Jordan Peterson's Withdrawals from Xanax EXPLAINED

well hello and welcome to another video Dr Sylvia Jr doctor from Sydney Australia and I've just finished making a video on Xanax um and then I came across this video of Jordan uh Jordan Peterson talking about coming off of benzodiazepines and his experience and the risks associated with benzodiazepines which we talked about in that previous video I thought it would be interesting to do a bit of a reaction to this and talk about uh like a kind of case uh where benzodiazepine withdrawal has been a big issue and we can reflect on some of the things we've talked about with benzodiazepines for those of you who don't know a quick rundown benzodiazepines are gabanergic medicines what does that mean Gaba is an inhibitory neuro transmitter and benzodiazepines increase the effects of the function of that receptor and so you get higher levels of gabber activity in the brain which is inhibitory and sedating and calming so for people who have panic attacks and anxiety it is indicated in their treatment depending on the circumstance the problem is if you have uh if you become dependent on benzodiazepines like if you take them regularly then that can be a problem if you take it for too long because you become dependent on that Gaba effect and so when you come off of benzodiazepines you know you've got no more external cause of the Gaba and your your body hasn't been doing it itself so you have a withdrawal effects you have a rebound anxiety which can be worse than the initial anxiety not only that but if you take it regularly for a long amount of time then the risks of withdrawal can be very substantial even you can get withdrawal seizures and I've seen people with withdrawal seizures and I've had to like chart like intramuscular midazolam to stop seizures and put cannulas in while people are shaking and stuff so it's very traumatic to see and I've seen in the emergency department a couple of times and these are some of the risks of benzodiazepines but what you need to remember before watching this is there are risks associated with any treatment okay there are risks associated with benzodiazepines but you have to compare those to the risks of not taking the benzodiazepines okay part of a shared decision making uh where the doctor and the patient make the decision together where you justify whether you need the benzos or not um and you know the key principles in benzos is it's short term and you avoid taking it regularly you try and just do it on an as needed basis so if you have a panic attack um you know some people have benzodiazepines charted and they'll have a panic attack three or four times a year and they'll take it when they have those panic attacks but for the rest of the year they don't take it that's okay right it's really um if you're taking it daily for more than a month that you have to be careful the other common use of benzodiazepines is if you have an anxiety disorder and you can't sleep and you're not functioning and you need to start on oral medicines to help with the anxiety disorder like an SSRI those can take a month to start having an effect so you can kind of take the benzodiazepines during that month you know three weeks-ish whilst the other medicine is starting to have its effect anyway with that context in mind let's check out this video of Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan talking about benzodiazepine withdrawals The Joe Rogan Experience what is it like to be you like what is it like to and then I know you know you've gone through a lot of and this latest thing with uh getting off of the benzodiazepine that to me was a real shocker because uh first of all I had no idea that you were taking it and then to find out that it's that difficult to get off of and then to hear from other people that have tried to get off of it how difficult it is and then to realize how many people around me have an issue with that stuff Xanax is a it and I didn't know what a it was until I talked to a friend who is a counselor at a drug rehab center where he was saying that that is one of the ways that people get locked back into drinking and doing drugs as a psychiatrist will prescribe Xanax and sober people who get on Xanax all of a sudden start drinking he said it's super common he said that it's one of the most difficult drugs to get off of is so that's a really bad combination um and uh yeah essentially Xanax is a gabenergic medicine and alcohol is a gabrinergic drug and so you've got two things that are very gabenergic which means you've got all this inhibitory activity happening or lack of activity and uh so you start becoming more sedated you can you're at increased risks of Falls you can get respiratory depression where you don't you don't protect your Airways as well so if you're drinking a lot and you get drunk and you vomit and you fall asleep you could aspirate and probably can go into the lungs and and things like that so it can be really dangerous you never want to mix Xanax with any other kind of like alcohol essentially and this is something that Dr Carl Hart who's uh I love him to death he's brilliant he he speaks so openly and honestly about drugs and you know the guy's a professor of Colombia he said that there's two drugs that will kill you when you get off of them he goes it's alcohol and benzodiazepine those are the two that if you just wait the thing that Joe Rogan here is not doing Justice to at all and that's fair enough