Sam Thompson says a recent health scare left him feeling like he was on death’s door after he was rushed to medics, and the 33-year-old has linked the episode to burnout from his ADHD.
Thompson said the fear hit hard because it felt familiar. He said that a couple of years ago he believed he was dying, with the panic sending him back and forth to doctors for scans and tests while he tried to make sense of what was happening. “I spiral all the time… I don’t think I talk about that enough. Burnout is always going to be a part of my life — it doesn’t fully go away,” he said. “I could do a bad interview and think, ‘What have I done?’ and turn it into something really negative — and not be able to get myself out of that hole.”
The health scare lands now because Thompson is speaking more openly about the way his mind and body interact, and because the issue is no longer just about one frightening episode. In 2024, he opened up about his autism diagnosis in an Instagram post, and he has also described the childhood anxiety that came with struggling at school before neurodiversity was widely understood. He told The Mirror in 2024 that he cried into his textbook because the words would not go in, tried coloured pens and post-it notes, and still could not make the lessons stick.
That earlier account gives the latest scare more weight. Thompson said, “When I had it a couple of years ago, I thought I was dying. I was going to the doctor for everything, scans everywhere… I genuinely felt like I was on death’s door.” He also said he knows the warning signs now: “I know how it feels just before it happens… I can tell a couple of days beforehand when it’s really going to hit.” That makes the episode less like a one-off collapse than a condition he is learning to recognise, even if he says it never fully goes away.
There is also a sharper tension running through his account. Thompson has built a public image around honesty and self-awareness, but he says the same pressure that helps him connect with people can also drag him down. He said that when he was younger, anxiety came with the struggle to focus, and that he would slam his hand down in frustration because he could not understand why he was having such a hard time. The teachers, he said, were lovely, but he grew up “from an era where it was just before people started understanding neurodiversity.”
That background matters because Thompson is set to release a children’s book titled You, Me and ADHD, putting his own experience into a form aimed at younger readers. The timing means the latest health scare is not just another personal disclosure; it is part of a larger story about how he explains his conditions in public and why he keeps returning to them. For Thompson, the answer is already clear. The fear was real, the burnout was real, and he says he has learned to read the signs before it happens again.
