We figured out that dad has a psych med induced neurological injury, and has been suffering from akathisia. It’s been 6 years since any psych medications. Last summer his symptoms started, after a flare up likely induced by mold (CIRS) and stress. It was complicated by pneumonia… pic.twitter.com/wPjAz4XsLT
— Mikhaila Peterson (@MikhailaFuller) April 18, 2026
April 19, 2026
Jordan Peterson and akathisia.
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44 comments:
I had to look up “akathisia”. Now that I know what it is, I suspect I’ll being seeing the word a lot more in future.
I have never used psych meds, but I know people who have and perhaps that is why I cannot sit still or stop my legs or feet from not moving. Or hands. Or...something. I always have to have something moving. My wife will be glad to know it has a name.
And so now, I think I can officially claim a medical disability and send my form into a website I read about in Minneapolis. They say I can get reimbursed for just having an address to go along with my claim.
Sounds like a pretty horrible condition to fight.
It seems great minds are, sometimes, just on the edge of failure. I hope he gets well.
It’s harrowing, what this family is going through. Thank you for posting. I have been wondering about Jordan’s progress. God bless him, and heal him.
I'm interested. Wish she would get to the point... Watched part of it. Scary stuff.
I've always said no to offers to get on anti-depressants.'
My doc pushes them a bit. In the past, I rejected her suggestions to take them. I told her depression is part of life and people should learn to cope. Like flowing down a river and hitting rough patches. My doc - and she is an OK doc - is like most docs, where a drug is often the solution. And drugs do offer solutions much of the time. My father is on statins and they have prolonged his life. back to anti-depressants.. I've always been skeptical. When I see ads on the TV for another drug to help fix the negative effects of phych/anti-depressant drugs - I feel vindicated in my decision.
I'm sorry for those who deal with chronic depression. Someone should crack the code on how to deal with it without drugs - and write a book.
22 mark - docs push more meds to cover the withdraw - and more damage is done.
I once took care of an old lady at the end of her life. One night she fell and hit her head. She was taken to the hospital, examined and discharged about 2 AM. From that point forward for the last 6 weeks of her life, I don't believe she slept even 6 hours total. She had a walker and she would shuffle around the apartment until she couldn't stand up anymore. Sit in front of the TV as long as she could stand it and finally would be too agitated to remain sitting and she'd get up again and go walkering around, bemoaning her condition. I couldn't sleep either with her up and around constantly, and it really wore me down. I'd beg her Please, please, just lay down for an hour so I can sleep. But she couldn't lay still, not even for 5 minutes. She'd cry out and throw the blankets off and say I gotta get up! I gotta get up!
This went on for 6 weeks. By the end her eyeballs were as red as cherries. Her family finally had a nurse come out who gave her a sedative that made her sleep, and she passed away a few days later never having regained consciousness.
6 weeks without sleep. I didn't think it was humanly possible.
28:25 + good info
I hope he gets well. And, I became increasingly curious about whether she has had collagen injections in her lips so that I was increasingly unable to pay attention to what she was saying. I had many feelings of internal restlessness about how petty I can be.
I still remember him talking about losing his parents and living remote from them. He mentioned that he knew he had only about a dozen more time of seeing them, over the course of a few years, before they passed away. I think they lived a bit longer than he thought. It helped me in dealing with losses in my family.
I also know what he had to do to get better the last time, and that required medical care in Russia, which is unavailable to him now. Canadian healthcare won't help him, because they'll just MAID him.
At some point - commie-care wont help anyone.
Benzo's are the cause and potential fix. That's perfect for Big Pharma. Of course, gut dysbiosis and leaky gut syndrome is a factor in neurological disorders. Fixing that takes work done everyday. And discipline and thoughtfulness. Something not many people can handle. Fecal microbiota implantation could possibly help but not a lot of research is being done at that because it cures so many different ailments that not create a trillion dollar market.
Rapacious capitalism care = big pharma+inflated prices
Commie care = Big Pharma + huge discounts
They're both bad but one just costs a hell of a lot more
Peterson's medication history is so out there that it's probably not generalizable. He was on Celexa, an antidepressant, for 20 years. He said it worked well for him, but he quit to rely on dietary changes. He then developed severe anxiety when his wife developed cancer, and he went up and down various dosages of benzos (Klonopin) for a while. He quit those cold turkey at one point, which is a really bad idea, and ultimately couldn't kick them. His daughter took him to Russia for some unspecified withdrawal treatment, and then to Florida to untangle him from the Russian treatment, and then to Serbia. Hard to tell what all he's been through.
CIRS is one of those naturopathic inflammation syndromes that conventional medicine doesn't recognize. As far as I can tell, Peterson's family is the first to tie it to akithisia.
I can personally attest to the utter havoc that benzodiazapines can wreak. Perhaps as a short-term drug to deal with acute alcohol withdrawal symptoms ("the DTs") but never for depression/anxiety and never, never, NEVER for longer than a week or so. Doctors who prescribe things like valium, librium, ativan, xanax and the like are quite literally killing people while believing they are providing care. Detoxification from "benzo" habituation can be as hard or harder than heroin withdrawal, and takes much, much longer. There is now, thank God a lot of literature documenting both the harm done by and the difficulty getting off drugs in the benzodiazapine family. It's the devil's own potion.
I'd've thought Peterson is the most naturally balanced person around.
Akathisia is a distressing neuropsychiatric movement disorder characterized by an uncontrollable, intense inner restlessness and a compelling need to move, often manifesting as pacing, rocking, or shifting weight. Primarily a side effect of antipsychotic medications, it is treated by reducing, stopping, or switching the medication, with options like beta-blockers or benzodiazepines, offering a good prognosis if managed early.