he's not a doctor or whatever is that although you can get withdrawal seizures from benzodiazepines and alcohol it can be avoided okay you you don't always get you know bloody withdrawal seizures it's very avoidable if you have a good drug and alcohol doctor or a good GPA or a good psychiatrist who taper you down lowering the doses of the benzodiazepines bit by bit every day or transitioning you first to a longer acting one and then lowering that dose and decreasing the frequency and with alcohol same thing with alcohol you go to a benzo and then you decrease over three to five days so just because you're drinking you shouldn't not stop drinking because you're worried about withdrawal seizures or just because you're on benzos you shouldn't not stop benzodiazepines because you're worried of withdrawal seizures you should just talk to your doctor and work with them to get on top of the withdrawal effects it's going to be hard it's the hardest thing you'll ever do in your life hands down you know and I'm sorry that people have to go through it um but yeah it's important not to take regular benzodiazepines for the rest of your life you'll die and or you wish you would meanwhile they're handing those things out like Tic Tacs oh yeah oh okay sorry that's not fair at all let me say one thing benzodiazepines have to be earned okay uh and what do I mean by that you you know benzodiazepines have serious risks I appreciate that completely but the serious risks in not starting benzodiazepines too if you're working in and you're having an a panic attacks and you can't sleep and you can't think straight because you haven't slept in two nights and your anxiety is seriously debilitating then that justifies the use of uh a benzozepine for a little while it just has to follow some key principles short term avoid it being regular you know try just going for an as needed basis um and if it is regular never for more than a couple of weeks to a month and you have to have the other medicine started as well as psychological therapies as well as healthy lifestyle interventions so exercise good diet and healthy sleep cycles and as well well as a less stressful job because if your job is causing this then you just this is the big thing people just never want to quit their jobs but I'm telling you if you've got a job that's stressing you out so much that you're having panic attacks and you need benzos maybe that's not the right job for you all right plain and simple but anyway all this to say that benzodiazepines can be indicated and used in certain situations I mean the treatment for a seizure is benzodiazepines you're going to use them right they're indicated you're not just going to let someone cease because you're worried they'll get addicted or whatever so if you use them in the right way you can avoid the risks of addiction um and tolerance but anyway let's keep going oh they were regarded as a safe substitute for barbiturates and you could easily overdose on barbiturates especially with alcohol when did they know when did they know when was it in the literature the difficulty of of detoxing yourself from these very recently really yeah Jesus Christ and when did they start being handed out 20 years ago more so what happened people just stayed on them often my I have one good friend that takes it every day and takes it oftentimes with alcohol which I know you're absolutely not supposed to do there's nothing I can do about it I this is a friend that I love to death and I just go I put my hands up and I go it's not a good deal and he's been on it for more than 10 years yeah yeah look I think a good point here is if people will need to want to change this is more like this isn't medical advice or anything this is more like friendship advice if you have a friend doing like drugs and alcohol in an unhealthy way you can only support them to do what they want to do and you can let them know though like to say you can't do anything is a little bit of a cop-out but you can say look mate you know what I think you're doing is dangerous and if you ever want to stop or if you ever need support or if you ever want me to come with you to a GP or a doctor to talk about your issues I'm happy to give you a lift I'm happy to support you um but you just let me know I've had that conversation with friends well I started taking them because I was Ill yeah you know and it they helped because I couldn't sleep I couldn't sleep at all I don't know I don't know what I still really don't it's very strange um you know for a mental health professional to not be able to know in what way they were ill and couldn't sleep no what happened you couldn't sleep and so an anti-anxiety medication do you think that any this is the one one of the things that I want to talk to you about through why I brought up the Fame thing how much of the pressure of being attacked by all these different people and having these um people write these uh horrible articles about you and I know you read that stuff which is different from me I don't read stuff about me and I think that's helped me tremendously and that like my gauge of how I deal with people is like Tucker Carlson doesn't read things about him either you could tell you can tell by the way he communicates he seems free you know there's a burden that people carry around when they read things about themselves like Eric Weinstein has that burden sometimes you know when people read yeah well part of the reason so did I read things