Jordan Peterson / Mikhaila Interview Analysis

hello this is dr. Grande today's question asks I can analyze the video about Jordan Peterson's recovery that was posted on Makayla Peterson's YouTube channel in this video that was recorded in Serbia and posted on June 30 2020 orden and Makayla discussed how he's doing after struggling with benzodiazepine withdrawal just a reminder not diagnosing anybody in this video only speculating about what could be happening a situation like this if you enjoy this video please like it subscribe to my channel and consider supporting me on patreon I'll put the link to patreon in the description for this video so here I'm going to go through some of the different items covered in that video and offer my opinion as I go but also bring it all together for analysis at the end now this was a 56 minute video normally I'm quite critical of videos that go on this long but there was really no wasted time here it was as long as it needed to be during the interview Jordan Peterson and Mikayla essentially told the story of how Jordan ended up in the situation Jordan Peterson's wife Tammy had surgery for cancer some time ago six weeks after that surgery she was told that the cancer was terminal no treatment would likely help her Tammy and her family eventually decided another surgery was the best option and that surgery was successful even though there were many complications all this understandably created a great deal of stress on everybody in that family now moving over to Jordan Peterson's experience we see that he was taking a benzodiazepine called klonopin starting in 2016 he had eaten some bad food and developed symptoms like insomnia and fainting so he was prescribed 0.5 milligram of carbon per day taken twice a day at 0.25 milligram so this was a small dose now combining these experiences Tammy is in this life-threatening situation Jordan is taking benzodiazepines do the stress of all this he asked for more cotton now initially in the interview he did not say how much but later we learned it's 4 milligrams a day that's a significant difference from 0.5 milligrams a day I'm super as dose was increased that much but this is what he said happened after the increase in dosage his anxiety increased which as he noted is rare typically the anxiety would decrease quite a bit especially that that dose Jordan then attempted to stop going from 4 milligrams a day to 0 which is exceedingly dangerous he said he was advised to do this it's hard to imagine he was given that advice but again this is what he states at some point during all this he developed a castilla this is a really miserable condition that involves the inability to stop moving so it's like restlessness he described it like being electrocuted non-stop he also described later in the video that it was worse than dying so pretty bad pretty uncomfortable for him and clearly a symptom that he wanted to resolve so the fundamental problem really became this the klonopin was causing akathisia which is causing him to suffer tremendously so he needed to stop taking the carbon but if he stopped taking it he would have serious withdrawal symptoms normally the solution here is to taper this means to come off the medication slowly which of course runs into the same problem in his case akathisia so he was really stuck with no terrific options here now after a few attempts to effectively treat him on the eastern seaboard the United States and eventually in Toronto his daughter with the consent of his family and ostensibly with his consent decided to take him to a facility on the outskirts of Moscow in Russia they used medications to render him unconscious he was unconscious for nine days while he was unconscious they detoxed him from the carpet now from what we were to understand from this interview Jordan had pneumonia upon his arrival in Russia so this is where things get a bit tricky in terms of trying to understand what really happened they made it seem like he was sedated essentially put into a medically induced coma in order to detox him from the conovan but of course it could have been that he was sedated so he could be treated for the pneumonia unless there's more from a that comes out here it's really hard to figure out what happened why did they put him in a coma running under the assumption that the sedation was specifically to detox from Cana pit there is no scientific evidence that supports that method there's no reason to believe that safe one of the themes of this interview was really defending that decision I realized that they were frustrated and they had talked to a number of other treatment professionals in North America but I don't see how this could have been a good move it certainly seems like the decision was made with the best intentions but that is different than critical thinking I think this interview could leave someone with the impression that Micaela acted in a manner that saved her father's life especially the emotional ending of that interview although I suppose it makes a compelling narrative again there's no scientific reason to believe that that's true the methods available in North America would have likely resulted in success without exposing Jordan to high-risk the vast majority of the time when confronted with a mental health issue science offers the best answer not intuition not rebelling against the system not working from one's experience not basing the decision on what somebody needs to happen now I don't know if a those who are active here I don't know what the situation was specifically in this instance but in general science is a better way to go now with all that in mind Jordan successfully stabilized at that facility and after this he was moved to another rehab facility still in Russia then we see he travels to Florida but his anxiety was still too high so he ends up in Serbia and again this is where that interview takes place so stepping back and looking at this whole interview I think the overall message was positive I've talked before about how benzodiazepines can be quite