Sarko Gergerian, a former Massachusetts lieutenant and psychedelic-assisted therapist, details his role at Psychedelic Science 2023, where he ensured safety for diverse attendees amid protests. His MDMA therapy for PTSD (67% remission) and ketamine insights—including addiction risks—spark debate on rapid FDA approvals. Gergerian links modern drug policies to historical suppression, like cocaine in Coca-Cola (9 mg/glass pre-1929) or caffeine in energy drinks (300 mg in Bang). He champions CLEAR, a Winthrop-based police-health pipeline, and psychedelics as tools for healing trauma, spirituality, and mental health—arguing prohibition fuels violence while decriminalization could restore balance. [Automatically generated summary]
And this past psychedelic science, I was shadowing people and working to help the people that went to the conference feel safe just because of the nature of the environment that we're in now.
In what way?
So psychedelic science had a lot of Jewish practitioners.
They had invited Palestinian practitioners in.
There was Arab practitioners there.
So there was a lot of education around sensitive topics happening.
And I was invited in just to be available to help people feel secure.
Possible protests, possible people getting overwhelmed with emotion.
You know, because in Psychedelic Science 2023, there was a situation where when Rick Doblin was on stage, a group came in and disrupted his presentation, and they were allowed on stage to speak.
And I think Psychedelic Science 2025 did a wonderful job hearing all the groups that wanted to be there and allowing them to have space to speak from their hearts and minds.
I'm also a therapist, a trained psychedelic assisted therapist.
And I believe, a lot of people believe I'm the first law enforcement professional who got a religious exemption at their place of work to access entheogens.
At this point, I'm already telling my current, my retired chief what's going on.
I'm meeting these people.
And MAPS gets me into one of the first MDMA-assisted therapist trainings, a cohort of people that they trained on how to do this methodology with people.
So you got to know what's going on, right?
I mean, when someone's on MDMA, they're different.
And you got to hold that.
You got to hold that.
But not only did they do that, MAPS contacts me and says, we might be able to get you into a federally sanctioned research protocol as a healthy normal, because I'm an example of a healthy normal, right?
Where you're going to be able to experience MDMA.
Because they think that it's important for the therapists to know what MDMA does.
So I mean, really?
I go back to my police chief and I say, chief, I'm not only going to be able to be trained as an MDMA-assisted therapist to help people with PTSD because it matters to me, right?
What are cops doing to themselves?
They're blowing their heads off.
Right?
The suicide rate in cops is two to three times higher than the rate in civilians.
More cops are dying by suicide, by the barrel of their own guns, than attack on the street.
Right?
The way the media is portraying everything, that's not getting out there.
So MDMA can help with that.
I'd say we're in an epidemic of suicide in first responders, if that's the numbers.
I think the problem is politically, it's very difficult to say what you're saying if you are anyone who is running for office or anyone who's currently seeking re-election, right?
Because it carries with this this taboo, this narrative that has existed since the 1970s that these are drugs that are ruining people's lives and it's going to waste, you're just going to waste away.
So I think what you're helping with is that I am asking for the politicians who can't speak up to help make safety for those of us who either can or want to.
I am asking for their help because I'm active law enforcement, and I got to tell you, Joe, we're muzzled.
We're muzzled.
Not only are our mouths shut, but our hearts are put in a cage.
But what they can do is keep their mouth shut until they get to the point where they put a barrel of their gun in their mouth, or they can go buy a giant bottle of whiskey and drink themselves into depression, divorce, divorce, divorce, subclinical depression, anxiety, disordered eating, disordered sexual practices, because you know, chronically activated autonomic nervous system.
So the first responder's nervous system is a carrier of trauma at a level unimaginable by most people, which is what you just brought into this conversation.
And then, so you got the gasoline, right?
And you got the match.
They fly off the handle and everyone acts surprised.
It's an unspoken issue that was really exacerbated during this whole defund the police shit that was going on a few years back.
Then you've got the demoralization, you know, and the fact that these people, not only they're not appreciated, but then they've been all turned into villains.
I work with some really caring young people, men and women.
And the whole defund the police movement was so hurtful.
It was so hurtful.
It hurt me watching them have to come to work and see them take the 911 calls for service and show up and do their best following the rules to make sure that that family or that person is okay and then come back and feel unappreciated and not understood.
So from your first introduction to this idea of psychedelic therapy, how long before you actually experience it and how long before you actually help other people experience it?
