The Canadian psychology professor JordanPeterson has been described as “themost influential public intellectual in the Western world.” He is an exponent of the Jungian concept of the hero’s journey, in whichan ordinary person heeds a call to adventure and goes out into the world tostruggle and suffer, only to return with heightened self-knowledge. (He hasdescribed himself, without apparent irony, as being “raised and toughened in the frigid wastelands of Northern Alberta.”)His stern ethos of self-help and bootstrapping has made him a darling of theso-called intellectual dark web, and a gateway drug for countless buddingright-wingers who have stumbled upon one of his lectures on YouTube.
S4 E15: Christianity and the Modern World: Bishop Barron Jordan B. Peterson Podcast Dr. Jordan Peterson 2021-04-19T14:53:34-04:00 April 19th, 2021 Bishop Robert Barron and I sat down on March 5th, 2021 to discuss a variety of topics in the realm of the importance of the bible, the bridge between religion. The latest tweets from @jordanbpeterson. The latest tweets from @MikhailaAleksis.
So it was something ofa surprise to learn, in early February, that Peterson had spenteight days in a medically induced coma at an unnamed clinic in Russia.Peterson’s daughter Mikhaila, a 28-year-old food blogger, posted abrief but dramatic video claiming that she and her father hadtraveled to Russia in early January seeking an unorthodox treatment for hisphysical dependence on the drug clonazepam. Dependency goes against the core tenetsof Peterson’s philosophical brand: stoicism, self-reliance, the power of thewill over circumstance and environment.“Noone gets away with anything, ever, so take responsibility for your own life,” he admonished in his bestsellingself-help book 12 Rules for Life.
According to Mikhaila, he nearly died severaltimes during his medical ordeal. After weeks in intensive care, he was unableto speak or write and was taking anti-seizure medicine.
The news was met with bafflement by doctorsand laypeople alike. What was Peterson doing in a drug-induced coma in Russia? Basedon interviews with medical professionals and a close reading of variousstatements that Mikhaila and Peterson himself have made on podcasts and socialmedia, it is clear that Peterson ended up in Russia after an extended battle towean himself off clonazepam. And it seems likely that Peterson, aself-proclaimed man of science, succumbed to the lure of a quack treatment—withdevastating consequences.
Peterson’s saga has mostly been covered inconservative news outlets, which have relied almost exclusively on a disjointednarrative put forth by Mikhaila, a nutrition “influencer” with nomedical credentials who claims to have cured her idiopathic juvenile arthritis,clinical depression, and a C. difficile infection by eating nothing butmeat, salt, and water. Peterson promoted his daughter’s snake oil diet and evenembraced the program himself. In July 2018, he told celebrity podcaster JoeRogan that he’d been eating nothing but beef, salt, and water for two months athis daughter’s suggestion, following a year of eating almost nothing but steakand salad. It’s unclear whether Peterson continued to follow this extreme diet.
Peterson’s health problems first surfaced inSeptember 2019, when his family announced that he had undergone a stint inrehab in upstate New York. According to Mikhaila’s update from Russia, he wasprescribed the sedative clonazepam, a benzodiazepine, by his family doctor in2017 for anxiety stemming from a “severe autoimmune reaction to food.”Peterson’s doctor allegedly increased his dose after Peterson’s wife wasdiagnosed with kidney cancer in April 2019. Peterson supposedly didn’trealize he’d become dependent on clonazepam until he suffered agonizingwithdrawal symptoms when he tried to quit the medication cold turkey during thesummer of 2019.
Mikhaila has consistently and emphaticallyclaimed that her father is suffering strictly from physical dependence, and notfrom addiction. And it is important to stress that the two are distinct.Dependence simply means that a person gets withdrawal symptoms when they stoptaking a drug. The National Institute on Drug Abuse defines addiction as “compulsive use despiteharmful consequences.” It is possible to be dependent on a drug without beingaddicted to it.
Media reports have claimed that Peterson issuffering from addiction, but have offered no evidence to support the claim. IfPeterson were addicted, you’d expect see signs of loss of control over his druguse, which might include buying drugs on the street; “doctor-shopping”; unauthorized dose increases; and drug-related problems with work, family, orthe law.
So far, there is no evidence that Peterson displayed any of the so-called “aberrant behaviors” that define addiction. Butagain, all we have to go on is reports from his daughter, whose family has astrong financial incentive to spin away any suggestion that the man who madehis name engaging in a kind of intellectual Spartan cosplay is hopelesslyaddicted to a sedative. In fact, Mikhaila has jokingly alluded to how bad anaddiction diagnosis would be for her father’s lucrative self-help brand, whichpurports to rid adherents of weakness through grit and self-sacrifice. “Wefigured we should let people know [the facts] before some tabloid finds out andpublishes [that] Jordan Peterson, ‘self help guru,’ is on meth or something,”Mikhaila said in a video update after Peterson checked himself into rehab inthe U.S.
