Jordan Peterson treated for tranquilliser addiction

Jordan Peterson was put into an induced coma in Russia during a ‘gruelling detox’ from a years-long addiction to tranquillisers.

Jordan Peterson was placed into an induced coma. Picture: Hollie Adams.

The Canadian professor and self-help guru Jordan Peterson is recovering in Russia from an addiction to tranquillisers after a retreat from public life, his daughter has said.

In a video posted online Mikhaila Peterson said that her father started taking benzodiazepines years ago after an “extremely severe auto-immune reaction to food”. After his wife, Tammy, had terminal kidney cancer diagnosed last April, his dose was increased, leading to physical dependence.

Withdrawal symptoms from benzodiazepines – nicknamed benzos – such as Xanax and Valium can include vomiting, panic attacks, insomnia, fatal seizures and akathisia – a sense of constant restlessness – which Ms Peterson said had driven her father to contemplate suicide.

After several failed rehabilitation attempts in North American hospitals Ms Peterson took him to Moscow for an “incredibly gruelling” detox. Shortly after arriving he was placed in an eight-day induced coma to fight a case of severe pneumonia. “He nearly died several times,” said Ms Peterson, who added that the next update would come from her father. “We are extremely lucky and grateful that he is alive.”

Ms Peterson said that the decision to travel to Russia had been made in “extreme desperation” but praised doctors there for having “the guts to medically detox someone from benzodiazepines”.

Peterson, 57, whose 2018 book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos became an international bestseller and was translated into 50 languages, is out of intensive care but has suffered physiological and neurological damage and is unable to type or walk unaided.

“He is on the mend,” said Ms Peterson, who achieved personal notoriety for advocating a diet of beef, salt and water to fight depression and arthritis. “He’s smiling for the first time in months.”

Mikhaila Peterson advocates a carnivore diet which her father also follows.

There are prescription drug crises in the US and Canada. At least 9.9 million Americans were addicted to prescription painkillers in 2018.

Peterson rose to prominence four years ago when he refused to address students by their chosen gender pronoun at the University of Toronto, where he teaches psychology.

He became a well-known opponent of transgender rights, political correctness, the concept of cultural appropriation and any movement to protect the environment, and drew huge numbers of online followers.

He has called Islamophobia a “propagandistic” term and claims that the “masculine spirit is under assault”. Those who confront him often face abuse and threats from his supporters, who venerate him as an intellectual hero of the alt-right movement.

Last July in a candid interview, he admitted suffering from chronic depression and said he was “distraught” at his wife’s cancer diagnoses.

Last March Cambridge University’s divinity faculty withdrew the offer of a visiting fellowship after a photograph emerged of Peterson with a fan who was wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “I’m a proud Islamophobe”.

Patricia Marcoccia, a filmmaker in Toronto who has co-produced a documentary about the professor, speculated that online abuse and clashes with journalists could have affected his health.

She told CBC: “Some people can take being hated better than others. I think it’s something that’s been particularly difficult for him.”

The Times