Because obviously MDMA has profound impacts on soldiers, the PTSD.
The studies have already been very clear, and MAPS has done an amazing job in explaining all that.
But the problem is a perception issue.
Okay.
And that this drug is also used by people who go to raves and wind up dying of heat exhaustion.
And people die because they hear they die of an overdose, which really they died of fentanyl poisoning because they're getting illegally sourced MDMA, which is probably not even really MDMA.
A lot of times it's amphetamines and it's cut with fentanyl and there's a lot of other shit in it and they wind up dying of an overdose.
Well, the real barrier is the fact that it's illegal.
That's right.
The problem is there is a demand.
And so when you have a demand and then you make it illegal for people to access, then what happens is outlaws step in and you get criminal organizations who sell it and they don't give a fuck about you.
There it is.
And they're used to killing people.
There it is.
They don't mind poisoning you and they don't mind if they're selling you something that's totally not what you're trying to get.
Well, I think we're in a very unique time now where the door is open.
And credit to Rick Perry, Former Republican governor of Texas, who championed the Ibogaine initiative here, and it's now become a thing.
They're going to start doing that, which is amazing and so beneficial for soldiers in particular.
People with extreme PTSD and people that are suffering from severe drug addictions and they don't understand why, and they're just fucked.
A lot of soldiers and a lot of really traditionally right-wing people are getting involved in psychedelics.
They're going to psychedelic retreats.
A lot of other soldiers that have had positive experiences and have gotten help are reaching out to their brothers and sisters, bringing them into these experiences.
That's right.
So instead of this narrative that psychedelics are for hippies and losers with no discipline, now you've got some of the most disciplined human beings on earth who are seeking these things out for help.
And let me take that narrative thread that you just brought in, and let's go all the way back to the times when the Spanish were colonizing this country.
It was actually part of the program to destroy the medicine and women, medicine men and medicine women wisdom keepers, which directly connects, I believe, to the war on drugs.
You go to Siberian shaman, they were silenced by the powers that be in those days.
It's just always been the case where people that take things that allow them to understand the methods of control that are being inflicted upon them and how to escape that.
And then they get a bunch of other people that follow them and they don't want to listen to propaganda anymore.
And then people go, hey, this is a real problem.
What's the cause of this?
Oh, it's these fucking dudes go to Elysis and they figure out life.
Let's bring that thread all the way to the present.
And I want to see if I can succeed at making this point.
And it has now hijacked law enforcement.
It has hijacked law enforcement.
And it moves law enforcement away from protecting and serving life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, and the First Amendment, religious expression, into industry interest profits without us even knowing it.
I'm not pointing a finger at any one law enforcement professional.
I'm challenging people to wake up to what's going on.
Because when we kick indoors and arrest black and brown people for having a relationship with a plant like cannabis and charge them and put them in a cage and lock them up and they weren't doing anything violent, we have to ask, who is this hurting?
And I'm here to tell you, it's hurting them and us.
So if you go back to the 1930s when alcohol prohibition ended, you have a bunch of enforcement officers that aren't doing anything anymore.
Then you have William Randolph Hearst, and then there's a machine, an invention called the decorticator.
And the decorticator allowed them to effectively process hemp fiber.
Hemp was always a very difficult Plant to process.
And when Eli Whitney, was it Eli Whitney created the cotton gin?
Is that what it was?
I think that sounds right.
When they created the cotton gin, now cotton took over for hemp clothing.
So cannabis, hemp, you know, the term cannabis, that was what canvas was.
So all paintings, the first draft of the Declaration of Independence was made on hemp paper.
It's a superior textile.
It's a superior paper.
It's a commodity.
You can take an acre of land that you're using to grow trees on that you process into paper, and it'll take you years and years to regrow the trees in order to have the same amount of paper in that area.
With hemp, it's instantaneous almost.
It grows very quickly, and within a few months, you have these plants again.
You harvest the stalks, you run it through the decorticator.
So in 19, whatever it was, 1930 something, cover of Popular Science magazine, hemp the new billion-dollar crop, because of this invention.
So this invention was going to, because hemp makes superior clothes.
I have a hemp jiu-jitsu gi that I got from this company called Datsura.
It's fucking indestructible.
My cotton gis, they rip apart all the time.
They're good for a year or two, and then they tear, and you got to buy a new one, or you just show up at class with a fucked up gi, which a lot of people do.