about me well yeah but that wasn't what was stressful exactly when I first got I've had a history of depression and that runs in my family and that's probably stems back for me right to the time when I was a kid and and I think when I really got sick in 2016 it was partly a manifestation of that but at the time my job was threatened like actually yeah and my clinical practice was threatened and the Canadian Revenue Agency was after me all at the same time and they were after me because of a mistake they made which they admitted three months later and the college was after me because of a vindictive client who came after me with a pack of Lies but because they were so and that basically I emerged from that unscathed but that was by no means obvious that that was going to be the case I was accused of sexual misconduct and the evidence when I was dealing with this client I would turn my wedding ring around you'd spin it well I play with it right and that was sexual misconduct yeah well to her it was a signal of some dark underlying desire that I wasn't that was polluting our therapeutic relationship I've been doing that with you the whole conversation yeah I have this uh silicon wedding ring yeah what I'm going to report I'd report you a few you're in there yeah exactly do that yes well there you go it's it's really bad and if there was a college that governed the behavior reprobates like you I would definitely report no don't do that that's terrible stretch it out no that's Freudian to the extreme although I don't know what turning it means how could the stretching a silicone wedding band be Freudian while you're putting your finger in the little hole rubber kind of vaginas you know that's good one thing I one thing I do like about Joe Rogan is he's got like the status I guess to ask someone like Jordan Peterson what kind of vaginas he's dealing with that is crazy anyways we don't have to go there so that was all you had done was turn play with your wedding ring yeah yeah and I was really I really helped her a lot like well unfortunately when you're dealing with people that are extremely troubled oftentimes they look for external reasons why they're troubled and they find oppressors well she was also angry with me because when all this blew up around me it interfered with my clinical practice and she had come to rely on our weekly meetings oh and so she was she was angry about being abandoned and it was really sad because I didn't want to abandon my clients but I had to stop my clinical practice which was also very upsetting to me because I had like 20 clients and I knew these people man like they were I knew these people yeah you know I'd fold them through thick and thin and then all of a sudden so many things piled up around me that I found when I was in a clinical session that I was distracted so you can't be distracted in a clinical session right and so anyways what emerged from that and it was in the middle of the winter and I have seasonal affective disorder I couldn't sleep and uh seasonal affective disorder is kind of like a major depressive disorder that is associated with winter and the thinking is essentially that the lack of light because Jordan Peterson's Canadian so maybe they have less light in Australia it's not as big as a problem as some other countries but the lack of light during winter and the shorter daylight time um actually affects the biochemistry in the brain because as you may know light and melatonin have a cycle and light it goes into your eyes hits the pine stimulates the pineal gland to inhibits the release of melatonin and when light goes away the pineal gland releases melatonin and that's the hormone that makes you sleepy and if you disrupt a circadian rhythm it's a major risk factor for anxiety and depressive disorders in fact some of the antidepressants the new ones like a melaton is a antidepressant that works basically by hitting melatin receptors as well as some other receptors but you know it has its effect theoretically we think from its effect on melatonin receptors so interesting how that can improve depression but anyway that's a little bit about uh seasonal affective disorder oh for quite a long time and I went to my doctor and I said I can't sleep and he gave me a sleeping medication and and and an anti-anxiety drug and I took the a little bit of the anti-anxiety drug and I could sleep and my life was pretty stressful and I thought okay I'm much better I'm just going to leave this be this is working I'm not going to muck with it because I could barely go back to work and what was it a low dose yeah yeah I couldn't even feel Xanax really so it's just so it alleviated the anxiety but it didn't affect your cognitive performance or it didn't affect the world it didn't affect it as much as how sick I was like that's an interesting line he just said so that's so benzodiazepines do affect your cognitive performance okay they are associated with brain fog for some people um uh you know in certain people uh but what he just said it didn't affect me as much as my anxiety or you know the symptoms he was having without it and so that's what I mean by you've got to justify the risks of the medicine versus the risks of not taking the medicine it's not as simple as just being like Oh you took benzos uh psychiatrists are able for prescribing it because they're addicted they have addictive properties it's like no you've got to think about the risks and benefit guys really effective