Trevor Noah: My Depression Was Linked To ADHD! Why I Left The Daily Show!

it felt like life was meaningless i would think to myself i hate this this sucks i don't know what i want to do with life anymore and that's sometimes where the depression would kick in but i didn't realize that the depression that i was suffering from was untreated adhd depression and so i've learned rules now for myself and for anyone who is suffering from this ask yourself a few simple questions let's try to know up the former host of the daily show where he gave a massive volume for his humorous yet incisive take on politics in society i was born to a black mother and a white father in south africa at a time when it was illegal in the country they were scared the police were going to take me away and then my mother met his father and it became an unsafe household your mother had been shot point blank in the head by this man yeah and from that day onwards everything changes you arrived in america to pursue your dream as being a comedian you are which led to you being the host of the daily show but it didn't go so well at first it was absolutely terrible people would just be like go back to where you came from death threats it was really hard when i persevered and i would get home at 9 p.m work until midnight get back to the office at 7 the next day and do it all over again and then the daily show went on to become some shit but constant i had made my life about work and i made everything else secondary and to be honest with you a lot of people are doing this we neglected connection and i think we're experiencing a generation of men in particular who are not just isolated but not practiced in the arts of connecting and it's affecting society now so those men are struggling where do they need to start this is a lesson that i've learned if you're struggling with this well that's that's a tough one because i i feel like my perception of what the most important things are may not be the most important things i could say it would be my sense of humor and it might be where the sense of humor comes from which might be my family or my country it might be which schools i went to it might be where i've lived or where i've traveled to it's a yeah it's one of those you know if you ever try to break down a food or something that you consume you're like what's the most important ingredient what are the ingredients that really make it what it is it's like is it the crunches the acids the salt is the fats is what what is it i i don't know i genuinely don't know if i knew then i would be able to either create more of me or or um or maybe like you know figure out which parts i want to tweak but i honestly don't know the answer to that question i often think of uh everyone only also myself in the context of like uh i guess it's an analogy like a set of ingredients that came together that were then put into an oven and like right the heat was turned on and we were baked not to say that we can't be changed after that moment but um what are those ingredients so my mother south african and hustle woman uh my father swiss from switzerland was living in south africa so those are those are the parental ingredients you know my grandmother i think is a key ingredient because i spent a lot of time with her as a young child my grandfather was a crazy funny man was bipolar but we didn't know at the time i think we knew towards the end of his life but it made him wildly entertaining um yeah it's an interesting and tough one you know because i because i often think as much as we're baked to what you're saying i think that we're baked but then we are very much a product of the people that we then come into contact with you know so i think of most people sort of like a sponge cake most cakes are very basic most of them and what really makes them special is what the bacon does to them afterwards you know but the fundamental cake is is pretty much the same and i think people are like that yeah there's certain things you know like color of our skin and tone of voice and all of that but then i think it's everyone we come into contact with that gives us the icing that gives us the shape that gives us the dynamic texture that makes us who we are you know and so i i strangely enough i feel like it's all of these people that i was lucky enough or unlucky enough to bump into that gave me a little bit of that texture and shape and i think that's the same for everyone you know that's probably why i'm so um so conscious of choosing my friends because i think that's me actively choosing the people who are going to keep shaping me as i as i live my life i've seen you on tv i've seen you all over the place over the last 10 years of my life i had no idea of your early context i had no idea and it's funny because sometimes you kind of see i don't know domino 35 and all these dominoes that fall but those early dominoes i think often lead a lot of clues to the domino 35 oh yeah definitely definitely so for someone that might not know your earliest context like i didn't what do they what should they know to understand you so i mean you know first of all i was i was born and raised in south africa right um i was born in 1984 so that was you know six years before apartheid ended born to a black mother and a white father at a time when it was illegal in the country um and it was strangely unique you know i guess because it was illegal you know so so i grew up in a world where i didn't see many people like me who had my background i saw some people who looked similar to me but they had a completely different background you know south africa's racial dynamics are very complicated and sometimes throw people off especially like internationally you know um but yeah i think that's that's one of the you know that's that's the beginning of me and and then i think you know i look at these ingredients which aren't necessarily the best in in choosing your starting points but then there was a series of lucky breaks you know the dominoes as you say there's a series of lucky breaks so one of those was apartheid ends you know so apartheid ends when i'm six years old and i always think to myself about how much that changes my entire life because if apartheid let's say apartheid went for 10 more years then now i'm 16 and i haven't been able to go to the schools that i went to because you know only white kids were allowed to go to them and you know children of color black children in south africa were restricted from going to the same schools and weren't allowed to live in certain areas and your whole life was defined by the color of your skin and so that becomes like one of the first dominoes that i didn't have anything to do with that changes my life people that are growing up today aren't aware of what the apartheid is no no no i've had to research as an adult to make sure i know what it is i was born in 92 so for anyone that doesn't know what it's like to be a child that has a white father and black mother growing up in apartheid south africa where as it says on the front of your book you're considered a crime yeah because your father and mother have different skin colors what does that environment feel like emotionally for you so i was lucky i was lucky in that i think at least on the surface i didn't feel it you know because one of the most important things i've learned from my upbringing is this episode is this episode is We'll be right back.