My book was finished. We were doing, like, everything was supposed to be incredible, and it’s imploding. And I was walking across the cambie Street Bridge in Vancouver, and a fan recognized me, and like, I had sunglasses on so they couldn’t see that I was crying, and they were just so excited at how happy I had made them, that in that moment of, oh, I want to fucking jump off this bridge to get out of this interaction, I was reminded that, hey, you exist to help pull me out of this as well. So it’s, yeah, it’s it’ll be good for I think it’ll be good for Jared and I to get out there and just be reminded that, you know, beyond the likes and comments and stupid shit on our phones like there’s real humans behind the joy that we’re trying to celebrate.
SS:
Absolutely, is there anything that you do that’s like kind of major to prepare for a tour this size?
DM:
Yeah, we I take a lot of time to recharge because it’s socially, like I think we were saying before we started recording. Like, my days on the road, especially this time around, like we’ll get to a city at 10am at noon, I’ll be at a book signing at three o’clock. We’ll be doing VIP meet and greets at five o’clock. We’ll be doing other meet and greets. Seven o’clock, we’re on stage. 11 o’clock, we’re done, but we’re doing the meet and greets for all the ADHDers that showed up late and forgot. And then we’re getting on and then we get on the bus and we do it all again the next day. And so for me, Jared and the team knows, like the week leading up to the tour, I’m not going to talk a lot. I’m really going to be Lego has become my my safe space like nothing, nothing brings me more peace than sitting and building a Lego with a TV show on and my headphones in and noise cancel out. And so that’s, that’s what I’ll be. I’ve been doing it this week even. I’m building the Titanic right now. It’s very exciting, much to my team chagrin, because I have a ton of deadlines that I’m trying to reach right now. And I’m like, No, I need to just, you know, I think if I’ve learned anything about my mental health is that for every five minutes that I put out energy, it takes 10 for me to recharge that I am before I would burn out really fast. And so now it’s like, how can we stop the burnout? Because you know, you’re going to see us on night three of our tour, and you deserve the same energy that the person that’s seeing me on night 40 of our tour deserves. And so for me, it’s like, how can I make that sure? Make sure that these people are getting their money’s worth, and I’m not going insane. And so, you know, from 11pm to 11am I won’t speak.
SS:
vMakes sense, gotta save your voice and your energy.
DM:
yeah, and it’s just, it’s more like the the emotional energy that I’m just like, I just need to find, find peace, and it’ll probably be with a giant gummy.
SS:
Can you tell us about your book, “Attention Seeker: neurodivergent comedians guide to thriving with ADHD”?
DM:
Yeah, you know this one is, I think it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever created. I’m not gonna lie like I am. I try to be a humble Canadian most of the time. This was four years of dedicated hard work, because when the publishers asked me to write this book, I was like, There’s no way I can write a book. I haven’t been able to read a book in 20 years. How am I going to write a book? And that was the the catalyst where I was like, Wait, that means people just like me can’t read books. So how can I write a book for them and me? Um. And so I really wanted to create a book that was, ha, it’s, it’s a memoir, for sure. It’s looking back on my life now that I have the diagnosis and going, how could I have lived this scenario differently? And it gives tips and tricks for people you know, like you might not find this story relatable, but here’s a situation I think there’s a lot of like, I talk a lot about rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria, and how I didn’t realize how many relationships I had ruined in my life because of it, because of creating these scenarios in my head. And so I give an example. One chapter is an example about that, and then it follows up with here are the signs that you can put into your everyday use. So it is, I really stress that it’s a self help book for the author only, however you might find some helpful things. And I also wrote it with an homage to my favorite books growing up, which was Choose Your Own Adventure, which is an ADHD kid’s dream. So the every chapter ends with a choose your own distraction. So you can read the book traditionally, or you can read it by jumping chapters around and stuff. So it’s really, I try to celebrate the good side of ADHD, but I very much also talk about the bad sides a little more. It’s just such a different medium for what I’m used to that like to get, you know, like, I just finished recording the audio book. I think it’s 10 hours long, and it’s like, well, when have I ever had 10 hours of anyone’s attention to talk about this shit?
SS:
Yeah, well, and congratulations. Like, I know that people are pre ordering, but it’s already number one on Amazon’s pre order list. Is it not?
DM:
Yeah. It was like, yeah. It blew up pretty fast, which is terrifying, but also exciting, because it doesn’t come out for January 27 is when it comes out, but you have this three month window of pre orders that the publishers are just like, down your neck being like, you haven’t mentioned your book and videos in 24 hours, and it’s like, oh my god, yeah, it’s not even available yet. Like, my people want to buy things now and get it now. So yeah, it I’m excited. I hope people dig it. It’s very vulnerable at times, and that’s terrifying for me to just be real with the audience. Because, you know, even though I don’t have the bravado, I’m still I decide what gets shown out in the world. And this one is very much. Here’s the story. Like, you want to know how I met Jerry, you want to know how we almost got divorced 10 years in? Like, dive in. Like, it’s not all rainbows and butterflies, but hopefully the jokes are good enough that you want to read the next chapter. Yeah.