Hemp gis are way better.
They're just far superior.
Hemp paper, you grab it, you pull it, you tear it, you're like, this is crazy.
It's so much stronger than regular paper.
It's a superior product.
So William Randolph Hearst, who didn't just own Hearst Publications, he didn't just own this news empire.
He also owned paper mills.
So he also owned forests that he was growing trees in.
He recognized this threat from this new industry.
And so to combat that threat, he starts putting out propaganda pieces.
And then they coined the term marijuana.
So marijuana was originally a term, a slang term for a wild Mexican tobacco.
It had nothing to do with cannabis.
Cannabis, which had been used for thousands of years, and hemp, which had been used for thousands of years.
So then they started printing these stories that blacks and Mexicans were taking this new drug and raping white women.
And then you have the Reaper Madness films and all these propaganda films that show young people taking a smoke of marijuana and losing their mind.
So people act quickly and they pass laws, not even knowing that they're outlawing hemp, thinking that they're stopping this new drug, because most people are unaware of it.
Clearly, this is a time before the internet.
Very difficult to access information and understand exactly what's going on.
So they hoodwinked the entire world.
So Harry Anslinger, William Randolph Hearst, they all conspired to stop a commodity.
And that's what hemp was.
It had nothing to do with the psychoactive form of THC.
It had everything to do with hemp as a commodity that was threatening to the businesses.
Only just business.
And to this day, you can make hemp crete.
It's a superior building material.
It's flame resistant.
It's lighter.
It's stronger.
It lasts longer.
You can build houses with it.
You can make clothes with it.
Hemp oil is hemp seeds.
Not only are they good for you, they contain all the amino acids.
It's a superior protein source.
It's like hemp protein powder is fantastic for you.
It's like really good stuff in so many different ways.
And they put the kibosh on that in the 1930s.
And that, 90 fucking years later, is still this anchor around our necks that we're carrying.
Pull up that article, Hemp the New Billion Dollar Crop, because it's wild to watch.
Because this machine, this decorticator, before that, it was really, it was brutal, back-breaking work to take the hemp fiber and break it down because it's such a durable plant.
Like if you ever pick up a hemp stalk, a hemp stalk that would, this is a mammoth tusk, but this is heavy.
But if you had a hemp stalk that was this size, it would be incredibly light like balsa wood, but hard like oak.
American farmers are promised a new cash crop with an annual value of several hundred million dollars, all because of a machine that has been invented which can solve a problem more than 6,000 years old.
It is hemp, a crop that will compete with other American products.
Instead, it will displace imports of raw materials and manufactured products produced by underpaid, what does that mean, coolie and peasant labor, and will provide thousands of jobs for American workers throughout the land.
So that was the machine underneath it.
That's the decorticator, and that's this new machine that they invented.
And this is what it's all about.
It has nothing to do with marijuana was a real problem.
We were losing people.
No, people have been smoking marijuana and taking marijuana in edible form and, you know, the sadhus and taking hashish.
People have been using it for thousands and thousands of years without problems.
Yeah, but I don't think you should shut down Burger King.
Be able to get a fucking cheeseburger if you want.
And there's a lot of things that people can abuse.
You could abuse every single thing.
You could abuse cake.
You can abuse everything.
Human beings tend to abuse things.
That doesn't mean that they shouldn't be allowed to use it.
It's like a hammer.
You could build a house with a hammer or you can hit yourself in the dick if you're fucking crazy.
It doesn't mean we should outlaw hammers.
That's right.
There is a use for these things.
And it requires discipline.
And it requires an understanding of what the thing is.
Well, when you turn that thing into a Schedule I substance, when everybody knows that's not true, especially when you have a Schedule I substance That is illegal when there's things like alcohol that are totally legal that I support.
You should be able to drink.
I own a bar.
I don't care.
I don't drink anymore, but I feel like you should be able to drink.
And you need the freedom to be able to explore these things and find out what's right for you and wrong for you.
And you need the freedom to be able to run studies and get accurate information in terms of dosages and side effects and what sort of genetic issues that certain people might have that make them more inclined to be addicted to alcohol or addicted to cannabis or whatever their issue is, whether it's psychological or biological.
We need to have information to put a blockade on this in the form of prohibition is stupid.
And the fact that we're doing it in 2025 with all the information that we have available today, we have an abundance of information.
