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No, I understand.
That's true.
I hope he is too.
Right.
I miss the old faces.
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I don't know if I saw the graph, but I've seen these numbers.
Oh, my God.
That's a problem.
Oh, Omri Betach is 185?
Always great.
Oh, no, wait.
Isn't that crazy?
Also, that history of smallpox goes back to the 6th century, starting in China.
That's 200 years later almost.
A whole lot.
Yeah, no doubt.
No, because some people love those characters.
He's a savage.
When I came home, I was like, fuck.
He definitely looked good.
Hey, guys.
More spread through.
Definitely.
It was very good.
Apparently, America can't eat it.
There's no time to wait.
I work with some really caring young people, men and women.
And the whole defund the police movement 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.
But that's a type of disruption.
And it should be handled carefully.
And Rick handled it like a master.
You don't know what's going to happen.
You don't know who you're interacting with.
You don't know if it's going to turn into a life or death situation.
I see people try to paint the job as a normal job, and it isn't.
And someone's got to do it.
Someone's got to do it because it's inherently a part of human nature at times for confusion to come through, for misunderstanding that leads to violence to happen.
He he made space for them.
Someone has to show up and handle that.
It's not a normal job.
So it was very interesting.
I mean, these were all ideas that weren't even on my radar until I met Rick at the Chiefs of Police Conference.
They get on my radar and they fire me up because this is what I want to do, right?
Because of my history, I'm compelled to step in between warring parties and get them to stop.
We can touch upon that if it fits into the conversation.
And then MAPS is able to get me into this research protocol and I'm able to get permission from my chief to experience MDMA.
There's a time and a place, right?
I have a mystical experience.
I have a mystical experience on film.
The segment when I'm... You can't make this up.
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.
When I take the blue pill, you know, Morpheus analogy there.
You don't want to take the blue pill.
You want to take the red one.
The blue one puts you right back in the matrix.
But I experience MDMA on film.
It makes it into Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind docuseries, the MDMA episode, right?
And I have a mystical experience.
So now I go back and I'm like, Chief, what the hell, right?
Our men and women need access to this.
If they need it, they should have access to it.
They still don't have access.
This is where I'm going.
This is where I'm going with this.
You heard about what happened with the FDA.
The panel that was supposed to decide the final step before medicalization was allowed said no to Rick.
What they said, they wanted more tests.
And I love that you did that because I tend to have to correct people.
They said, we're going to delay you and we want another phase three clinical trial.
But some of the things that came up I want to talk about real quick is they couldn't make sense of how good the data was.
You're going to use that as a reason to not go forward?
I believe that was part of the problem.
I mean, we can look this up.
But I believe that was part of the problem.
They also couldn't make sense of how do you make the prescription a drug paired with therapy.
They couldn't make sense of the therapy part because it would be the first prescription of a drug paired with therapy.
Why don't you tell everybody what your background is?
So I am currently a law enforcement professional at the rank of lieutenant.
So here's what I want to ask you about that, and I want to ask a science about that.
Is that a problem with the power and magic of MDMA, or is that a problem with where science is?
Well, it's a perception problem, right?
Out of Massachusetts.
Hey, how are you, Joe?
Look, you bring up something called the challenge of accessing safe supply.
I can tell by the accent.
People need to check their drugs regularly.
because the illicit supply isn't standardized.
My accent's going to kick in and on and off, on and off through this whole discussion.
And you know where I learned about this?
I think you'll get a kick out of this.
My promotional books, Studying to Become a Sergeant.
They actually have an entire section on what prohibition of alcohol cost.
And yet nobody applies that to other substances.
That's exactly where I was going.
And here's the muzzle part.
Why aren't officers allowed to talk about this?
Why aren't working officers allowed to talk about the problems with the war on drugs and how it's being waged?
Couple beers in and you really go.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I think it's programming.
You mentioned the programming from the Nixon time till now, right?
This is prohibited stuff.
We can't talk about it.
Not only can't we talk about it, but we can't think about it because thinking leads to behaviors.
So that's been about 15 years.
And if those behaviors are risky, out goes your career.
I'm also a therapist, a trained psychedelic assisted therapist.
Oh, it's great to see you.
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.
It's crazy and extremely tragic.
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.
It's great to be here, man.
It's gone on forever, right?
And they went into hiding.
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 in 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 in doors 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?
How did you meet Paul?
And I'm here to tell you,
It's hurting them and us.
I think I'm going to have to go a little bit further back for that.
Well, it's still happening.
Somewhere around 40 states have recreationalized or medicalized, so we still have work to do.
And if you look at the Drug Policy Alliance...