SS:
Oh, you didn’t finish the line. “It’s not rainbows and butterflies, it’s compromise that moves us along.”
DM:
Oh, hey, I didn’t know that.
SS:
Maroon 5.
DM:
Oh, right, hilarious. Yeah, I always say rainbows and butterflies, because anytime chair says he’s not thinking about anything. I just pictured that in his brain, but I didn’t realize I was maybe half referencing a Maroon 5 song. How ADHD of me to only know half of a lyric.
SS:
I know the book’s not out yet. Are there any tips from the book that you might want to share with our listeners?
DM:
Yeah, I think just, I’ll stick with the RSD stuff for now. I think the thing that I will always tell people when they’re making up conversations in their head about a relationship scenario is you have to bring facts to the table. What are the facts? You know, like, had you rescheduled this meeting with me, or even canceled this meeting with me? There are so many ways RSD can take over that scenario where, oh, you’re not relevant anymore. Darcy, like, Oh, you don’t actually know what you’re talking about, or they don’t actually think you’re funny. Like, there’s all these things. What are the facts? The facts are, Sean was unable to make today’s meeting exhale. That’s all you know, and that’s all you might ever know, and that’s okay, but allowing yourself to fill in the blanks is where your overactive brain is actually being detrimental to your mental health and to your relationships. I had, you know, like a people don’t talk about losing friendships a lot. We talk about breakups all the time with with, like intimate partners. But, you know, I had a best friend that we had a huge falling out six years ago, and I we’ve never spoken since, and I mourn losing him all the time because of now knowing I did it, it was me, like it was my RSD, that put us in this position where he couldn’t he couldn’t win anymore. I. And it blew my mind when I learned about it, because I was like, wow. Like, how many other friendships have I had over the years that I have let go of or had falling out? So I really started to look back at it and go, Wow, I turns out I am the asshole. Like, turns out I am the problem sometimes, and so I just, I urge anyone that finds themselves in those spiraling moments to get a pen and paper and write down the actual facts that you know of in this situation and stare at them, because you’ll be gobsmacked at how much your brain fills in the blank,
SS:
Absolutely, yeah. I try to get people to, like, stop thinking about the what ifs and let’s focus on the what is, yeah.
DM:
No, that’s literally what what I say. Because I’m like, you’re, you know, a lot of the time we’re having What’s that anxiety? Is fear of tomorrow, a lot of the time, and it’s like, well, you know, tomorrow’s tomorrow. Like you can’t, you can’t control that. You can control right now. And if you know what you’re what you’re panicking, panicking about in regards to a relationship, like, sometimes the facts suck, and that’s okay, too, where you’re like, No, actually, Sean said that you’re not funny, and he doesn’t want to do the show with you, and it’s like, oh, okay, I’ll work through that in therapy next week, at least. Now I know, but it’s when you don’t know that you’re just creating. Like, I always get out of the shower and tell Jerry I won four out of five arguments in my head today, so I’m doing pretty good. And it is like, I know so many people that are neurodivergent that have those full on conversations in their head to the point that they’ve convinced themselves Absolutely it’s almost real, it’s tangible, and it’s like none of it’s real, dude, chill out.
SS:
Yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s wild. How you know something so small can occupy so much space in our mind and just steal our mental energy,
DM:
For sure. Yeah, it we, you know, like we are. As RuPaul says, our self saboteur is the most active part of our brain all the time. And between that and what’s the Oh, my God, I’m gonna forget the word, and it’s going to drive me nuts. It’s so fucking ADHD imposter syndrome. Imposter Syndrome something that I suffer from a lot, and it’s something that I have to like constantly remind myself that everybody has it. There isn’t a single person that isn’t, you know, unless they’re sociopath, they’re questioning their value in their position. And, you know, like, like, I’m an author. Now, what? Like, that’s not true. And it’s like, no, it is. You wrote a book. You’re an author. Welcome. That’s all it takes.
SS:
Best selling author.
DM:
Let’s see, the only thing that matters is New York Times bestseller, apparently. So, yeah, we’ll see. And if I don’t, I don’t, that’s the other thing that I’ve come to learn. Is like, okay, so I’m not the number, you know, in the top 100 books around the world, that’s doesn’t mean it’s not a success. All I care about is the people that spend their hard earned money, especially in today’s financial climate, feel like they got something out of it.
SS:
Absolutely. How does Jer help you with your ADHD and autism? Like, how does he help level you out?