You also have to make sense of it in a time where things are prescribed and you can get them from a doctor that we absolutely know are addictive and highly damaging and kill people.
And then on top of that, Joe, we have the federal government giving permission to certain groups of people to access plants, cacti, fungi, animal secretions with permission and not others under a religious context.
You have to make logical sense as to why you're imposing these laws and then imprisoning people and taking away their freedom for not listening to you.
We're called To create an artistic expression of a unique life.
To me, that's what the divine is commanding.
That's what the divine gets to experience.
The more of us who get to live and be our authentic selves internally and expressing them outwardly, the more the divine gets to experience unique difference.
Well, the more possibilities there are for creativity, the more possibilities there are for people to rethink their lives, get on a better path, there's a lot that people are missing just because you've been hoodwinked and you've been led into this false narrative.
It really makes you wonder what would the world look like had they not placed that sweeping psychedelic act of 1970 and then impose those standards on most of the rest of the world as well.
That was to decriminalize the psychedelics and create healing centers in Massachusetts.
43, 44% of adults voted yes, but it wasn't enough.
It wasn't enough.
Well, listen to what I just found out before I came to your show today.
The Psychiatric Society of Massachusetts just endorsed or got behind three psilocybin bills.
They didn't get behind the ballot question, which failed, but they're now getting behind decriminalizing psilocybin measures that are at the state house.
It happens at a snail's pace, and it happens through back-breaking labor from people like you and Paul Stamitz and Rick Doblin and so many more who are doing the Lord's work, literally.
But this is, it's just a frustrating thing for a lot of people that know the truth behind this, that how many people it can help, and then how many people who are being damaged by these unfair, unjust, immoral, and illogical laws.
And if we bend it, if we bend it, if you take on one end the enforcers, right, which I believe are called to be peace officers and guardians, and the other end, the civilians, which are being split up into groups and pitted Against one another, and you bend them, everybody's getting hurt, and trauma load is exponentially growing.
And you know, Joe, when back to that FDA committee that delayed everything with MDMA, I ended up really, really sad for like three months because of what you just said.
A lot of people who will benefit from MDMA are not going to be able to access, not for a month or two, for years, for years.
At a cost that could hurt a person like Rick Doblin and Maps and Lycos and the philanthropists that help him get to this point.
Could you imagine the world we could live in if these things were available to people so that they could heal, so that they could dream, so that they can become their own versions of Jimi Hendrix?
It's really crazy when you think about it that one president and one administration changed the course of civilization because they wanted control and they wanted to stop the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement.
And I like that statement, course of civilization, because they succeeded at taking it on a road show into other countries through international treaties.
You know, this brings something up.
I was blessed with being able to go and speak on a panel at the United Nations, and it was put together by an organization called LEAP Law Enforcement Action Partnership.
I want to give a shout out to Diane Goldstein, amazing executive director of a wonderful organization of law enforcement that are trying to change these issues.
And we spoke about access for psychedelics for law enforcement.
And I was able to call out Schedule I at the United Nations, at the CND, Commission on Narcotic Drugs, and say, we need to do away with the schedule.
And here's the two things that I found out I wanted to get to this point.
The World Health Organization has now recognized that Schedule I is a fraud.
It's fake.
It's unscientific.
They're going to try to create their own, right?
And two, I got to see how they spend all day on a treaty focusing on one word across like 40 countries, whether they agree on that one word or not.
What was a word?
Make up a word.
Are they going to allow harm reduction into the treaty?
All day.
12 hours later, they're asking this country if it's okay and that country if it's okay.
Once they're lost, and this is what's really obvious about the 1970s Schedule I Act, because it's like we're dealing with the same issue all these years later, but it's not the 1970s, right?
So we have all the access to the data now instantaneously.
Well, so the system that we have takes the power and then it doesn't want to give it back.
This is what I'm hearing.
And then you've got to fight to give it back.
But you did indicate something, which I agree with.
Things are speeding up because of technology.
I mean, technology is involved in this show and us being able to talk to each other.
This is a miracle in and of itself.
People being able to share ideas at a lightning pace, influencing one another.
That's a miracle in and of itself.
But I want to bring up a point.
Maybe we can explore this together.
People are taking back their power and recognizing that the founding documents of this country are designed to protect the life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, and religious expression of the individual human being.