A few years back, we could look this up.
We're still arresting in the hundreds of thousands of people, nonviolent marijuana.
So I went to a little high school in Boston, Massachusetts, Newman Prep.
It's completely inappropriate.
The numbers are already showing it.
They're building up to a collapse.
People are going to get off the alcohol.
They're not going to be able to rely on the profits to be the same.
And then you know what else?
Cannabis is such a threat because it's a medicine.
That can help with such a broad array of symptoms and challenges.
What a threat to pharma.
Yeah, it's definitely that.
And when I graduated there, I was luckily accepted into Northeastern University.
So I go into Northeastern University in my 20s, and they ask you, what do you want to major in, right?
So Paul Stamets introduced me to you.
And who knows what they want to major in at that age.
I was like, let's study psychology, right, and get to know myself, figure things out.
Such a behavioral program.
What I mean by that is rats pressing levers, observable stuff, right?
It's still in place.
I wasn't getting what I was looking for.
So how did you meet Paul?
So I take a philosophy class.
I take a religion class.
Eventually, I take so many of those classes, I graduate with an undergraduate degree in religion and philosophy and a huge minor in psychology, right?
Drink if you want to.
I say the same thing about alcohol.
It's a depressant that's a carcinogen.
At that time as well, Northeastern is a co-op school.
Well, look, I think it was, as you said, there was intentionality behind what was done.
And when you don't have 50 years of creating an evidence base, you have a weaker argument for evidence.
So you go to school for six months, you work for six months.
And that was intentional.
That was intentional.
Joe, I mean, you brought this up, right?
Highly addictive, no known medical use.
We can go through the list of schedule one and we can point out which one it's a lie about.
Which one is actually anti-addictive?
You take psilocybin and you have an experience with psilocybin magic mushrooms, you don't want to drink.
We haven't been able to study that.
I was able to convince my co-op advisor to let me be a security guard in the nightclub industry in Boston for my co-op for school.
Ibogaine, you want to reprieve from your opioid use disorder?
Ibogaine will give it to you three, four months.
So look, look, those numbers are staggering.
Science can't make sense of it.
We're in an epidemic.
Well, we got to slow down.
Watch out for the risks.
We need to study these things more.
But there's harm in not allowing access to.
We got to talk about that.
So I was aware of Paul for quite some time.
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.
Okay, so five year program, I'm studying religion and I'm working as a security guard in the 90s in the nightclub scene in Boston.
Is it a sacred sacrament?
And again, we're talking we talk.
I don't want to talk poorly about alcohol.
I'm not talking poorly about these people should go get their rights.
But you can't have it both ways.
I'm talking to the government.
It isn't available without them.
And that was intentionally blocked out.
So, you know, we're hearing the stories about the really brilliant tech people, right?
You dig deep enough.
They've had some experiences with these things.
A large number of them.
And still do a large number.
So these things that are so dangerous or are we blocking up certain blocking out certain groups from having access?
And this is one of my primary things that I try to talk about.
I want the audience that's in law enforcement.
Why is this the case?
Why do I feel uncomfortable not talking about this?
I have a front row seat when ecstasy hits the scene.
Why do I feel uncomfortable saying that this sergeant who might be hurting needs access?
But people are scared of losing their career, right?
And this past Psychedelic Science...
I start working when it's high test stimulants and alcohol and I'm there continuing to work when the scene gets introduced to ecstasy, MDMA.
Maybe this is the way.
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.
They're all in that same category?
We've been stripped of our power to define what medicine is.
Have you heard people say community is medicine?
Well, ask a hardcore Western science model.
And they'd go, well, you've got to show us the evidence.
In terms of like how long you live.
Well, we can show that.
But is community medicine?
But this the point I'm trying to make is how did we lose the power to define what medicine is for ourselves?
I not only get to see how it affects people, but it affects the whole culture.
Community is medicine.
And there's the right.
Maybe the term medicine is the wrong term.
Maybe is good for you.
But why define medicine in such a rigid way?
Also, why only allow one methodology to create an evidence base for that medicine?
Let me give you an example.
And this is Paul Stamets.
I listened to him talk at Psychedelic Science 2025 where he said we should see the world through two eyes.
Western science and indigenous wisdom.
And they don't have to be attacking one another.
The time of extractionary capitalistic relationships with this living planet might have to be coming to an end.
And what's going to replace it?
These two eyes, they need to be in the same being.
The people at the clubs are no longer looking at each other like, who are you and what do you want?
They're saying hi and smiling.
And they were scared of that.
And, you know, I just made a comment about my belief system to you.