DM:
Oh, not to reference the book again, but there’s a really beautiful thing that when I talk about meeting jer for the first time and learning that other people’s energy just take they meld with yours so beautifully. Jer is the calm to my storm. You know? He is the he is the he is the force that when he sits next to me, I just feel my heart rate lower, and I can breathe and the noise is kind of quiet. He’s really good a he’s really good at knowing my triggers so and that takes, you know, we’ve been together 24 years, so, you know, and especially, we’ve learned more in the last five years about triggers and stuff. But he makes sure I’m fed. He makes sure that I am hydrated, especially during hyper fixations, you know, like when I was writing the book. The irony was, yeah, I would be writing for 11 hours a day, sometimes when I was really in the thing, and all of a sudden, as I’m writing, I’d look over and there’d be three different drinks beside me and a sandwich, because he doesn’t know what I’m do I want hot? Do I want cold? Do I want sweet? He doesn’t know, so he’s like, here’s the three options for your beverages, and here’s some fucking food, please. Z. So he’s really good at, like that part of just knowing my creative side needs to flow, but also I need to function as a human being still and and he’s also he can just read when I need to be quiet, you know, like when last night, our daughter’s staying with us right now for a visit, and I’ve just been, I’ve been filming this other TV show and working on the new live show, and just the ton of deadlines with the tour and stuff. And he knew that I just needed a Lego night. And so the two of them went off to the guest room and watched a movie, and the Lego was all like, set up ready for me, and it was just like, it’s just so nice when someone gets it, when someone just goes, Okay, he’s gonna burn out if he doesn’t. And sometimes, you know what it’s like when you’re just caught in that rhythm of like, just go until you completely collapse. So he’s just really good at making sure. At the end of the day, the motherfuckers just making sure I’m paying his bills so he knows that I’m no good to him if I’m burnt out, you know. So he’s just trying to, he’s trying to make sure. He’s like, Yeah, I’ll make him a sandwich so I can keep playing video games and not worry about about it. But it’s been a, you know, like this year, our roles have reversed a ton. Like, not only am I the corporate stooge, but like, I’ve had, I’m caring for him a lot. And the the irony was, like finishing the book last year before we went on tour, made I had a entire book of tools to help me take care of Jer. Which was, which I was really, I was really lucky for because, you know, he took care of me for 23 years in this year it’s been, it’s been really reversed and and so far, I haven’t fucked it up too much. I only I took my mom. I took my mom to the wrong hospital one day and left her at jair’s Hospital and and that was other than that, I’ve been pretty on the ball, because there’s one day I had my dad was having surgery, Jer was having treatment, and my mom was having treatment, all at three different hospitals, and I had two Golden Retrievers with me, and I was like, we’re gonna get this done. And we all got in the cancer mobile, and I got everyone to where they needed to be on time, and everyone was picked up. And I was like, All right, we’re we’re just fucking doing it.
SS:
Yeah, that’s incredible.
DM:
It’s been a weird year.
SS:
Yeah. Is there any advice you would give to, you know, autistic ADHD, budding comedians that are just trying to get started?
DM:
Oh, don’t do it. [laughs] You know, like, it’s a really hard job because you it’s instant gratification and it’s also instant rejection. I and I, I, you know, like, I’m glad I didn’t know about my ADHD when I first started, because I was just too stupid and just kept plowing through. But it is really hard to constantly be rejected. I am that is something that you have to you, got to find the tool that works for you to get past that. Unfortunately for me, for the longest time, that tool was food, and it took me a long time to really clock that and find a healthier pattern to deal with the rejection of a bad show or even a bad joke. I auditioned for 200 roles a year, probably, and maybe book one, and that’s still like the game I’m playing. Even with the success we have, I’m still getting rejected every day for something. And so you really have to get a little bit of thick skin, but also just try. Just try the thing. Try the thing. Who fucking cares? Zoom out on Google Earth anytime you feel like you aren’t worthy to be here. Because none of us are worthy. This fucking world is huge. We are tiny, little specks of dust in the universe. If one of those specks of dust is just wants to Yap for a bit, let it Yap, you know, like it Life’s too short. Just, just try the thing, and if the thing makes you happy, keep doing the thing. Unless that thing is heroin, then I don’t recommend it. But, you know, try micro dosing. But I think for me, the thing that I that like when it comes to tangible advice, for a comedian, record every set and listen to the set every night after the show to get the real because when you’re up there you go, Oh, yeah, I crushed. I got two big laughs. Yeah, you got two big laughs over 12 minutes. That means there were 11 and a half minutes where people weren’t laughing. Thing, why not find that hole and fill it? I would drive home from shows in Vancouver. We lived about an hour outside the city, in Ladner, and I would drive home and listen to my seven minute set on repeat to be like, Where can it get better? Where you know? And it really helped me go, okay. My laughs per minute ratio needs to be five, and right now it’s one. How can I get? Where’s where can I get? How can I tell a story while still making people laugh? Yeah, and a lot of the time, great advice. A lot of the time, I write the story without the jokes. So I’m like, What are the facts of the story? And then find the jokes afterwards.
SS:
Yeah, I think it’s great suggestion. For people who are looking to find you online, where can they learn more about your work?
DM:
just type in Darcy anywhere. Darcyandjar.com is kind of like the home landing but if I think if you just type in Darcy on any platform, it’ll probably take you to my bullshit.
SS:
I agree. I was Googling you earlier. Super easy to find on every platform.
DM:
It’s terrifying. I can’t wait. I can’t wait to retire and delete it all.
SS:
Darcy, thank you so much for being our guest today. Thank you again. Keep up the great work, and look forward to seeing your next show.
DM:
Thanks buddy and you too. Keep up the great work. This is good stuff you’re doing.