Best Selling Writer and Psychologist, Jordan Peterson is slowly recovering from a near death experience

After his wife was diagnosed with cancer, Jordan Peterson went on an anti-anxiety drug to cope with the stress. It turned out that the drug was toxic and he was sensitive. His daughter Mikhaila Peterson, who first notified people about the situation in September, recently posted an updated video about Jordan Peterson’s near-death experience.

In her September 2019 video, Mikhaila talked about the shock to the family when Tammy Roberts, her mother and Peterson’s wife, was diagnosed with cancer. After a successful surgery, Roberts had a bad reaction and almost died. Because Canadian doctors couldn’t cope with Roberts’ illness, she ended up hospitalized in America. The American doctors saved her.

Peterson never left Roberts’ side, but the stress was extreme. His doctor put him on a low dose of Clonazepam, a benzodiazepine. What no one in the family knew is that Clonazepam is highly addictive (two weeks will do it) and some people’s chemistry makes withdrawal unusually difficult.

Peterson ended up in a rehab program to get weaned off of Clonazepam. He was put on other, milder, shorter-acting benzodiazepines. Mikhaila was happy to report that her dad was recovering and her mom was out of the woods. And that’s where the story ended in September 2019.

Last week, though, Mikhaila came back with a deeply disturbing update about Peterson:

Here’s a brief rundown of what Mikhaila says: The rehab treatments were not working. The family finally found a rehab center in Russia that offered emergency medical benzodiazepine detox. By the time Peterson was hospitalized in Russia, though, he had pneumonia and ended up spending four weeks in the ICU. He was put in an induced coma for eight days and almost died.

As a result of the medications, the withdrawal, and the time in the ICU, Peterson has neurological damage, and can neither type nor walk well. His muscle strength was so depleted he had to get therapy to sit up by himself.

It’s a horrific story of well-intentioned medical care run amok. It’s also appalling to think how close the world came to losing a man who has helped inject meaning back into ordinary people’s lives.

It is a perfect example of why you should just deal with it as opposed to medicating

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People are going to accuse you of being insensitive to how hard it is for people to deal with such difficult life circumstances, but I personally agree with you. Reaching for the crutch will almost always make things worse for you. You cannot defer pain and grief, as hard as that is.

Taking meds was his solution to anxiety due to his wife’s illness.
Faith in God might have saved him a lot of unnecessary distress, but he’s an agnostic who claims that behaving “as if” God exists is the best way to live, and he didn’t even do that in this case.

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfvVu7__vy0
(”Does God Exist?) Warning, 10 minutes long, more than you need to reach a conclusion.

Short answer: “I don’t like that question, it’s an attempt to box me in...I don’t know.” < 10 seconds.

I respect his many and sincere admirers but when I listen to what he says I can’t be among them.

You cannot defer pain and grief, as hard as that is.

Yes, and probably shouldn't. I'm referring to emotional, not needless physical pain. Some people's first response to anything, even an intellectual challenge, is to elude or dodge it, and if their pain is within, they turn to medication.

Intellectuals seem especially prone to construct forests about themselves, there's always a tree to duck behind, but it's easy to become lost in a forest.

Over the past few decades, I’ve known of quite a few women addicted to benzodiazepines in the neighborhood and at work. All of them smoked pot before getting their benzo prescriptions and moving on to getting them from illegal pill mills. Every one of them drove around like burning bats, scrogging every man in town. We watched, as the gardens of tattoos grew across their bodies. At least some of them moved on to meth. All of them went stark raving nuts and ended up in the jails and on the streets.

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