Still, as soon as Peterson’s initial stint inrehab became public in 2019, threads sprang up in Peterson-related forums aboutwhether his fans should think less of him in light of his struggles with benzodiazepines.“He was using a drug to escape the pain of reality, period. Call it whateveryou like, but it doesn’t change the facts,” wrote the user KingLudwigII on Reddit. In fact, dependence and addiction arehealth issues, not character defects, and if you pressed Peterson on thatpoint, he’d probably agree. However, that message is a tough sell to many ofPeterson’s fans, who are drawn to his macho image and his personal story oftriumph over adversity.
By August or September 2019, Peterson’shealth had deteriorated to the point that the family was more worried about himthan his cancer-stricken wife, Mikhaila said in an appearance onRT, the Russian propaganda network aimed at audiences outside of Russia.
There are established ways of treating adependence on benzodiazepines, a class of sedatives—including Klonopin(clonazepam), Valium (diazepam), and Xanax (alprazolam)—used for anxiety,insomnia, and epilepsy. Introduced to the U.S. market in 1960 as an alternative to barbiturates,benzodiazepines can be useful in treating a variety of conditions from panicattacks to muscle spasms. They can be very helpful for short-term andintermittent use, but their benefits tend to wanewhen they are used every day. They can also cause physical dependence within four weeks. If a person who’s physicallydependent on benzodiazepines stops taking the drugs suddenly, they can sufferfrom withdrawal symptoms including severe anxiety, agitation, and evenlife-threatening seizures.
Dr. Olivera Bogunovic, the medical director ofambulatory services at Boston’s McLean Hospital and an assistant professor of psychiatryat Harvard Medical School, developed an outpatient program towean patients off benzodiazepines almost a decade ago. Prior to that, sherecalls, patients were being detoxed over four days in the hospital, becausethat was all insurance would pay for. Four days is a very rapid detox, and itsometimes resulted in the patients having seizures.
The state-of-the-art treatment forbenzodiazepine dependence is not some grueling ordeal. Patients aren’t strappedto a hospital bed, white-knuckling it through withdrawal; instead, they aregradually weaned off the drugs outside the hospital over the course of months.In general, doctors try to decrease a patient’s dose by 25 percent every twoweeks. Bogunovic reports that this method has a very high success rate: “Up to 80to 90 percent of patients have successfully completed detox in our clinic,” shetold me.
Jordan reportedly unsuccessfully attempted toquit cold turkey at least once on his own, which may have set him up for futureproblems. “It’s called the kindling effect,” Bogunovic explained. “If you don’t detoxproperly the first time, every subsequent detox can be more difficult.”
Mikhaila also claims that, in addition to hisdependence on clonazepam, Jordan suffered from a paradoxical reaction to thedrug, which allegedly made him extremely restless. (A sedative, of course, ismeant to have the exact opposite effect.) Bogunovic says that such paradoxicalreactions to benzodiazepines occur in about 1–2 percent of patients. Theclinical term is akathisia. The patient may shift positions, cross anduncross their legs, rock, or writhe. A severe case of akathisia can make aperson completely unable to function.
The picture that emerges is of a man who wastrapped: He couldn’t tolerate the medication, and he couldn’t tolerate thewithdrawal. Mikhaila told RT that her father was looking for a place that hadthe guts to detox him “cold turkey,” a place where doctors “aren’t influencedby the pharmaceutical companies.”
Apparently that’s how a man who didn’t want touse drugs traveled thousands of miles to be placed in a drug-induced coma.Mikhaila said that her father was diagnosed with pneumonia “upon arrival” inRussia. If that’s accurate, then his medically induced coma may have hadnothing to do with benzodiazepine withdrawal. If pneumonia is so severethat it causes respiratory failure, the patient needs to go on a ventilatorsimply to breathe. Because it’s so unpleasant to be on a breathing machine inan intensive care unit, patients are usually heavily sedated.
The more alarming possibility is that Petersonwas placed in a coma as part of his detox regimen. Mikhaila described herfather’s treatment as “an emergencymedical benzodiazepine detox, which we were only able to find in Russia.” Theterm “medical detox” suggests that drugs were an integral part of the program,and the fact that this treatment is only available in Russia implies that itwasn’t one of the more conservative forms of drug-assisted detox available inNorth America.
Bogunovic says she’s heard of people usingmedically induced comas to treat benzodiazepine withdrawal, but that it’sextremely rare and not scientifically sound. It’s a little more common to offerthis kind of sedation for opioid withdrawal, she says, but there’s no evidenceto support the efficacy or safety of sedation detox for opioids, either. Theproblem, Bogunovic says, is that the patient still has to cope with withdrawalsymptoms after they wake up. And the risks of being sedated and placed on aventilator alone are considerable: Ventilators can cause pneumonia, and prolongedimmobility puts patients at risk of blood clots, which can cause strokes.
