During a lengthy discussion with podcast host Joe Rogan this week, popular Canadian psychologist and bestselling author Jordan Peterson discussed a false accusation of sexual misconduct a troubled client made against him that happened around the time Peterson became a household name and experienced an increase in depression, which eventually led to an addiction to anti-anxiety pills.
“I started taking them (Benzodiazepine, a.k.a. “benzos”) because I was ill. And they helped, because I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep at all,” Peterson told Rogan on “The Joe Rogan Experience.”
“I’ve had a history of depression that runs in my family, that probably stems back to me right from the time I was a kid,” he continued. “I think when I really got sick in 2016 it was partly a manifestation of that.”
“But at the time,” Peterson explained, “my job was threatened, like actually, and my clinical practice was threatened, and the Canadian Revenue Agency was after me all at the same time. And they were after me for a mistake they had 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 … and basically I emerged from that unscathed, but that was by no means obvious that was going to be the case [at the time],” he disclosed to Rogan.
“I was accused of sexual misconduct. And the evidence? When I was dealing with this client, I would turn my wedding ring around,” Peterson said. “I’d play with it. … To her, it was a signal of some dark underlying desire that was polluting our therapeutic relationship.”
“I’ve been doing that with you the whole conversation,” Rogan joked, asking Peterson, “That’s all you had done?”
“Yup,” the “12 Rules for Life” author replied. “And I really helped her a lot.”
“She was also angry with me because, when all this blew up around me, it interfered with my clinical practice,” he revealed. “She had come to rely on our weekly meetings, so she was angry about being abandoned. And it was really sad because I didn’t wanna abandon my clinical clients, which is very upsetting to me.”
As things “piled up around me, I was distracted,” Peterson said. “You can’t be distracted during a clinical session.”
When Peterson started having increased trouble with sleep, he was prescribed anti-anxiety pills, he told Rogan.
“That was when all the pressure, from all these different sources were physically making you sick?” Rogan asked.
“That was part of it,” answered Peterson, who has been open about his past addiction to benzos.
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Source: Dailywire