It's a sacred establishment that we're working under, but people don't realize that the individual, when they truly, sincerely believe what they're doing in this country, they can do it.
Public perception moves all those other things because then people will contact politicians and respond by not voting for them or voting people out that do have like this lieutenant governor.
He's politically in deep water because so many people have reacted so negatively to this draconian attempt to ban all THC products where people are like, why?
And you know, Joe, I want to give credit to the courageous people who are the carriers of this knowledge and wisdom by experimenting, learning, realizing, right?
This is the hero's journey, right?
Going into the darkness, like metaphorically and literally into the underground and coming back with the bounty, the realization, right?
Yeah, that's a problem with, well, that's a problem with everything, right?
You know, it's a problem with any, I mean, if you really need Adderall, you have like chronic fatigue and Adderall is the only thing that lifts you out of that.
But, you know, this is also the argument for coca leaves because coca leaves apparently is a superior stimulant.
It's just they chew it and they chew coca leaves and this is something that, you know, farmers and hardworking people in South America have been doing forever.
What year did they, let's find out what year they took cocaine out of Coca-Cola?
Because I remember the whole story for, I don't remember exactly the details of, like, how cocaine was in Coca-Cola for the first place.
But cocaine used to be prescribed, 1929.
So 1903, fresh coca leaves were removed from the formula.
After 1904, instead of using fresh coca leaves, Coca-Cola started using spent leaves, the leftovers of the cocaine extraction process with trace levels of cocaine.
And since then, by 1929, they've used cocaine-free.
And they're the only company, I believe, that's allowed to do that.
I think they're grandfathered in.
And how did...
Find that out.
Like, what's the story?
What is the story Of cocaine in Coca-Cola.
Okay.
Pemberton called for five ounces of coca leaf per gallon of syrup, a significant dose.
In 1891, Candler claimed his formula altered extensively from Pemberton's originally contained only a tenth of this amount.
So it used to be really juicy.
Coca-Cola once contained an estimated 9 milligrams of cocaine per glass.
For comparison, a typical dose or line of cocaine is 50 to 75 milligrams.
So it was like a mild pick-me-up, nine milligrams.
After 1904, instead of using fresh leaves, Coca-Cola started using spent leaves.
Today, that extract is prepared at a Stephan company, Stepan Company plant in Maywood, New Jersey, the only manufacturing plant authorized by the federal government to import and process coca leaves, which it obtains from Peru and Bolivia.
Stepan Company extracts cocaine from the leaves, which it sells to Mallencrock, the only company in the United States licensed to purify cocaine for medical use.
Cola nut acts as a flavoring and the original source of caffeine in Coca-Cola.
It contains 2 to 3.5% caffeine and has a bitter flavor.
In 1911, the U.S. government sued the United States versus 40 barrels and 20 kegs of Coca-Cola, hoping to force the Coca-Cola Company to remove caffeine from its formula.
Interesting.
That's interesting.
Court found the syrup, when diluted as directed, would result in a beverage containing 1.21 grains, 78.4 milligrams, of caffeine per eight fluid ounces.
The case was decided in favor of Coca-Cola Company at the district court, but subsequently in 1912, the U.S. Pure Food and Drug Act was amended, adding caffeine to the list of habit-forming and deleterious substances, which must be listed on a product's label.
In 1913, the case was appealed by the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati, where the ruling was affirmed, but then appealed again in 1916 to the Supreme Court, where the government effectively won as a new trial was ordered.
The company then voluntarily reduced the amount of caffeine in its product and offered rather to pay the government's legal costs to settle and avoid further litigation.
But the problem is, like, legalizing these things would cause a big problem.
It'd be a big problem.
If you just legalize them, there's a lot of people who would never try any illegal drug who would try a legal drug.
You know, if you made heroin, cocaine, you know, fill in the blank, all the different substances, psychedelic and otherwise, if you made them all legal, you're going to have a bunch of people that are going to have problems with these things that wouldn't have problems with them normally.
So it would be a period of time where it would cause damage.
And that would be really problematic for politicians, lawmakers, anybody who enforced these ideas.
You know, there'd be blood is on your hands.
but this infidelization of human beings, like turning them into babies that need to be controlled by the state.
That's the problem.
And we're in this problem, and the only way to get out of that problem is to tear the fucking band-aid off.
I saw, when I was a kid in high school, I saw a bunch of people that had cocaine problems, and I was like, I don't want to have anything to do with that.