dangerous for some people a number of mental health professionals do not understand how harmful the withdrawal can be so more awareness on this topic is a good thing I particularly like the fact that Jordan touched on the idea that when people become dependent on substances others tend to believe the person played some role in their dependence this is one of those complex areas of Mental Health I've seen examples where a person essentially had no responsibility and their own dependence and other situations where the person seemed to go into it with a lot of clarity they used knowing the risks I've also seen everywhere in-between so there are no easy answers here so again I think this was a good point for him to mention overall I liked the interview but there are a few things that were said during the interview that I have difficulty with outside of the whole going to Russia for treatment part Jordan said that benzodiazepines are probably worse than the opioid epidemic I can remove all doubt on this point no they're not I can appreciate his frustration and he did acknowledge that this was kind of a controversial statement but the statistics are simply indisputable on this point in the year 2018 in the United States almost forty six thousand eight hundred people died from overdoses that involved opioids in that same year as the DA subpoenas were involved in ten thousand seven hundred deaths which is actually down 800 from the year before when opioids are four and a half times more likely to lead to death for any given person I would say that makes them more dangerous I think it's fair to say that benzodiazepines are more insidious when people take opioids they often know there is a substantial risk associated with them especially if they're illegal when people take benzodiazepines they don't always understand that they're taking something that could be dangerous at first glance they seem innocuous compared to opioids Jordan also said that benzodiazepine use was associated with an increased risk of dementia there was research that indicated a weak link between those two events but later researched with a very large sample size found that there is no relationship I understand why people think there is if someone is using benzodiazepines their memories affected their reasoning skills are not as sharp so it's natural think maybe this is connected to dementia but from a statistical point of view they are completely unrelated to one the last thing I'll talk about here my last criticism would be this there are always two sides to a story and I like to hear both sides before I settle on what I think really happened from what Jordan and Michaela are saying they talked to many mental health professionals who gave them bad advice presumably after completing an evaluation after looking at data from lab work these professionals just kept recommending treatment that was unhelpful or even dangerous now again this is what they claim now if they said they went to one professional and received some bad advice I would say okay that happens all the time that's fairly believable but they're saying they went to something like five different professionals in North America the chances that all five would give bad advice are very low another possibility is perhaps they didn't like what they were hearing it wasn't so much that the treatment advice was reckless but maybe they couldn't accept it I don't know this again their version of events could be 100% correct but this is something I wonder about what is the story of those professionals how did they remember the situation what would they say about their experience about what advice they gave of course it's fairly likely that we'll never know but again I wonder about what their side the story would be so I guess what I'm saying here is that overall this was a good interview benzodiazepines are dangerous but anything can be taken too far it's important when trying to make changes in policy and opinions that representations are accurate right it's good not to exaggerate or to take one situation and say this must be true for every situation right there was a lot of overgeneralizing that could have taken place here as I've noted before in other videos for some people benzodiazepines are nothing short of a life-saving medication I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the symptoms that people have when they seek treatments that involve something like benzodiazepines every course of treatment even counseling that involves no medications comes with risk right risk is everywhere what we have to do is accurately evaluate the risk not say okay just because one thing could be harmful we should avoid that sometimes we have to take risks in order to enjoy the potential rewards it's just part of the math part of the logic of life so it's easy to look at everything that's possibly threatening and say well I'm not gonna get involved in that I'm gonna stay away from that but there could be a cost to not taking that risk in the case of something like benzodiazepines it's used to lower anxiety it also has a number of other functions just taking anxiety for example this causes a tremendous amount of suffering for millions of people so situations like this interview again may be quite compelling people might look at the interview and say okay there's a clear-cut course here but really there's not this was the experience of Jordan Peterson and his family and it does seem like it was quite painful but that's not necessarily what everybody in that situation would experience each person is unique and will have experiences that differ from other people so those are my thoughts on the jordan Peterson interview please put any opinions and thoughts in the comment section they always generate an interesting dialogue as always hope you found my analysis of this topic to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 276,537

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Id: NZe7QTSPY8c

Length: 12min 21sec (741 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 04 2020