Another possibility is that Peterson’s doctorsdidn’t set out to put him in a coma, but that he developed such severewithdrawal symptoms from quitting “cold turkey” that they were forced to do sofor his own protection. Sometimes, in cases of severe benzodiazepine withdrawal,the patient becomes so agitated that they have to be sedated; their heart rateand blood pressure can skyrocket, and their extreme agitation can make them adanger to themselves and the medical team.
Seizures are by far the most feared sideeffect of sudden abstinence from benzos. If someone vomits during a seizure andinhales the vomit, they can stop breathing or develop pneumonia, either ofwhich could have landed Peterson in a coma.
Mikhaila blames Western medicine for herfather’s predicament, and not just because Western doctors prescribed thepills. Allegedly, Peterson’s pneumonia was the fault of a North Americanhospital, too, though she doesn’t say how she knows that. Mikhaila is essentiallyweaving her own “hero’s journey” into her father’s ordeal, one in which shebrought him to a far-flung clinic that had “the guts” to do what Westerndoctors wouldn’t. It’s a tale that burnishes her brand as a wellness influencerand shoves aside awkward questions about whether the treatment harmed Peterson.
When it comes to recovery, there are no quickfixes. But that doesn’t mean the most arduous option is necessarily the mosteffective. If Peterson’s sad story has a moral, it’s that a drug problem is neithera dragon to be slain nor a sin to be ashamed of. It’s a mundane health problemthat should be treated scientifically, without heroics.
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ContinueSay Jordan Peterson’s comments about identity politics make your blood boil. Or you are offended by his opposition to Canada’s law that relates to the use of specific pronouns for the transgendered. If, for whatever reason, Jordan Peterson gets your goat, you are not alone.
I discovered this first-hand. Last year, I naïvely emailed my peers in social work notice of a newly discounted price for Peterson’s Self-Authoring Suite. His journaling software has been shown to render positive effects when used by first year university students. Those students go on to report, on average, higher marks and lower drop-out rates, compared to those in a control group.
Oops.
My email triggered a hailstorm. One social worker, described Peterson as “subtly dangerous,” “like so many charismatic and cunning manipulators.” For her, Peterson’s popularity or influence reminded her of Jim Jones, referring to a cult leader from yesteryear who orchestrated the mass murder-suicide of his followers. Another called him a modern-day spreader of hate speech. One person suggested that my email and all the responses be omitted from our group archives. It was a flurry of emails, a tidal wave of negativity.
Here’s the problem. Infants move through a developmental stage that Melanie Klein referred to as ‘Good Mother, Bad Mother’. At this stage, the child’s reactions are polarized. If mother satisfies all needs in a timely manner, mother is deemed ‘good’. If mother’s performance is compromised; say, she is delayed in the shower. The infant is crying. Mother is ‘bad’!
We hope, in time, the child will outgrow a tendency for black-and-white thinking. After all, mother – and everyone else – is good . . . and bad. Helpful . . . and flawed. She comes through. She disappoints. The ability to host this paradox is one of the building blocks of maturity.
In fact, this idea sits at the heart of Judaism’s central prayer, Shma Yisrael. That benediction is consistently mistranslated in English. We read, “Hear, O Israel, the L-rd is Our G-d, the L-rd is One.”
Wrong.
Jordan Peterson Twitter Thread
Within the benediction, we find two Hebrew names for Divinity. One of them refers to the loving G-d, our Father in Heaven. The other refers to G-d, the King, who wields laws, issues retribution. The nurturing parent, the stringent parent. That prayer requires us to to straddle the paradox, to find the unity within the dichotomy. The two disparate countenances of Divinity are, in essence, one. We are being asked to work ourselves into a state characterized by acceptance, wisdom, temperance, modulation. In short, maturity.
So Jordan Peterson’s politics irritate you. But can you also host the generosity of a clinician who has provided millions with free access to hundreds of hours of lectures on YouTube, lectures that thousands upon thousands are using to make personal changes, sans expensive psychotherapy?
Read the comments under the videos. People are getting help from his materials. In Canada, where we have socialized medicine, each person who voluntarily and independently takes responsibility, resolves a substance abuse problem, cleans his room, all this without accessing, say, support from a psychiatrist, saves taxpayers’ dollars.
On that note, think about it. How many people do you know who fail to take responsibility, resolve a substance abuse problem, or clean their rooms, even with the support of a therapist? Peterson is, at the very least, helping some people sort themselves out.
Jordan Peterson Banned From Youtube
For two years, Jordan Peterson travelled around the world, teaching how to turn chaos into habitable order. Then his life fell into chaos. Then our lives fell into chaos. And now his materials remain available, a legacy and gift for those facing turmoil. Given the times we now live in, many people cannot afford professional help. How many of these will turn to his resources and garner inspiration and direction?
Jordan Peterson Twitter Account
I know. You still hate Jordan Peterson. Ironically, you may need his insights more than others. The problem: his free lectures are way too expensive for you. In order to give a listen, you’d have to surrender something you’re clinging to. I would refer you to the work of one Jerusalem Kabbalist, Sarah Schneider. Her book should matter to you. The title: You Are What You Hate.