But it's about these companies that added chemicals to cigarettes to make them far more addictive.
And he was a whistleblower.
He was a chemist that was working at this company.
Russell Crowe was playing this doctor.
He was a real guy whose life was threatened because he exposed that these companies had put a bunch of different chemicals into cigarettes to make them highly addictive, much more addictive than just plain regular tobacco smoking.
Well, that's the problem is that the companies that were getting Sued after it was determined that cigarette smoking does cause cancer, cigarettes are addictive.
Once they lost a bunch of money, they went out and bought all the processed food companies.
And now they made those more addictive.
And so now, like, you know, they even openly flaunted.
And if you want to increase their value through the roof, prohibit access after they've tasted them and let the cartels produce them in another country and try to get them across the border to sell to our people.
And there's also this fear aspect to it because if you go against it, you know, you're going to get put into a very bad position where there's people with enormous power and influence that want to silence you.
And this is why guys like Rick Doblin are so courageous, like, because he spent his entire life trying to do this the right way and doing it above board, by the books, and show through the use with police officers and military people and people experiencing PTSD that, look, this has extreme beneficial aspects to it that you shouldn't ignore.
And they're good for society.
And we should probably expand the use of them in an appropriate way.
So what kind of pressure do you think they're under to not allow these things?
Because that's the question.
Like, what is it?
Is it public social pressure?
Because if they do pass this, then they'll be scrutinized and people that are ignorant and that have bought into the narrative will then look at them as like, you're a part of the problem.
You're contributing to the deterioration of society by allowing this use of MDMA to push forward.
And by minimizing the risks of it, by talking about the benefits of it, you're essentially allowing people to think that it's a lot safer than it really is.
We were talking about public perception and that changing and then that pressuring and things changing as well.
I think this is a paradigm changing and shifting thing that the entire system, including pharma and all these people that are on these boards, these decision makers, power brokers, right, are trying to make sense of.
And I'll explain.
We have an identified disorder or challenge.
We have a medicine that masks that symptom.
This is going to allow people to truly heal.
When you truly heal, you don't have to keep taking a medicine.
You might have to come back to it periodically.
Sure.
Let's call that a flare-up.
Yeah, let's call it a touch-up.
But when you're not taking your pill every day, every other day, that's going to be a big hit to people's power and money.
It's a book that he wrote after he was one of the people that was contracted to decipher the Dead Sea Scrolls.
It was like a 14-year job where they were deciphering the Dead Sea Scrolls.
And he was the only one on the committee that was agnostic.
He was an ordained minister, but through his studying of theology, he started becoming agnostic because he recognized that there's just too many religions and too many parallels.
And like, what's the real religion and root of this all?
Or origin rather and root of this all.
So he wrote this book after 14 years where he's going to sort of paraphrase, but he thought that the entire Christian religion was based on the consumption of psychedelic mushrooms and fertility rituals.
And that this was what it was all about.
And I believe the book, because I've said this before, but I need to know it's true, was the book bought up by the Catholic Church?
I think it was bought up by the Catholic Church, and they stopped production of it.
And then he released a new book called The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth.
And that one was available.
But then since then, they've republished them.
But the big one was The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, because that was the one that was kind of very difficult to get.
And I have a couple copies of it, but they're original copies that I had to buy online.
It's a fascinating book because he translates or he breaks down the word Christ to an ancient Sumerian word, which was a mushroom covered in God's semen.
And this is what he's saying, is that they thought that when it rained, that this was God, his semen on the earth, which has caused all life to rise from.
We all need water.
And then plants, of course, need water.
And then after rainfall, they would find these mushrooms.
Because mushrooms grow incredibly quickly.
And they would consume these mushrooms and have these religious experiences.
And this was a hugely controversial book, of course.
And to really be able to know if he's right or wrong, you would have to have a deep understanding of ancient languages and the Bible and so many different things.
Just because we can understand that this is wood and a table and we've labeled it and boxed it and analyzed it doesn't mean that the mystery of it all has been stripped away.
And I don't think we need to allow that process to happen.
Right?
This is a magical, mysterious experience.
When we're staring at one another, just because we identify as human beings, do we really know what's happening?
Or is that ego inflation and science trying to dumb down a mystery and a magic?
We've become accustomed to the mystery, so it seems normal.
But, you know, if you didn't exist on Earth and Earth was a drug that you could take where you could experience life on Earth, you'd be like, this is crazy.
