As a student, he visited a maximum-security prison, where he was particularly struck by a convict with a vicious scar right down his chest, which he surmised might have come from surgery or an ax wound: “The injury would have killed a lesser man, anyway-someone like me.” He spent a youthful summer working on a railroad in Saskatchewan, with an all-male group that nicknamed him Howdy Doody, after the freckle-faced puppet. He once recounted in a Facebook post how he’d overheard a neighbor named Tammy Roberts joking with another girl that she wanted to keep her surname, so she would have to marry “ some wimp.” Then she turned around and proposed to the teenage Jordan. Growing up in Fairview, Alberta, Peterson was small for his age, which fostered both a quick wit and a fascination with the power and violence of traditional masculinity. The mystery deepens: What really happened to Jordan Peterson, and why has he come back for more? Peterson has now returned to the public sphere, and the psyche-splitting ordeal of modern celebrity, with a new book, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life-an intriguing title, in light of his recent experiences. He was revered as a guru, condemned as a dangerous charlatan, adored and reviled by millions. Peterson was, depending on whom you believed, either a stern but kindly shepherd to a generation of lost young men, or a reactionary loudmouth whose ideas fueled the alt-right and a backlash to feminism. The price of these rewards was living in a maelstrom of other people’s opinions. He had created an entirely new model of the public intellectual, halfway between Marcus Aurelius and Martha Stewart. For $90, his website offered an online course to better understand your “unique personality.” An “official merchandise store” sold Peterson paraphernalia: mugs, stickers, posters, phone cases, tote bags. His book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, published in 2018, sold millions of copies, and he had conducted a 160-city speaking tour, drawing crowds of up to 3,000 a night premium tickets included the chance to be photographed with him. When the story of his detox became public, in February 2020, it provided an answer to a mystery: Whatever happened to Jordan Peterson? In the three years before he disappeared from view in the summer of 2019, this formerly obscure psychology professor’s name had been a constant presence in op-ed columns, internet forums, and culture-war arguments. The coma kept him unconscious as his body went through the terrible effects of withdrawal he awoke strapped to the bed, having tried to rip out the catheters in his arms and leave the intensive-care unit. The Canadian academic, then 57, had been placed in a nine-day coma by doctors in a Russian clinic, after becoming addicted to benzodiazepines, a class of drug that includes Xanax and Valium. This article was published online on March 2, 2021. Illustration by Vanessa Saba photos by Rene Johnston Chris Williamson Getty
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