Drug Experts on Jordan Peterson Seeking Treatment in Russia for Benzo Dependence

Drug Experts on Jordan Peterson Seeking Treatment in Russia for Benzo Dependence

Peterson’s daughter said doctors in the West didn't have “the guts” to medically detox her father. But experts say that’s a misleading narrative.

By Manisha Krishnan

Feb 13 2020, 1:02pm

While revealing that her famous father is physically dependent on benzodiazepines, Jordan Peterson’s daughter Mikhaila delivered a stinging rebuke of doctors in “the West.” But drug policy experts say some of her claims are dangerous and don’t appear to be evidence-based.

In a pair of articles in the National Post last week, Mikhaila Peterson said her dad, a controversial University of Toronto psychologist and author, is struggling with a severe dependence on benzodiazepines. Popular benzos are Xanax and Valium.

The articles, based solely on Mikhaila’s account, outline a number of extreme circumstances and medical reactions that supposedly led Peterson to seek detox treatment in Russia.

Mikhaila, an advocate of the dubious meat-only “Lion Diet,”said Peterson was prescribed a low dose of benzos in response to an autoimmune reaction to food. (The Post piece doesn’t specify what that means, or how it differs from a food allergy.)

Mikhaila said her dad’s dose increased when her mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer last April and he developed a physical dependence on it. She said he developed a side-effect called “akathisia”—a restless movement disorder that left him suicidal. According to Mikhaila, her father “nearly died several times” while bouncing around North American hospitals and being given more medications.

Mikhaila said her dad sought treatment in Russia in January, where he was put in an induced coma for eight days and “had the most horrific withdrawal I’ve ever read or heard about.” (Peterson went dark on Twitter between January 22 and February 5; his most recent column for the Post appears to be from November.)

“He almost died from what the medical system did to him in the West,” Mikhaila said. “The doctors here aren’t influenced by the pharmaceutical companies, don’t believe in treating symptoms caused by medications, by adding in more medications and have the guts to medically detox someone from benzodiazepines.” Russia is known for having tough drug laws, scarce resources for recovery, and a cold turkey approach to treatment that includes the banning of methadoneas a drug substitution.

VICE has reached out to Mikhaila Peterson for comment but has not yet heard back.

It certainly sounds like things are rough for Peterson, who developed a massive following when he refused to use students’ preferred gender pronouns, and later released 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, a book that doles out tips like: “set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.” But experts who work in drug policy and public health say Mikhaila’s version of events raises questions and perpetuates ignorant narratives around addictions treatment in Canada.

Dr. Evan Wood, an addiction medicine physician and scientist with the British Columbia Centre on Substance Use, said that while he can’t comment on the specifics of Peterson’s situation, Mikhaila’s statement that doctors in Canada don’t have “the guts” to detox someone off benzos is completely inaccurate.

“There’s a whole community of substance use professionals who routinely provide care for people who’ve become addicted to benzodiazepines and that would involve a tapering of the medication,” he said. The reason for that is slowly tapering off the drug lessens the likelihood of relapse, he said, adding going into a medically induced coma is “very extreme” and would typically only ever happen in Canada due to severe alcohol withdrawal symptoms. (There’s no indication that Peterson is seeking treatment for alcohol issues.)

Wood said tapering people off benzos can be “very challenging,” and can take up to a year.

“It’s a very dangerous medication,” he said, noting that benzos aren’t effective for anxiety because they like work in the short term but cause rebound anxiety when a person isn’t taking them.

Wood also said that getting through the detox, as Mikhaila said Peterson has done, doesn’t mean a person won’t relapse.

“It would be the same as withdrawing off of fentanyl or alcohol. The potential to go back to it would remain.”

Mikhaila also specified that her dad does not have “psychological addiction” to benzos but developed a dependency, a distinction that Peterson’s followers seem to be fixated on.

Wood said he doesn’t make a medical distinction between people who are physically dependent because of prescribed drugs and those who have an addiction, defined as “ongoing use in the face of harms.”

“I hate to see people categorized as though they’re bad people because they’re addicted,” he said. “The physical manifestation is the same but if you have access to the drug and you’re prescribed then you could call it dependence.”

Public health expert and University of Calgary professor Rebecca Haines-Saah said Mikhaila’s statements imply that there are no safe medical detox options for benzos available in Canada.