Being a human being interacting with people, looking at things through your eyes, hearing things through your ears, touching and feeling, smelling and using all your senses and navigating through this bizarre experience of life.
And what about that image of the Ouroboros, right?
The snake or dragon eating itself?
I mean, let's talk about sacred sexuality and the fact that every living thing is in a system that's eating and birthing itself continuously in all directions.
How do you wrap your mind around that?
You know, I got a big sense of that when I went into Old Growth Rainforest in Costa Rica for the first time.
And I touched like the handle of a bridge and it felt like it was moving because like every drop of everything is alive and everything is either competing, going along with and helping, supporting or eating one another in that space.
And I had that type of an experience on psychedelics in the religious context, psilocybin.
I felt like I dropped into the collective conscience and I got to see the partitioned section that was my psychic space where all my complexes and traumas were pulsing energetically into one another and how that energy was spilling over on my family and community.
That was the access that was given to me through psilocybin.
You know?
And those energetic forces are pushing me around right now as we speak.
But then you're dealing with different languages and control of resources, and then you have people that are leaders that have control over giant groups of people and then use propaganda.
And Joe, you know, when we, there's research out there that shows that for a period of time, our species ended up having something like 5,000 of us on Earth.
Yeah, like people had, people, people gave birth when they didn't know what a door was.
They hadn't figured out floors yet.
You know, it's like we're constantly in this process of evolving and changing and growing, but it just gets stifled by so many different aspects of civilization, so many different aspects of control and propaganda and manipulation and fear.
And then, you know, there's a choice point here, Joe, where you can, you, sometimes it's hard because there's things in the psyche that are manipulating what you're focusing on.
Traumas plus external factors.
But if you start focusing on gratitude, if you start focusing on the beauty, if you start focusing on the benefits of science, the benefits of operating in communion with other human beings, that thing that we said, I mean, how many people in Manhattan, right, every day waking up, they go to work, they go home.
Yeah, there's a handful of problems, but that's not how it's presented.
And it seems to me that we're so fear-based that we built the outer ecology that people have access to around concerns related to that.
We build the mainstream culture, the laws that we operate under, out of concern for the 2% rather than celebration of the 98% that do care, that do feel empathy, that do.
That's the problem with social media, and that's the problem with this addiction to devices, that you are constantly being inundated with the negative.
You're constantly interacting with the worst aspects of life on earth and not appreciating all the good that's around you all the time.
New discoveries, the James Webb telescope and new things that people are learning about quantum physics and all these different fascinating things that can enrich your mind and expand your understanding of the world that we live in Instead of dwelling on all the negative aspects of human civilization.
And I've come to notice, let's call it the CBT triangle, cognitive behavioral therapy or theory triangle, right?
Thoughts lead to emotions, lead to actions, right?
Because of psychedelic work, I've able to see how a thought actually is a portal that allows a certain energetic flow into you and that affects you and that can manifest in reality out of you.
Two things come to mind when you ask that question.
It's made me more empathetic because I've had direct access, direct experience of some of these theories you read about or have a teacher as the expert tell you about, I've had direct access to.
The second is I'm able to share with people when they come to me being pulled towards experiencing these things ideas around harm reduction, where to go.
There's legal states.
There's less legal states.
I can talk to them about the substances.
I'm not prescribing, but if you come to talk to me, I can listen.
See what I'm saying?
And I know from direct experience some things.
Right.
I'm also able to fight off fear, and I can go into these territories with people.
Therapists need to know themselves.
You don't want to step outside of the lanes that you're comfortable being in.
If you're not comfortable being in a certain lane, you've got to go get training, training and experience to be an ethical practitioner before you talk about something, right?
And I've gotten that experience.
It's never ending.
I'm not done.
I'm just in my process of awakening.
And I can share from that reference point.
As a therapist, that was your question.
That's how I think I can help people.
I'm more empathetic.
You come in and want to talk to me about a particular substance.
I have a little bit of a lived experience knowledge base I can share with you.
And legally, I'm allowed to talk harm reduction.
Yeah.
I can't prescribe.
I'm not going to tell you to do something illegal.
But if you want to talk to me about it, I know a thing or two.
And I think it was probably because the culture that had already been firmly established in that place condoned open-air drug markets, people that were addicted to fentanyl and opiates out on the street and methamphetamines out on the street, using them constantly, no education.
