Jordan Peterson has been hailed as a ‘prophet of our times’ and ‘the world’s most important conservative intellectual’.
The Canadian clinical psychologist, best-selling author and ultra-influential public thinker revelled in his reputation as the ‘scourge of snowflakes’ and spiritual leader of the ‘manosphere’.
And for millions of his young male followers, who devoured his books and relished his combative podcasts and YouTube appearances, he embodied the sort of man they aspired to be – intelligent, self-reliant, assured and composed.
Although his liberal opponents dismissed him as ‘the thinking man’s Andrew Tate’, Peterson usually had little trouble trouncing them. To this day, his fans cherish his infamous clash with then-Channel 4 news presenter Cathy Newman as a masterclass in humiliating an interviewer who was determined to catch him out but not up to the task.
Even if they didn’t always agree with Peterson, his supporters admired him for saying the unsayable – on political correctness, on modern parenting and on how millions of young men were crushed by wokeness and needed to ‘grow up’. Some of his fans even attested how Peterson’s tough-love advice had saved their lives, sometimes literally as they struggled with depression and despair.
With his daughter Mikhaila, the telegenic Peterson, whose wild-eyed, scripture-quoting manner at times resembles that of an Old Testament prophet, even developed his own bizarre culinary regime: the beef-and-salt only ‘Lion Diet’ – a meal plan that was steeped in machismo and provided a certain two-fingered indifference to the horrified reaction it met from doctors and health experts.
Jordan Peterson’s supporters admired him for saying the unsayable – on political correctness, on modern parenting and on how millions of young men were crushed by wokeness and needed to ‘grow up’
Peterson’s daughter, Mikhaila, co-hosts a series on her father’s podcast in which they answer listeners’ questions
It certainly sounded like dietary madness and a path to an early grave. But according to Peterson and 34-year-old Mikhaila, his chief acolyte – who both claim to have spent years eating nothing else – it worked wonders, freeing them from debilitating conditions including juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and an autoimmune disorder.
When Mikhaila began the diet, ‘I had digestive problems’, and ‘the diarrhoea lasted six weeks’. But she claims that after surviving on beef, salt and water alone, no medication was required to treat her arthritis.
However, if Peterson’s followers were tempted to believe that nothing – not even a lack of Vitamin C – could vanquish their leader, they must now think differently.
A few weeks ago, his devoted daughter posted an update on her father, now 63 and living in Toronto, in which she encouraged friends and fans to pray for him in his hour of need.
‘Things are really bad,’ she announced solemnly. ‘He’s still very unwell but he’s not in the hospital. We’re working with great specialists in giving him more time to recover.’
She went on: ‘Thank you so much for your prayers – we need them.’
Mikhaila, who co-hosts a series on Peterson’s podcast in which they answer listeners’ questions, admitted that while he was ‘recovering’, ‘we’re still really not sure what’s going on – whether it’s an immune system issue, neurological or both.’
So what has happened to the once-indomitable culture warrior – an inspiration to millions, now seriously unwell at a relatively young age and clearly deeply troubled?
Could the pressure of the explosive rise to fame for a relatively unknown academic have been too much? And what role might the strong-willed Mikhaila be playing in his treatment?
After a spate of earlier health troubles, Peterson has been struggling for months – five of which he spent in hospital last year – with a mystery illness so debilitating that he’s cut off all communication with his flock, not posting to his six million X followers since last August. (He still boasts nine million on YouTube.)
Later that month, Mikhaila suddenly announced on Peterson’s X account that he was ‘taking time off everything’ after being diagnosed with CIRS, or chronic inflammatory response syndrome, a complex and serious illness with symptoms including inflammation of the immune system, ‘brain fog’ and fatigue.
Tammy, Peterson’s wife, credits her kidney cancer recovery with ‘rosaries that were blessed by the Pope’ (pictured, Tammy holding granddaughter Audrey)
A common cause is mould in water-damaged buildings and – two months later in another online update – Mikhaila confirmed that her father had been recently exposed to it when he helped clean out the basement of his own father’s house following his death, accentuating the alleged effects of ‘decades’ of previous mould exposure.
He’d already been suffering from neuropathy, or nerve damage, and ‘general weakness’ for several years and the CIRS worsened his condition, forcing him to contend with a ‘host of neurological issues’, she explained in October.
He ended up having to spend more than a month at the end of the summer in intensive care before being moved to another wing of the hospital, during which time he was ‘near death’ while battling pneumonia and sepsis. Family and close friends were unable to communicate with him.
Mikhaila added that Peterson’s condition was complicated because he was unable to take many medications without suffering from ‘severe paradoxical reactions’.
As for his ‘neurological’ symptoms, his family didn’t have a ‘better explanation’, she said, than ‘spiritual attacks’.
The past few months, she added, had been ‘terrifying’ for his family. Just to add to the drama, she said Peterson had been rushed to hospital on the same day that her new-born daughter, Audrey, was also taken by ambulance with pulmonary hypertension and ‘almost died of heart failure’, although her condition had since stabilised.
‘Every single day this summer and now fall has been like watching a movie,’ she said tearfully last autumn, adding that it had been ‘one thing after another in an otherworldly type of way’.
Signing off ominously with a verse from the Bible about humanity’s struggle against ‘the rulers of the darkness of this world’, she said she would be ‘keeping his message across his brand alive while he recovers – not letting demons get in the way of that’.
In her latest post a month ago, Mikhaila explained she wouldn’t be commenting again on her father’s condition until there were signs of improvement. She didn’t respond to requests for comment or health updates.
Last night, a friend of Peterson confirmed to the Daily Mail that there was ‘deep concern and genuine confusion among those who love him’ about what is really wrong with him and his prospects for recovery.
