Recently, podcaster Mikhaila Peterson released a video updating viewers on her father, Dr Jordan Peterson, who she says suffered a severe medication-related injury.
In 2020, Dr Peterson was prescribed the benzodiazepine ‘clonazepam’ during a period of intense personal stress.
According to his family, the medication triggered a prolonged and debilitating reaction that left him with ongoing neurological symptoms.
In her latest update, his daughter says those symptoms have returned, despite him having been off the medication for years.
She describes episodes of akathisia—an extreme state of inner agitation—in stark terms: “the worst thing I’ve ever seen anyone go through… intolerable discomfort that makes people want to crawl out of their skin.”
She also recounts her own experience after stopping an SSRI antidepressant, saying the withdrawal lasted more than two years and left her, at times, unable to function.
Her account is confronting, but it is not unique. It reflects a pattern that has been described for decades and is often under-recognised.
The first time I heard about it
I first came across akathisia more than a decade ago while working on a documentary about antidepressants for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC TV).
I interviewed patients, as well as psychiatrists and researchers from around the world.
Many patients who had tried to reduce or stop their medications reported a cluster of symptoms—marked agitation, insomnia, and anxiety—that did not fit a straightforward relapse of their original condition.
In one conversation, a patient described the sensation as “unbearable,” saying she felt an urge to jump out of her skin and that it induced suicidal thoughts. The account was consistent with what others reported.
The documentary was researched for months, interviews were completed, and scripts were written. It reached the final stages in the edit suite before being pulled at the last minute.
The network was concerned about the public’s reaction—specifically, that the program might lead some viewers to question their medication, or even stop it—despite repeated messaging that these drugs should not be stopped abruptly and require medical supervision.
That decision censored real patient experiences from the public—especially those that challenged prevailing clinical assumptions.
What is akathisia?
Akathisia is still often described in clinical settings as “restlessness.”
But that description fails to capture the reality of the patient experience.
It is a severe, whole-body state of inner agitation.
It has been described in medical journals as “an intense inner restlessness and a compelling need to be in constant motion,” often accompanied by marked distress and an inability to remain seated.
Case reports describe a feeling of terror, a persistent sense of dread, and an urgent need to escape one’s own body.
This is why akathisia has been associated with suicidal ideation—not necessarily driven by depression, but because the sensation becomes unbearable, and death is perceived as a means of escape.
In some cases, symptoms can persist—a pattern now described in the literature as benzodiazepine-induced neurological dysfunction, or BIND, where neurological and psychological symptoms can continue for months or even years after the drug is stopped.
This has been described in cases like Peterson’s.
Akathisia is not limited to benzodiazepines.
It has long been recognised as a potential adverse effect of a range of psychotropic medications, including antidepressants and antipsychotics.
It is frequently described as ‘rare,’ but the volume and consistency of patient reports suggest it may be more common than often assumed.
Withdrawal and the problem of misdiagnosis
For many years, withdrawal from antidepressants was described as mild and short-lived. That position has begun to shift, particularly as more patients have remained on these medications for years.
Research now shows that withdrawal symptoms are common. More than half of people stopping antidepressants report some form of withdrawal, and a proportion describe those symptoms as severe.
The difficulty is that withdrawal symptoms—anxiety, agitation, insomnia, and despair—overlap with the conditions these drugs are prescribed to treat.
When a patient deteriorates after reducing a dose, the symptoms are often misinterpreted as relapse.
The medication is reinstated or increased, and the cycle continues.
Why tapering cannot be rushed
Patients are often advised to taper over a few weeks, but that is inadequate for many.
Mikhaila Peterson addresses this directly, saying: “If you have a doctor that suggests you wean off of a long-term psych med in two to four weeks — run.”
She argues that reductions need to be much slower and individualised to avoid severe withdrawal.
There is now ample evidence to support this approach.
Researchers such as Dr Mark Horowitz have shown that tapering, for some people, may need to follow a hyperbolic pattern—smaller and smaller reductions as the dose decreases—because of the way these drugs interact with receptors in the brain.
In practice, this can mean tapering over many months or years.
Guidelines from NICE and some medical colleges now recognise that withdrawal can last months and that tapering must be individualised.
Suicidality
Antidepressants are commonly prescribed to treat conditions in which suicidal thoughts may occur.
But in placebo-controlled trials involving children and adolescents, SSRIs were associated with an increased risk of suicidal ideation—approximately 4% on the drug compared to 2% on the placebo.
That signal led to formal black box warnings from regulators.
In other words, in the very population where these drugs are often used to reduce suicide risk, the trials detected an increase in suicidal thinking during treatment.
Separate experimental work has shown that even healthy volunteers, with no psychiatric history, can develop agitation and suicidal thinking when exposed to these drugs.
These findings do not apply to every patient. But they suggest that in some individuals, these medications can produce the very symptoms they are meant to treat.
That reality is still not being communicated clearly.
The gap that remains
After years of reporting on this, it is evident that people are not routinely given clear information about what stopping these drugs may involve.
They are told about the benefits, but are not given meaningful details about withdrawal, akathisia, the need for slow tapering, or the possibility of persistent sexual dysfunction after the medication is discontinued.
That is a failure of informed consent.
The Peterson case has brought attention back to a problem that has never gone away.
Patients have been describing these experiences for years — often dismissed, often misdiagnosed, often left to navigate it alone.
As Dr Horowitz suggests, if a drug can induce physical dependence and withdrawal, then a plan for stopping it should be part of the prescription.
Resources:
Inner Compass Initiative (ICI): theinnercompass.org
Prescribed harm: prescribed-harm.com
Antidepressant Coalition for Education: antidepressantinfo.org
Taper Clinic: taperclinic.com
Brisbane ACT Centre: brisbaneactcentre.com.au/tapering/
Further reading:
Quitting antidepressants can be tricky
Starting a medication is easy...stopping it can be much harder
Antidepressants can cause ‘chemical castration’