Rocking back and forth, now called "stereotypic movement disorder" was regarded as a sign or symptom of mental illness. Now you can get it from anti-psychotic medications? Is that like anti-depressants that can cause "suicidal ideation"? Tardive dyskinesia (medications for it are now advertised on television) is apparently related to akathisia.
Our health care system is so bad.
I remember him touting some sort of all meat diet that his daughter got him on. Feeling so much better. Right. Don't get me wrong though, I love the guy. But that was nuts.
Wince said...
I'd've thought Peterson is the most naturally balanced person around.
That isn't how it works. The reason he was so "balanced" was because he was constantly thinking about where he was and what he was doing.
The real problem is "akathisia" is a word to describe "something." But the people describing "something" aren't really any better thinking than the rest of us. I would say that the people who study this are university professors and they are the most self unaware group of people in the world.
Experts are really bad at describing things.
The real pain starts when these Experts start working with drug companies to fix "akathisia."
This whole system is fucked up.
Sounds like my much-medicated wife, except that she sleeps deeply for six hours or so once she comes to bed at 2 or 3am.
A sad story. Sincerely. I take it as a cautionary tale about psychoactive substances - notably pills. "Side effects" too often worse than "cure."
As to akathisia, I would drop the medication and go for meditation - moderate doses, supervised / guided, in group. Sit erect, balanced, immobile. Purpose is to flush the mind. Briefly examine rising thoughts. No remorse, guilt, or pride. Just evaluate, accept, go on to next.
(Full disclosure: my medical background is to favor Holiday Inn Express when we travel.)
Big Pharma - gives big bucks to pols like BERNIE SANDERS. (C)ommie.
It is a well-documented reality that individuals who rely on psychiatric medication to manage chronic conditions often face significant, and sometimes dangerous, challenges when attempting to live without them.
See Alex Rudakubana.
Always thought he was rather bizarre. Lesson learned. pharmacoligically weird.
Prayers for him and his family.
I am very suspicious of their explanation. Unusual side effects of any medication are...wait for it...unusual. Common things are common. It is much more common for people to blame psychiatric medications rather than all the other weird supposedly natural stuff they are doing. @ Temujin - sounds like a variant of restless leg. Magnesium is a harmless experiment in standard doses. But also, we are wired differently, and there are tradeoffs. This body phenomenon may be related to active mind. You may want to just live with it for that reason.
Most of the blaming of Big Pharma for everything that involves a medication is ludicrous. Most medications help, not cure, and are fine if you understand that. Everything has potential side effeccts, pay attention. All the supplements and special treatments are far worse, including "natural" ones.
Way back when, we used to call people like Jordan Peterson 'high strung', and accept them and adjust for their flaws, because they had a lot to offer, in spite of being peculiar.
I hope he recovers from this.
By the way, this is called 'diversity' in its native element.
Jordan Peterson has been on a strict carnivore diet (essentially only meat, primarily beef, plus salt and water) for many years. 9 years and counting. Not saying this is the cause but he is someone who goes to extremes. His daughter was first with the carnivore diet and she seems to be doing fine with it.
Watching him speak for many years, I never noticed any particular nervous physicality.
Victoria - - millions of people take anti-depressants. and many are being harmed.
Not that you would ever care.
Victoria prefers the intellect of Kamala.
It's fairly obvious (just based on TV ads) that the US is over-prescribed anti-depressants. I suspect more of this will come out.
Bill Gates has always rocked like a mental patient.
Every cure is a poison and every poison is a cure.
My wife took Prilosec for GERD. Low magnesium is a normal side effect, so she also took Mg supplements. About four months in, she started developing tingling in fingers and toes, that became significant neuropathy in her feet. This was eventually traced to B6 toxicity, because her "Mg" supplement also had a lot of B6.
If you're taking ANYTHING for ANYTHING, you better be paranoid.
All that was under medical supervision.
Medical Supervision
Estimates suggest that preventable medical errors, often referred to as medical malpractice or negligence, cause between 250,000 and over 400,000 deaths in the United States annually. These figures frequently place medical errors as the third leading cause of death in the U.S., trailing only heart disease and cancer.
National Institutes of Health (.gov)
National Institutes of Health (.gov)
+4
Peterson indulges in treatment fads.
That family just needs to make their beds every morning, and stop making excuses for their lazy feelings.
We are told that that family was a total mental basket case before taking these drugs, and we are told that that family is now a total mental basket case because the drugs taken six years ago had a delayed effect. And mold made them crazy. But meat made them sane, except that they are still nuts even though they eat meat now.
Got it.
Thoughts and prayers. Peterson is a good guy.
Howard, I'm going to rewrite your most recent copy and pastfrom whatever AI you are using, to show you why we hate the direct copy and paste.
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Fred, regarding medical supervision: NIH estimated between 250, 000 and 400,000 deaths per year due to malpractice or medical negligence (making this perhaps the third leading cause of death in the US.). So maybe medical supervision isn't all it's cracked up to be.
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See how much more readable that is? It sounds like it's part of the conversation instead of copy and paste from a f****** encyclopedia entry, It leaves out almost all the redundancy and blather including the double copy of the reference and the plus number whatever the heck that means, and as a bonus it also includes a sentence explaining why you think it's relevant to the conversation.
Surely you are capable of writing something like that instead of blindly copy and pasting as if you were Inga or Bich.
Like gluten "sensitivity", Long Covid, Morgellon syndrome, gender dysphoria, and several other trendy disorders, the notion that chronic diseases can be blamed on mold in our houses is an essentially psychosomatic illness that doesn't stand up to scientific scrutiny. There are certainly allergic hypersensitivity reactions that can be triggered by inhaling mold spores, but that's a very different thing than what the true believers claim.
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