so sick meaning depressed no no when you say you're sick no no I uh when it hit um I if I stood up my blood pressure was really low if I stood up I'd faint I was fainting five or six times a day what are we talking about 2016. okay so this was when all the pressure from all these different sources was coming at you yeah so I mean just reading into that a bit if you're fainting posturally and you have a mental health problem a mental health problem by itself doesn't cause postural hypotension which is what causes this fainting um but mental health problems can cause you to have decreased intake Jordan peasants a pretty thin Guy this is all speculation by the way I'm just thinking through different possibilities so maybe he had decreased fluid in the oral intake and so then he was dehydrated and so when he was and so he's at increased risk of fainting benzodiazepines can also make you wobbly on your feet and increase the risk of falls in the elderly but he's not that frail that was making you sick so it was changing physically yeah that was part of it I think I think what it did was it it stressed me enough so that I was acceptable more susceptible to whatever was wrong with me in the first place so there's a lot of immunological problems how long did it take you to recover from the benzos well when I finally two years and and I haven't fully recovered but but also I was also sick no I have my left hand is quite numb and was way more numb both my hands both hands and my feet were like completely numb oh my gosh and uh I was in like excruciating pain for two years like pain at levels that I didn't even know was possible all the time or no on occasion no this is one of the things that was terrible about it is that it was really really bad in the morning and did it start right after you got off of the nox no but it got way worse so it just started showing up eventually yeah and then it started to get worse about the same time that Tammy went into the hospital but when because she was fighting her way through you know catastrophic cancer at the same time when this started down so this is additional stress yes and that heightened everything well it didn't it certainly didn't help right I think it made me again it made me more susceptible to something that was already happening so whatever this illness has that that's plagued my family my father my grandfather multiple cousins and and a lot of immunological problems on my mother's side too my one I had a cousin whose daughter died of immunological problems the same ones that Michaela had and this is all mitigated somehow and Michaela his daughter has a juvenile rheumatoid arthritis I think I read um but it sounds like he's just got this uh really bad luck with the family genetic disorder I mean benzodiazepines don't cause this pain in your hands I've never heard of that there might be some rare exception please leave in the comments if you've ever heard of it um but as he said coming off of them makes it worse and that's basically because Gaba and you know mental health in general modulates how you experience pain so if you are anxious or depressed you can feel pain much more intensely than someone who is not um and so they they can modulate it uh better uh so maybe coming off of it the withdrawal effects and everything is making his pain modulation affected and therefore he's experiencing that this kind of chronic hand pain that he gets uh what in a worse way um how interesting well how interesting guys um yeah look I think that's uh an interesting discussion to see uh you know this video has three million views so I think it's worth making a comment about um maybe being a little bit more nuanced than Joe Rogan and um and maybe just providing some of the context around why benzos are used uh you know it's just important to remember that medicine and Psychiatry and mental health is all complicated so statements like oh they hand them out like Tic Tacs it's just like nah bro you just you just don't get it that's all and uh yeah I mean dragon's an open-minded dude he likes to learn about lots of things so I'm not going to criticize him too heavily but um yeah that statement kind of triggered me and uh otherwise thank you so much for watching I hope that was insightful if you haven't seen the video on um my medication Mondays series you can check out I'm doing a new medication every Monday that's my goal um I'm making my way through a psychopharmacology textbook that I have as part of my Psychiatry training um and uh anyway I wish you guys all an awesome day please consider supporting the channel by leaving it a leaving the video a like and subscribing and sharing it with your mates or whatever and uh I need some inspiration you know I'm kind of I I leave some comments on what you want me to react to or what kind of videos you'd be interested in watching because I read those comments tonight and I make those videos um so if there's anything you guys have that you'd be interested in a junior doctor in Australia's point of view uh let me know otherwise have a wonderful full day and I'll see in the next one bye for now

Channel: Dr Syl

Views: 32,872

Keywords: Dr Syl, medical doctor, medical student, intern, australian doctor, aussie doctor, Dr_window_syl, reactions, reviews, mental health, psychiatry, psychology, demystified, explained, medicine, medical education

Id: DDfRDOorhDQ

Length: 21min 16sec (1276 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 26 2022