A Note on Jordan Peterson, BIND, & the Danger of Speculation

Over the past few weeks, several students and clients reached out feeling shaken and looking for clarity. Not by a sudden change in their own health or recovery journey, but by something they had watched or read online. If you've spent any time in the online benzo communities, you know this happens often. There's simply so much fear, speculation, and pseudoscience that it's a wonder how anyone makes it through recovery without feeling utterly paralyzed by fear.

However, this new speculation about Dr. Jordan Peterson's recent health issues wasn’t based on new science or new data.

It was pure speculation, delivered with certainty, about permanent brain injury and long-term fragility.

I want to address this carefully and clearly, not to attack anyone, but because fear spreads quickly in vulnerable communities, and when it does, people suffer unnecessarily. I've already seen several people throw into setbacks because their limbic brain (the Bear) catastrophizes over the perceived danger.

Benzodiazepines, Withdrawal, and What We Actually Know

First, let me clearly say benzodiazepine withdrawal can be severe. For some people, symptoms are prolonged and destabilizing. Anyone who dismisses that reality is not paying attention or is in denial. 

The medical literature acknowledges that a subset of individuals experience persistent symptoms after discontinuation, which we call protracted acute withdrawal syndrome, or BIND. Those experiences deserve validation, patience, and thoughtful care. Not gaslighting. 

What the literature does not support is the idea that everyone who has ever taken benzodiazepines is permanently neurologically injured, that benzos are a neurotoxin, cause brain damage, or that recovery is inherently incomplete.

There is a difference between recognizing suffering and turning that suffering into a permanent identity.

This matters immensely. 

Jordan Peterson: Facts Versus Narrative

Recently, a public figure, Dr. Jordan Peterson, experienced a serious health event. Almost immediately, some voices in the benzo space began speculating that this was evidence of benzodiazepine-induced neurological dysfunction (often referred to as BIND) resurfacing years later after Peterson had seemingly fully recovered and was thriving in his life.

Let’s slow this down and look at the bigger picture.

For several years prior to this event, Peterson had been functioning at an extraordinarily high level. He completed international speaking tours and delivered multi-hour lectures on stage without notes in front of thousands of people several times a week. He wrote and published books, built a university, and took part in countless interviews and promotional work. 

Dr. Peterson showed sustained cognitive endurance, emotional regulation, and executive functioning under immense pressure at a level that most of us can't even fathom. Most people (not just benzo people) wouldn't last a week with Dr. Peterson's schedule and obligations. Yet, he did it in such a way that it looked easy. 

He showed clear evidence of neurological and psychological stability over a long period. I even met Dr. Peterson recently at an event and spent a couple of hours with him in a private room with a small group of people. I spoke with him for several minutes about benzos and our new film, Lake of Fire. 

During that experience, I must admit, I was studying him a bit because I was also curious about how he healed. And let me tell you, I was utterly impressed. The man didn't show a single ounce of nervousness, anxiety, stress, emotional flatness, or anything of the sort. 

In fact, he appeared precisely as you'd expect a person of his caliber to appear. Calm. Cool. Focused. Friendly. Intuitive. Warm. He was clearly a highly functioning individual, and I saw absolutely no traces of BIND. 

In fact, when I spoke to him about benzos, he didn't flinch. He didn't grimace. There was no detection of trauma or any kind of negative emotion about the discussion. This alone is rare, and tells me he's done the work to heal, not just biologically, but from his own traumatic experiences. 

Yes. Dr. Peterson has experienced a recent health issue that's sidelined him. But let's dive into what we actually know, without the speculation.

His daughter, Mikhaila Peterson, has spoken openly about the circumstances surrounding his collapse.

According to her account, several factors converged around the same period:

She described significant environmental exposure, specifically suspected mold contamination, while cleaning out his father’s basement after his death. This exposure was framed as a trigger for a broader inflammatory or immune response rather than a psychological relapse or withdrawal phenomenon. But it also highlights a profound stressor in his life, such as losing his father. 

She also described a cascade of acute medical complications, including severe illness that progressed rapidly and required hospitalization. These events unfolded in the context of intense emotional stress, grief, physical exhaustion, and a body already under strain.

Notably, this account aligns with what is often seen in cases of complex inflammatory or immune dysregulation syndromes, sometimes discussed under umbrellas such as CIRS (Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome), where environmental triggers, stress, and infection can interact to overwhelm even an otherwise high-functioning individual.

What matters here is not the precise diagnostic label, but the broader point, that this was presented as an acute medical crisis with identifiable stressors and environmental factors, not as a delayed resurgence of benzodiazepine withdrawal or progressive neurological damage.His daughter, multiple times, openly stated this wasn't because of benzos or some new psych med injury. 

Serious illness can happen to people who are otherwise well. Stress, grief, infection, and environmental factors do not become “proof” of permanent neurological damage simply because someone once had a difficult medical history. 

That's absurd, and speculation from prominent figures in the benzo community is wildly unethical and irresponsible. 

Why the BIND Narrative Is So Tempting and So Dangerous

The idea that “you can be fine for years and then one trigger re-injures your brain” is compelling because it explains everything and demands nothing except vigilance. Moreover, our Bear (fear brain) naturally gravitates toward explanations like this. It prefers this narrative over rational alternative explanations. 