Not that our insider said they were particularly surprised that Peterson was so ill. For all his robust, ‘real man’ image, he has suffered from a litany of physical and mental issues. His tendency to burst into tears mid-conversation multiple times a day hinted at some of these woes.
In fact, Peterson did another health-based disappearing act a few years ago when he vanished for 18 months.
This was in 2019 when his wife of 30 years, Tammy, was diagnosed with what her doctors said was terminal kidney cancer – according to Peterson. The 60-year-old has since ‘healed’ from the tumour after being told she had only ten months to live and credits her recovery with ‘rosaries that were blessed by the Pope’.
Despite this, Peterson was devastated by the ordeal and his health started to fail, leading to him reportedly developing an autoimmune disorder as well as anxiety and depression. (Peterson has also claimed to suffer post-traumatic stress disorder from the years of hostility he’s faced over his political views.)
His doctors responded by giving him increasingly high doses of the powerful sedative benzodiazepine, but he became addicted, which he later said made him suicidal and schizophrenic.
As his daughter explained: ‘Dad started to get super-weird. It manifested as extreme anxiety, and suicidality.’
After several attempts to detox failed, his desperate family – led by Mikhaila – flew him on a private plane to, of all places, Moscow, where he was submitted to a radical treatment that Western doctors had refused him.
He spent eight days in a coma induced by doctors administering propofol, the ultra-strong sedative-hypnotic drug that killed Michael Jackson.
After months being shunted between hospitals and rehab clinics around the world (including in Toronto, Florida, Moscow and Serbia) he returned home, apparently cured at last.
The experience was so stressful for his daughter, who had bought her then husband, Russian Andrey Korikov, their nanny and three-year-old daughter along with her to Jordan’s clinics across the world, that her hair started falling out.
‘I thought, I’m f***ed if this goes badly,’ she said. ‘The entire world is going to blame me, because who brings somebody to detox from these medications in Russia? It’s, like, this is really bad.’
Indeed to many it must certainly seem that way. But what an extraordinary rollercoaster it has been for a life that began as relatively humdrum.
For years, Peterson – who was born and raised in the rugged province of Alberta by a librarian mother and a teacher father – flew under the radar in the psychology department of the University of Toronto.
He met his wife Tammy at just seven years old when he lived across the street from her and was in the same year at school. They have been married for 35 years.
Then, in 2016, he posted a string of videos on YouTube in which he attacked a proposed Canadian law that would ban discriminating against ‘gender identity and expression’. Peterson, who insisted he was objecting to the legislation on free speech rather than anti-trans grounds, said he was appalled by the thought he would become a criminal if he refused to call a transgender student by whatever pronoun they demanded. He later widened his attack to over-weening political correctness and identity politics in general.
His ability to hold his own against the barrage of abuse he received from outraged critics on the Left and his academic colleagues earned him rock-star status as millions flocked to his YouTube channel and sold-out lectures in theatres across the world.
He became a hate figure for those who recoiled from the idea that he was speaking sense. In 2019, he had his offer of a visiting fellowship rescinded by Cambridge University after its student union said his views were ‘not representative of the student body’. Two years earlier, a young female academic at Canada’s Wilfrid Laurier University was disciplined merely for showing students a clip of Peterson speaking.
But his notoriety has made him a fortune. In 2023, it was estimated that he had earned more than $89million – including $30million from his books and $51million from his lecture tours. No wonder his daughter, who is chief executive of Peterson’s company, Peterson Academy, now says she’s determined to protect his ‘brand’.
However, some contend that whether he returns to health or not, much of the glister has gone out of the Peterson star.
For even before his abrupt departure from public life, critics had complained about a marked decline in the quality of his utterances and arguments.
He was widely applauded for delivering sensible and valuable advice to young men in early best-selling books such as 2018’s 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote To Chaos, which he promoted with a world tour and which advised readers to ‘stand up straight with your shoulders back’, ‘tell the truth, or at least don’t lie’ and ‘make friends with people who want the best for you’.
Granted, some of the later tips were a bit odd – such as his typically rambling advice for buying lingerie for a girlfriend in his 2021 book Beyond Order: ‘You can find something to wear that is reasonably sexy in a men’s shop or a place that sells erotic clothing that is not too extreme and does not scream of poor taste and produce intense and counterproductive self-consciousness.’ But at least most of it was largely considered and useful.
But, of late, some have asked whether all the adulation hasn’t gone to his head. Was he taking those descriptions of him as a ‘prophet’ a bit too literally?
His book titles have certainly become more portentous, his most recent 2024 tome being called We Who Wrestle With God.
One British reviewer described it as ‘unreadable’ and ‘repetitive, rambling, hectoring and mad’. The author, he continued, ‘cuts a more raddled and wild-eyed figure with every passing chapter’ of a book in which he unconvincingly tried to argue that every children’s film from Aladdin to Harry Potter is rife with ancient allegorical meanings and rabbited on about the ‘biological reality’ of dragons.
Video footage of a debate the same year (2024) with scientist Richard Dawkins, in which Peterson bizarrely tried to make the same perverse claim about the mythical creatures, went viral – although in this case not for the reasons the acerbic culture warrior originally found fame.
As for, Mikhaila, she has gone through a similarly dramatic transformation in recent years. She once looked ordinary but now, with her new husband, Jordan Fuller, in tow, she has become a pouting, pneumatic peroxide blonde who recently celebrated the 2026 New Year by posting a photo on social media of herself posing in a very low cut, white fur outfit.
She was clearly taking a well-deserved break from worrying about her father. But for the rest of his vast fan club, a new year without word of their once so formidable idol is hardly reassuring.
