Self-Help Guru is Put in Medically Induced Coma

Jordan Peterson went to Moscow to treat his drug addiction
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 9, 2020 1:30 PM CST

A polarizing self-help guru is trying to recover from a radical health treatment he underwent in Moscow, the CBC reports. Jordan Peterson, a Canadian psychologist, spent eight days in a medically induced coma to battle a lung infection. The intervention followed his admitted dependence on clonazepam—a benzodiazepine tranquilizer often given to people with panic issues—and his pneumonia diagnosis in Moscow. In between, there were failed treatments in North American hospitals. All this according to his daughter, Mikhaila Peterson, who posted a YouTube video Friday updating her father's battle with dependency. "The decision to bring him to Russia was made in extreme desperation, when we couldn't find any better option," she said.

Mihaila called his withdrawal "horrific" and said Russian doctors were willing to fight a drug's side effects without drugs: They "have the guts to medically detox someone from benzodiazepines," she said, per the National Post. Peterson apparently spent four weeks in intensive care and came out with neurological damage; he's recovering but can't walk without help and is taking anti-seizure medication. Seems he began taking clonazepam to treat anxiety a few years ago and relied on it when his wife was diagnosed with cancer last April. An intellectual hero of the right, and reviled by the left, Peterson gained notoriety in 2016 for opposing a University of Toronto policy that teachers address students by their preferred gender pronoun. (See how he "became a phenom.")

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