Emotionally, part of us also resonates with this, because we've been through hell. We've seen the damage that these meds can cause. We've seen horror stories online, and many of us have experienced setbacks. 

But psychologically, this creates a permanent state of threat monitoring. Every symptom becomes suspicious. Every illness becomes ominous. Every stressor becomes proof that something is fundamentally still wrong.

Benzo withdrawal becomes some kind of dormant bogeyman, where a person can be perfectly healed and functioning for years, then one day wake up and be back in acute. And while dysregulation can return, my friends, there's a much better explanation than bogeyman-BIND!

Feeding wildly BIND fears does not calm the nervous system. It trains it to remain on guard indefinitely.

Fear doesn’t just accompany withdrawal. Fear can become the withdrawal if it is continuously reinforced.

And that's not an opinion. That's a scientific fact.

When Fear Becomes a Business Model

Over the years, I’ve had many people come to me after pursuing help elsewhere, reporting that they spent extraordinary sums of money. I've heard reports as high as $60,000 and $90,000 in a single year working with a recovery coach and team.

Many described leaving more afraid than when they started. Some reported being placed on additional medications. Others, already off their benzos, reported that they were told that meaningful help would only be possible if they resumed benzodiazepines so the process could be “managed.”

This roped them into spending thousands of dollars each month in search of recovery. I’m sharing this based on what multiple individuals have independently reported to me over many years. Not my own speculation, bias, or because I don't like someone. That would be petty. 

What’s striking is that some of these approaches are publicly framed as treating catastrophic, permanent injury, while privately being described as relatively straightforward and largely anxiety-driven. I've seen this personally. I've had friends who were medical doctors or therapists tell me that certain coaches, behind closed doors, from one colleague to another, say that most benzo people are just traumatized and anxious, and that there are many medications that can help them walk right off their benzos. 

Naturally, these two narratives cannot both be true. And when such contradictions exist, the cost is paid not in theory, but in real human suffering.

In my opinion, for some coaches, fear becomes part of the business model. I can only speculate if this is a conscious move or an unconscious one. 

I've been in the online benzo community spaces since 2010. And I can tell you that I've seen a lot. I've seen grifters, trends, fads, and supposed miracle cures. Thankfully, these usually fade out before long, and the grifters pivot. 

Some even become psychics. True story. 

A More Honest Framework

A more honest framework allows for nuance.

Withdrawal can be severe and is rarely linear. The nervous system can become sensitized and wildly dysregulated. Symptoms can go on long after we take our last dose. Fear can amplify and prolong symptoms, and dysregulation can absolutely reemerge after periods of high functioning. 

But that is not the same thing as permanent damage, and we need not draw magical connections where they don't exist. That's not gaslighting. That's rational, scientific thinking.

What often lingers is a conditioned survival response, a system trained to anticipate threat and interpret sensation as danger. Over time, this conditioning can become self-sustaining. People can develop anxiety disorders, insomnia, depression, or obsessive rumination. The brain can learn these things and condition around them. People in the benzo spaces constantly downplay or overlook the profound impact that trauma has alone on recovery. Trauma-response isn't just about having scary flashbacks, but emotional flashbacks, where the nervous system quite literally emotionally remembers the fear and horror, then reactivates old dormant pathways.

When this happens, we say, "My God! This feels just like acute again! I'm going backwards!" And of course it feels like acute. It's reactivating the same damn parts of the brain, producing the same kinds of symptoms, emotions, fears, and reflexes. 

However, while all that is true... there's another truth worth highlighting. That our nervous systems are adaptive. 

They respond to learning, safety, and leadership. 

They recalibrate through experience, not through avoidance.

People are not permanently fragile. 

Recovery is not about living smaller. 

It’s about restoring confidence and capacity.

A Note to Those Who Are Scared Right Now

If you’re reading this and wondering whether a setback, an illness, or a stressful period means you are permanently damaged, pause for a moment.

Ask yourself:

• Am I being given evidence, or certainty?

• Does this message reduce fear, or multiply it?

• Does it lead me back into life, or into narrower and narrower avoidance?

Healing does not require perfect conditions. It requires safety, agency, and gentle, forward movement.

It requires breaking away from old, conditioned fear lies and teaching the limbic brain a new story. 

Closing Thoughts

I’m not interested in arguments or personalities. I’m interested in outcomes. Fear may attract attention. But clarity helps people heal. I've seen in countless people I've helped heal, and I've even lived it personally. 

My hope is that we begin asking better questions and stop mistaking catastrophic stories for truth. 

And perhaps be a bit more cognizant of those wolves in sheep’s clothing selling us fear and codependence. 

Dr. Peterson may very well have experienced a bit of a collapse. He may very well have buckled under his major life stressors, responsibilities, sicknesses, and grief. His nervous system very well may have remembered dysregulation and collapse from earlier experiences in his life, even benzo withdrawal. But that in no way means he is back in BIND, or that the benzo boogieman came for him years after he healed and was living his best life.

And it does none of us any good to entertain these assertions, and it does him and his family a great disservice. I can only hope that Dr. Peterson, his family, and YOU, are smart enough to know better. 

Until next time, keep going.