“I think that’s quite a bit of misinformation for people who may be vulnerable or feel like they might need treatment for that,” she said. “Given the influence of the Peterson family online and their large following I think some of this information that may not be evidence-based can be taken up and get legs and I think that’s a bit dangerous.”

Ontario, where Peterson lives, has a number of public and private drug detox options.

Haines-Saah also said the story also raises a lot of questions, including how Peterson allegedly nearly died several times due to the treatment he received in North America.

“There may be parts of the story that aren’t being shared publicly,” she said.

Petersons’s supporters have been quick to.admonish people who aren’t particularly sympathetic to him.

“The critique of this is the family is asking for compassion but maybe there’s a sense that they haven't been that compassionate to other individuals who've experienced addiction,” Haines-Saah said.

(One of Peterson’s lectures on Youtube is titled “the problem of too much empathy.”)

But even the narrative around Peterson’s addiction and recovery send a message that in order to be a “real man” one must undertake a detox without the aid of other medications, said Haines-Saah. It’s in line with his views around masculinity. The same goes for the focus on Peterson’s physical dependence versus a psychological addiction.

“That’s advancing the power of the will the psychology versus the physiological dependence,” she said. “It really does support the idea of addiction as a moral failing.”

https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/epgb37/what-drug-experts-say-about-jordan-petersons-benzo-dependence

The Oracle said:

When I first heard Jordan Peterson speak, I couldn’t figure out his appeal. We were paired up at a recent Montreal Press Club event, and he was the headliner, with me as an opening act. Peterson was talking about free speech, and the biblical tradition in Western thought. At first, I didn’t really understand his thesis. And he seemed all choked up, like it was all so tough for him to talk about. Unlike almost everyone else in the room, who seemed rapt from the moment Peterson began speaking, I’d never seen any of his videos. (I still haven’t.) I felt like the only guy at the Poison concert who wasn’t holding up his lighter for “Every Rose Has Its Thorn.”

But then, after Peterson had been speaking for about 10 minutes, it clicked for me. His ideas came together in a powerful way, and I got a glimpse into why he’s become Canada’s most influential intellectual. It wasn’t just that his ideas struck me as original and well-informed. It was the atmosphere of suffering that accompanied his speaking style. In those moments, Peterson took on a tragic, almost gothic aspect. It was as if facing up to the truth of his ideas caused him spasms of intellectual agony, which he endured for the sake of educating his audience.

'The doctors here have the guts to medically detox someone': Mikhaila Peterson on her father's condition
Jordan Peterson's year of 'absolute hell': Professor forced to retreat from public life because of addiction
I certainly don’t think Peterson regards himself as any kind of prophet: a recently released documentary about him, “The Rise of Jordan Peterson,” reveals that he was fixated on the nature of evil from a young age (especially in the form of war and genocide), but also shows him to be far more interested in analyzing these phenomena as an academic and author, rather than proselytizing any kind of totalizing creed to deliver humanity from suffering. But I do think that the powerful reaction he attracts — both from his most devoted followers and his most vicious detractors — owes something to the tragic atmospherics that sometimes characterize his speaking style.

Every progressive Canadian columnist took his or her turn writing what was more or less the same column bashing Peterson.


And while these two groups are at each other’s proverbial throats on social media (and sometime even at real-life protests outside his speaking events), they are flip sides of the same basic phenomenon. As Peterson himself has discussed, we are living in a post-Christian age, and many people now turn to politics, academia, activism and sometimes even their YouTube autoplay feed, seeking figures who can play the role of ersatz prophet or demon. For some, it’s Donald Trump, or Bernie Sanders, or Greta Thunberg. For others, it’s Jordan Peterson.

There was a period in 2017 and 2018 when every progressive Canadian columnist took his or her turn writing what was more or less the same column bashing Peterson — usually on the basis of his pronoun wrongthink, or because of some stray angry comment he’d made on Twitter, or because he’d met with the wrong person, or taken a picture with someone who turned out to be a nut. (It’s difficult for prophets to maintain their aura of purity in the age of social media.) The overall theme was that Peterson is “the stupid man’s smart person.” These columns were strikingly peevish in tone, and seemed animated by an almost hysterical (and oddly reactionary) fear that Peterson is a sort of pied piper who uses his Harvard education and extraordinary academic pedigree to convince the unread and unwashed to abandon social-justice puritanism. The phobic tone echoes the conservatives of yore who warned young people to avoid jazz clubs lest their music-addled brains succumb to communism.

