Andrei Ungureanu, a 28-year-old Romanian, was invited to the “Față în Față” podcast and, in the middle of the conversation, a tic appeared that no one expected: making the sign of the cross and kissing the microphone, all involuntarily.
Andrei was diagnosed with Tourette syndrome at age 6, although it took 12 years to confirm it with an MRI in Italy. At school in Miercurea Ciuc, Romania, classmates imitated him and teachers thought he was making noises on purpose.
“It was triggered when my mother left the country, but also after I got scared because of a friend. There is a triggering moment.”
He dropped out of school in ninth grade and taught himself programming, while his tics—shouts, grimaces, and even sounds that seem operatic—kept appearing without permission.
They criticized me, judged me, left me out. I didn’t lose friends, but people who didn’t know what Tourette syndrome was would tell me: “You have hiccups”. Everyone told me to stop doing it. They didn’t understand that I couldn’t control those verbal and muscular tics.
Everything changed when his roommate convinced him to upload a video to TikTok: it got 140.000 views in just two days. From there, he went on to iUmor, where he ended up winning season 9 by doing precisely what had once seemed impossible: turning his own experiences with Tourette’s into comedy.
Today he lives in Brașov and says something that sounds like a joke, but is the plain truth: normality does not exist, so it is better to laugh first.