And then they just sort of opened the doors for everything.
And then people went there specifically because they could do these things.
But when you've already got people openly camping out on the streets and littering Everywhere, and like what they've already allowed, unfortunately, they need to clean that up first before they can say we're going to decriminalize everything.
Because you've already allowed people to do something that you know publicly is frowned upon, to just like be shitting on the street and to open drug use everywhere.
Have people camped out, homeless people like covering up sidewalks where you can't get around, and there's needles everywhere and it's like garbage everywhere.
So we realize that if we say full-scale decriminalization, anything goes, doesn't work, I would have told you right from the beginning, well, that's kind of freaky.
Why are we going that far?
Why don't we have any funding to help people and tell them, no, you can't take a shit over there.
Yeah, no one's ever done that successfully, though, right?
Like, has any state ever incorporated some sort of successful program where they gave people safe supply and then counseling and got like a percentage of them off drugs and healthy?
So I've heard that Canada is exploring the medical access of medical-grade heroin for certain people.
And we know that certain countries for years at this point have safe injection facilities where people can come to use their drugs under care and consideration and then leave.
We know these things work, but they've got to be curated properly.
In Winthrop, Massachusetts, Winthrop, Massachusetts, 10 years ago, when I was a patrol officer and I kept coming in seeing public health issues in the police logs and police incidents, public health issue, mental health challenge, a person not having access to their psychiatrist running out of their medicine, overdose save, overdose loss tragically, over and over and over again.
And I went talk to the police chief.
I said, his name's Terrence Delahante.
I said, chief, on patrol, when I'm in, will you let me make a pile of work?
Let's call it cases to investigate, because I think I have a detective fetish.
I've never been a detective, but I wanted to investigate things too.
He's like, then what are you going to do with that pile?
I said, I'm going to follow up in police uniform, patrol car.
I'm going to go knock on a door and have a conversation with somebody, see what they really need to prevent that 911 call for service.
He's on record saying he thought I was going to bang my head up against the wall.
He's like, there's no one's going to talk to this kid in full uniform.
But he was so excited, I had to let him try.
Two, three weeks later, I come back.
I said, Chief, I got a problem.
People are inviting me into their house, telling me to sit down, calling somebody down who's telling me that they were looking for cocaine, got fentanyl.
We have a good problem.
I got to connect these people to the appropriate help.
You know what he said to me?
He said, connect them to the public health department.
There's a woman in there.
Her name is Meredith Hurley.
And she's brought in people with lived and living experience with challenges related to intoxicating substances who are open about it to help with the overdose crisis.
Bang.
Public safety connected with public health.
We created what I call the police-to-public health pipeline.
Right?
Picture this.
A cop showing up to your house because they know what's going on in your house.
You called 911 and you told us without us even coercing you and saying, Joe, what's going on?
What do you need?
What do you need to be well?
We don't want you to die.
Talk to us.
We're not going to use it against you.
I'm actually not going to run you because I'm playing this distinct role.
I'm not going to run you.
I don't want to know if there's any outstanding warrants.
I'm not here.
I'm not here to snoop around to find something that I'm going to be able to charge you with.
I'm here to see what you need to not die and not have my detective show up and put you in a cage.
That started in Winthrop over 10 years ago.
It's called CLEAR: Community and Law Enforcement Assisted Recovery.
It's the way these problems are approached and that they need new solutions.
Solutions that are preventative and that enforce the sense of community and help law enforcement officers ingratiate themselves with these people and be a part of the community instead of just being a person who comes to lock them up.
Now let me plug something else in that I think is a sophisticated, important point that people got to keep in mind.
This isn't an attack on traditional enforcement type of policing.
If you are sensitive to human nature, you know there's going to be violations of the type that need somebody to show up and take a person out of their house in cuffs, put them in a jail cell, and take them to court.
Unfortunately, the dark side is a part of human nature.
And that type of policing done right is important and it keeps us well.
But when it's the only type of policing, we're missing something.
We're missing something important and special.
And our people are expecting our officers to show up and put a hand out, a hand, a helping hand and say, we know what's going on and we want you to be well.
We don't want you to die.
We don't want you to be in a cage, human being in a cage.
I think it is fundamentally law enforcement's role to do that.
I appreciate your perspective, the fact that you're willing to express it the way you do, and that you're willing to come on here and stick your neck out like this.