Ironically, the anti-Petersonians now seem far more fanatical than Peterson’s most faithful fans. This became clear in recent days, when some of Peterson’s critics — including, amazingly, a professor at the University of Ottawa — went online to express satisfaction that Peterson is being treated for dependence on benzodiazepine, an anti-anxiety medication. It was a shockingly ghoulish response. It was also comically hypocritical, given that these are the same people who typically spend much of their waking lives boasting publicly of their commitment to social justice, and who insist on using the language of genocide to describe acts of misgendering or cultural appropriation. All cults dehumanize their critics and perceived enemies. And the self-described social-justice proponents who regard Peterson as a secular demon are no different.

Ordinary passersby approach Peterson to tell him how his work has helped them overcome self-doubt and depression.


For those who want to understand the true Jordan Peterson, flaws and all, I recommend the above-referenced documentary, “The Rise of Jordan Peterson,” which was produced by the Toronto-based husband-and-wife team of Patricia Marcoccia and Maziar Ghaderi (whom I recently interviewed for the Quillette podcast). Lest you think this is hagiography, it’s not. In fact, Marcoccia and Ghaderi began the project well before Peterson rose to fame in 2016. Their original focus was Peterson’s deep involvement with a B.C.-based indigenous group, and they switched to a more general biographical focus only after he became a celebrated international figure.

One of the amazing things you will see in the film is that, wherever the filming takes place, ordinary passersby approach Peterson to tell him how his work has helped them overcome self-doubt and depression. This is the human reality behind the fact that Peterson’s self-help book has sold more than two million copies. Whatever you think about his academic ideas, he is clearly helping people make sense of the world.

When I look at the people who despise Peterson most, on the other hand, they are people who help no one — most of them being social-media addicts and literary mediocrities who could walk Toronto streets from dawn till dusk without a single person recognizing them, let alone thanking them for their work. So if you’re looking for demons, which fits the role more perfectly: the troubled academic who took medication to deal with his wife’s cancer and the strains of life in the public spotlight — or the social-justice hashtag sadists who revel in his misery?

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jonathan-kay-on-jordan-peterson-and-his-critics

When I look at the people who despise Peterson most, on the other hand, they are people who help no one — most of them being social-media addicts and literary mediocrities who could walk Toronto streets from dawn till dusk without a single person recognizing them, let alone thanking them for their work. So if you’re looking for demons, which fits the role more perfectly: the troubled academic who took medication to deal with his wife’s cancer and the strains of life in the public spotlight — or the social-justice hashtag sadists who revel in his misery?

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The stupid man's smart person is far from Canada's most influential intellectual. He's got very little respect on academia, which is what matters.

jcpro said:

It's "in academia" and he's one of the top people in his field.

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That can be said about a lot of professors.

Most of critiques have come from academia, and his supporters tend to be Non-Academics. What he likes to do is pretend to be an expert in fields that he knows nothing about, like philosophy and economics. This is why he's more ideological than anything else.

JohnLarue said:

Too funny!
You are one of the poster boys for what is wrong with allowing ideology to rule over common sense & rational pragmatic thinking.
You post a new "whats wrong with the world / the right" topic every day

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Right wingers like you tend be factually, historically, and economically wrong about everything. Not to mention, education levels among your ilk are low.

Dutch Oven said:

Sometimes a post just implodes upon itself.

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Point proven.

People with lower emotional intelligence are more likely to hold right-wing views, study finds

https://www.psypost.org/2019/09/people-with-lower-emotional-intelligence-are-more-likely-to-hold-right-wing-views-study-finds-54369

Dutch Oven said:

Keep climbing, Yertle! I'd say my point will register with you eventually, but I don't really think it will.

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Stop gaslighting. It's not working.

jcpro said:

What is "emotional intelligence"? How do you measure it? Does it go by a pound, yard or kelvin? Do I score higher if I cry while cutting the chicken's head off? What's your level of emotional intelligence? Can it compete with my high level of midichlorians?

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Google it

jcpro said:

Im not going to...neither will a Google "magic".

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Suit yourself.