6 Years 349 days - Ask Boyle

6 Years 349 days - Ask Boyle

How do individuals turn their lives around after addiction? Here, comedian David Boyle, host of "I'm Quitting Alcohol", riffs his way through nearly seven years sober while wrestling with another label: ADHD and possible autism. Across this short, loose, and very sweary Monday instalment, you'll hear Boyle reacting to listeners who call his more serious episodes "boring".

He jokes about how hard it is to compete with viral clips of people hitting golf balls at each other, while trying to talk about things like economic systems and the cost of groceries. As he puts it, "If it's boring, it doesn't even fucking touch the sides. It just disappears into the ether.

That's pretty ADHD, I reckon." The real focus this time comes from a message sent in by Benny Eastwood, a 41‑year‑old social worker from Wellington who works with homeless people and is getting assessed because he is "very sure" he's ADHD and on the spectrum. Benny asks Boyle to try some credible online ADHD/autism screening tools and share his results. Boyle leans into the request with his usual mix of blunt honesty and absurd humour.

He jokes about becoming "the disabled comedian" if he scores high for autism, questions how freely labels like ADHD and autism are handed out, and admits he does a lot of "autistic things" like locking into random obsessions and struggling with eye contact. He also throws in a sharp observation about modern life: spend a few hours a day on your phone and "even if you didn't have ADHD, you have it now".

By the end, he commits to finding decent online tests for both ADHD and autism and promises to return with the results, asking Benny to report back on his own. If you're sober, sober‑curious, or just enjoy raw, comedic takes on mental health and labels, this one might get you thinking: how much of who you are is diagnosis, and how much is just life?