Who gets to experience and be with that or in that and of that?
That's Jimi Hendrix outside of the box, right?
That level of artistic expression, I think that's our purpose, right?
They're high-fiving each other when they meet up.
We pushed it into the underground.
And then we hijacked our law enforcement to show up as enforcers, kick in doors and take people to cages, right?
Members of our own community.
Our community and our law enforcement.
They're hugging each other.
So this is what I want to be clear on here.
I want law enforcement to ask why.
Why are we in this current moment?
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.
Why are we still arresting people for wanting a relationship with plants, cacti, fungi, animal secretions?
Are we protecting and serving our community members or industry interests?
I had that in my head in my 20s.
When you start asking these questions, think shake.
They made me into an activist, not only an advocate, but an activist.
So I got behind Massachusetts ballot question four in a very public way.
That was to decriminalize the psychedelics and create healing centers in Massachusetts.
43, 44% of adults voted yes, but it wasn't enough.
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 statehouse.
So I become a cop in my 30s.
I meet this police chief.
He notices that I think a little differently.
I see things a little differently.
My background's a little different than your typical officer.
He starts taking me to the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference every year.
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.
Exponentially growing.
And what is the media like to put out there?
Not media like this, but standard media.
This is a really important point, the IACP.
The algorithm is based on hate, fear, division, isolation.
It's a really serious, huge international conference with upper-level, chief executive-level officers there.
I mean, we're biologically created to worry about things that we fear.
And logically, I'll give you an example from my community.
I think about this all the time.
There's about 20, 25,000 people in my community.
Every day they wake up, they go to work, they interact with one another and go to bed.
20, 25,000 people with one or two issues that the cops have to go to.
People are wildly nice.
Yeah, for the most part, right?
And in control and okay.
There's this research article called The Clinician's Delusion.
I call it The Enforcer's Delusion, where your perspective gets completely warped based on the people that you continually interact with.
So when you're continually showing up and helping people in their worst moment, you think everybody's their worst moment all the time.
That's a dark box, a lonely, terrible box to be in.
I go one year when Rick Doblin's there.
Personal experience.
That critical incident amplified data set.
That activated nervous system.
It actually makes you rely on your biases more.
Instead of being able to check your biases, it actually listens to your biases more.
So an officer now is taught, try to slow down if you can.
So you can check your bias before you act.
Because you're amped up.
The quicker you act, the safer you'll be.
And that's through that automatic process near the brainstem.
He's presenting on phase two clinical trials the results for MDMA-assisted psychotherapy, its efficacy against treatment-resistant severe PTSD.
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 them get to this point.
That's how expensive it is.
Yeah, and then the cost of human life.
And let's take that thread back to what you said.
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?
That's really what happened.
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 1 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 1 is a fraud.
They're going to try to create their own.
Actually, I've shared this story before.
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.
Are they going to allow harm reduction into the treaty?
12 hours later, they're asking this country if it's okay and that country if it's okay.
I went, oh my God, you said snail's pace.
I think you said snail's pace.
At the moment that he was going to present, to the left was Rick Doblin and to the right was Donald Trump.
This is even slower than a snail's pace.
Change, having it happen, is painful.
Well, so the system that we have takes the power and then it doesn't want to give it back.
I'm not making this up.
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.
I sit in the front row.
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.
And the room that they gave him, this huge room, has 10 people in it because everybody went right.
It's the most radical thing ever.
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, as long as it doesn't harm another human being.
Let's talk about that.
How do we get to the point where people realize that that's the way it should be?
We wake the enforcers up.
We get the politicians to help create safe space for the exploration of these topics.
We meet up in conversation and break bread in safety.
67% of people with treatment-resistant severe PTSD had their PTSD pushed into sustained remission.
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.
This is the hero's journey.
Going into the darkness, like metaphorically and literally into the underground and coming back with the bounty, the realization.
The gold and sharing it.
That's a courageous act.
And, you know, I was able to access MDMA and I had a numinous experience.
I felt like I was surrounded by love.
I was gifted a gratitude that was big enough to hold everything that went into who I am in the present moment.
Let me explain that real quick.
If I accept myself wholly.
I have to accept my light and dark aspect as well.
I have to accept my traumas as well.
From how many experiences?
I have to expect my lineage's history as well, in its entirety.
I'm not saying something radical.
There's been books written about this by smarter people than I. MDMA helped me access that, right?
I've experienced ketamine.
Ketamine, I say, was like a luscious massage of my soul.
I think the way it was set up was like two or three.
I felt like the energy of my being was traveling in and out of my body.
And I had three energetic streams traveling with me.
