A comment on Jordan Peterson's miraculous akathisia recovery:
The thing about the Peterson case is the family don't claim any med healed him, only diet and avoiding most medications while tapering off those he was on, and eventually coming off all of them.
A specific opioid (hydromorphone), that helped him so much, was used purely as a bridging measure to enable him to taper off all other medications, particularly a benzodiazepine, which can be almost impossible to taper in such cases, without causing a huge akathisia flare up, and then he tapered off it last.
The article suggests he is med free now, now that the hydromorphone and diet changes have done their job.
He tried many, many meds in his 3 years with severe akathisia, with only mirtazapine, and more significantly, hydromorphone helping.
If they had their time again they would have gone straight for the opiate after the initial akathisia set in, rather than experimenting with any other psych meds, which only triggered his akathisia more, his daughter said. Not only was it by far the most effective, but also turned out to be the safest of the medications used.
Not much is known of the value of hydromorphone and morphine (the two opioids she said were the best suited and easiest to taper from) in treating akathisia, a notoriously difficult condition to treat, in the medical community and there is much fear around opioids in general, which is unfortunate given their potential value in treating such cases.
Hopefully his tale becoming more widely known may help fill the information gap around opiod treatment of akathisia and help many people with this common and extremely distressing condition find help ftom their health providers, rather from suffering for months or years in pain.
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