Introduction
Taken from JRE #1769 w/Jordan Peterson:
open.spotify.com/episode/7IVFm4085auRaIHS7N1NQl
Content
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 he said, 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, this guy's a professor of Columbia.
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 quit you'll, [, __, ] die.
And or you wish, you would meanwhile, they're, handing those things out like Tic, Tacs, yeah, well, they were regarded as a safe substitute for barbiturates.
And you could easily overdose on barbiturates, especially with alcohol.
Well, 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, not a damn thing.
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 there's.
Nothing I could do and he's been on it for more than 10 years.
Yeah, 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 know 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.
This is 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 he could dull.
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 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 relations, I've been doing that with you the whole conversation.
Yeah, I have this.
Uh, silicon wedding.
Yeah, what I'm going to report I'd report you a few later in there? Yeah, exactly 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 this stretching a silicone wedding band be Freudian while you're putting your finger in the little hole rubber, [, __, ], kind of vagin*s are you dealing with rubber? Is you know, that's good.
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.
So 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, 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, followed 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 at all 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 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.
Well, it didn't affect it as much as how sick I was like that really affected 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.
When are we talking about 2016.? Okay.
So this is when all the pressure from all these different sources was coming at you, yeah.
And 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 susceptible more susceptible to whatever was wrong with me in the first place, I have a lot of immunological problems.
How long did it take you to recover from the Ben those? Well, when I finally two years 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 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 what did it start? Right after you got off of the Xanax, 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 and same ones that Michaela had.
And this is all mitigated somehow or another by this only eating meat, I, don't know, it certainly is for Michaela.
And for you as well, I don't know that for sure I know what the diet has done.
