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Sudden onset adult stutter? Hey y’all! A bit of backstory, but there’s a Tl;dr as well. I started a new job last spring, but it really ramped up in responsibilities around Sept/Oct. They had us all working from home, which was fantastic for my mental wellbeing. I was getting extremely overwhelmed and my performance began to lag, and eventually I was asked to work in-office for a month. This request was genuinely traumatic to me at the time, as it just piled more-overwhelm on top of already-overwhelmed. I was barely keeping pace as it was - adding in showering, dressing in clothes that required regular laundry days, driving to the office and being on time, _and_ planning ahead to feed myself each day felt like a mountain. During my one week notice of going in-office, I suddenly developed a stutter. I’ve never stuttered before in my life. The emotional avalanche ultimately cascaded into a rock bottom that led me to talk to my dr about ADHD (which I’ve always suspected, but had never sought treatment for, as my prior jobs were very hands on so I’d scraped by). I got on medication (which was as night-and-day as putting on glasses), learned more about ADHD brains, and developed better strategies for keeping up with my work. The pressure eased up, and everything got way easier - but the stutter persisted, and seemed unconnected to and unaffected by the medication (and, it began a weeks before). Some strings of days, it was really bad. It tended to lessen in severity the evenings and on weekends, with Wed-Fri being the worst manifestations. My job is phone calls all day, so it was having a profound affect. Even during leisure time, though, it cropped up, especially while trying to talk about abstract or nuanced concepts. Some words and sounds would skip like a CD - while others would completely jam up, and I could barely squeeze them out despite immense focus. T’s seemed be among the worst, with “October 20th, 2020” and “fifty-two dollars and twenty-two cents” sticking out as peculiarly difficult. The log jamming didn’t seem limited to only my words, though; I’d oftentimes feel the brakes slam in my mind too, as I tried to coax thoughts into formation. Sometimes gibberish words would come out. I’ve never felt this type of out of control. Since then, the stutter has mostly gone away. Sometimes, like this week, it does re-emerge if I’ve been stressed or not sleeping enough. But it’s never returned to anywhere close to the severity it was in Oct-Nov. Missing piece that I’m just now connecting: shortly after beginning in-office, I suddenly developed a gross, wet cough. Very phlegmy, had to sit in the bathroom with the shower on some mornings to clear out my lungs. Never had fever, malaise, shortness of breath, or other telltale covid signs, like fatigue or loss of smell; my dr listened to my chest and heard no issues, prescribing me a decongestant and sending me on my way. I chalked it up to stress, seasonal allergies, or something in the walls/ceiling of the office bldg I’d never spent time in until then. However, the cough has persisted, even though I’ve long since returned home. It never got horrible, but the “worst” of it took almost 1.5 months to pass. It’s still definitely present, and gets a bit fussy when I haven’t had enough sleep. Are transient idiopathic, sudden-onset adult stutters even a thing? Most places say no. I’m beginning to wonder if the cough and stutter could be covid. I had no idea until last night that stuttering is one of the neurological symptoms it can cause. I rationalized that, if it were that, the cough would’ve come first - but I’ve also learned neurological symptoms can absolutely precede neurological (hello, loss of taste/smell!). *Tl;dr Is sudden-onset adult stuttering a thing? Can it arise from stress/emotional distress alone? Beginning to consider covid as a cause, and I’d rather it be anything else.*