While many people fear public speaking, stand-up comic Drew Lynch has become a success on stage, despite living with a serious speech impediment.
Lynch told Fox News Digital he owes his comedy career to his stutter, calling it a "gift" that helped him find his path and build an authentic connection with audiences.
"Stuttering has taught me so much about myself in perspective, both in personal and professional endeavors, that it really was something I thought was a curse, but it ended up being a gift," he said.
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Some may remember the 34-year-old comedian from his standout run on "America’s Got Talent" in 2015, where he finished second despite a near-debilitating stutter.
During the show, Lynch leaned into his stutter, making it part of his act and winning over both the audience and the judges.
In his first audition, stand-up comic and show judge Howie Mandel hit the Golden Buzzer, sending Lynch past the opening rounds and into the most competitive stages of the show.
Since finishing as runner-up, Lynch has built a thriving stand-up career, amassing about 9 million followers across social media platforms. He has released several specials, including his latest, "The Stuttering Comedian," which debuted earlier this summer.
Lynch told Fox News Digital the special gives audiences a personal look at the stutter and the struggles that shaped his career.
"And it's just nice to have all of these answers to questions people might have, the history of the injury or how it happened, how I ended up stuttering, because I got it when I was an adult. Most people who stutter, they have it since childhood, or it's neurological, it's hereditary. And so, it was just nice to be able to put it all in one place."
In one joke, he quipped, "For a long time, a lot of people, they called me the stuttering comedian. And that’s because, for over 10 years, I had a really bad publicist."
"But I also had a really bad stutter," he added.
Lynch noted the irony of the title, saying, "I don't stutter that much anymore." Viewers who watch his latest special and compare it to his delivery during "America’s Got Talent" might think he has overcome it completely.
"Over the years, as I've just, you know, I've done a lot of rehabilitation, speech therapy, physical therapy," he said. "I've seen like, just so many medical professionals to try to improve it because I just didn't want it to be this thing that wore me down. I didn't want it to be a thing that was such a definition of my life."
Lynch said he developed the stutter after a softball accident as a young adult.
"It was just a freak accident where a grounder took a bad hop," he told Fox News Digital.
"It hit me in my throat, which you would think would be like, ‘Oh man, that's bad, and that's not enough to do some damage.’ But when I fell back, I hit my head on the ground," he said, noting the impact caused a concussion, though he didn’t find out until it was too late.
The next day, after his roommate noticed something was wrong, Lynch went to the hospital. Doctors ran tests and found he had suffered "a vocal contusion with a significant concussion," he said.
Doctors initially told Lynch he would fully recover. But after months with little improvement, another doctor gave him bad news.
"We saw a neurologist sometime later who said, ‘Yeah, you never properly healed your brain. You had bruising on your brain that you just never healed… You experienced a traumatic brain injury and you never healed it properly.’"
The diagnosis upended Lynch’s life. He could no longer speak normally, and it also ended the acting career he had been pursuing for years.
"So, when the injury happened and I had every rep that was at the time representing me, express that they didn't want to work with me anymore until I got better," he told Fox News Digital, though he said he understood why.
"It sounds harsh, but it's also like, okay, well how are you going to send an actor into a room where they're stuttering and they can't – they have no control over their motor skills on the left side of their body?’"
Lynch said that early on he held out hope for recovery.
"But when that didn’t happen, that was when it became like panic city," he said.
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In that dark period, a friend urged Lynch to get onstage at a comedy club and share his struggles during an open mic night. That decision helped him discover his true calling.
"I think it happened when I had a friend tell me – this was before I ever went on stage after my injury – and he said, I think that you need to talk about it. And I think you need to talk about it on stage. And I did it at an open mic, and it didn't – and the jokes were not good jokes."
Although the jokes fell flat, Lynch felt a real connection with the audience.
"There was just this feeling of empathy in the room, because comedians –– we're all suffering from something," he said. "There's something that we're either hiding from or running towards because of whatever outcast we feel. Whatever is absent from our own feelings of self-worth, that's what we're kind of here for."
"I just felt really connected to people again for a moment," he said, adding that he decided then and there to give it a shot.
"And then when that happened, I was like, 'All right, I guess I'm going to try to understand the science of it.'"
When asked if he would trade his current life for one without a stutter and a high-profile acting career, Lynch said he doesn’t think he would.
"Oh, man, I don't know that I would trade this because I learned so much about the art and I learned much about myself. I did everything I could to get where I am now and I just mean, like even in the recovery of my injury, just what I've had to do to get here. So, I don't know that would ever trade that."