My martial arts instructor periodically, my wife, and God.
On ketamine, it was unbelievable.
What do you mean streams?
So on ketamine, I felt like there was a bit of a disembodiment that occurred, right?
And we can label what that disembodiment is.
You know, there's a model to the framework.
It's a disassociative anesthetic.
People say it feels like their spirit, soul, or identity disconnected from their body.
But the energy wasn't just one.
I had remembrances of these three.
I felt like I needed to give gratitude to God.
Preparation, experience, space, experience, space, experience, and then integration.
I felt like the presence of my wife was with me and my martial arts instructor as well, Doreen Cogliandro.
And their energetic streams were going in and out of my body, and I could remember such joyous thoughts associated to them.
It was like a massage to my spirit.
And the thoughts associated with that massage and that peace and that sense of safety was there.
Ketamine lifts suicidality in minutes.
It just became a medicine approved for depression.
Why did that just happen?
Well, here's the thing.
How long were the people partying with it, right?
Well, you can get addicted.
Ketamine is addictive?
You can get addicted to ketamine.
Is it a psychological addiction or is it a physical addiction?
There might be a combination.
I don't want to purport to speak about it scientifically too much, but I've heard there can be a compulsion to use it.
And it can hurt your bladder if you go overboard.
I mean that's full disembodiment, right?
You're in another place and your somatic self has to be kept safe.
Well, they're doing a nasal spray.
So they're like doing it throughout the day.
That's the prescription I forget from what company for depression.
Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies.
I'm glad you did that.
Or even coffee, right?
Double espresso can become a quad.
Then you're drinking six.
Rick's presenting there.
I'm a happier person on caffeine.
I really enjoy that substance.
I'm in the front row.
Yeah, I have a hard time coming off of caffeine.
Yeah, I get headaches.
It affects my mood a little bit.
I like the caffeine.
I mean most of the world is having it in the morning.
And then most of the world is having a drink at night.
And I say, I have to help.
He says, why don't you tell me some stuff about who you are first?
We don't know because we can't try.
And that is the block of experimentation that's unjust.
You know what's interesting about cocaine is –
It's medically appropriate.
I think they use it for eye surgery.
So I can't off the top of my head remember if it's on Schedule 1.
I don't think it is.
You know what I mean?
I mean, we could look it up.
Well, here's the thing.
If it can be used for eye surgery.
So it would be interesting to see.
Yeah, so is it like a numbing agent?
Like, this is a guy in front of me shaking his hand and saying, I have to help with this.
I've heard that they've realized before it became a big issue that it's safe for eyeball.
And he finds out I'm a therapist, too.
And he says, the best way to help is to become a psychedelic assistant therapist.
Like they shut down the cocaine molecule somehow.
And then something of that still gets into Coke.
You'd never heard of anything?
Never heard of any of that.
You think they have original recipe Coke bottles at the factory?
I mean, what year was that?
What year was this again?
Man, it must be five years ago, maybe more than that at this point.
But they're still using...
Cocaine-free coca leaf extract.
So psychedelic science had a lot of Jewish practitioners.
Just working from memory.
It was Orlando, Florida, IACP conference.
You said something really important, Joe.
What an advertisement.
You hear the pop and the bubbly poured over ice right out of the fountain.
Psychedelic assisted therapist.
Oh, that's a beautiful advertisement.
Medicalizing a Schedule I substance.
How is this even possible?
That was all over caffeine content.
I was going to say, what's in a monster?
But the story gets even more interesting.
He gives me his card and he says, contact me.
And Coca-Cola led the battle.
The amount being in it.
What the heck is going on here?
At this point, I'm already telling my current, my retired chief what's going on.
And keeping it and controlling it and not giving it back.
And you've got to resist.
I'm meeting these people.
They had invited Palestinian practitioners in.
And MAPS gets me into one of the first interviews.
But listen, you made that decision for yourself.
And look, we know we were just touching upon examples of people having a relationship with a cocoa plant without it causing an issue.
MDMA assisted therapist trainings, a cohort of people that they trained on how to do this methodology with people.
Well, look, we're starting to talk about...
We're using the word legalization and saying there will be a problem with legalization for a time being.
Why don't we talk about decriminalization and regulation?
I've done follow up on police calls to people who said to me directly, I was trying to get coke.
I got fentanyl and almost died.
But but but but Joe, you're jumping to this next idea that we should probably explore, which is called safe supply.
And who should control safe supply.
But let me remind our audience and let me bring this back into the conversation.
Our police promotional books, we're not talking radical here.
Our police promotion books talk about the problem with prohibition and criminalization, unleashing gangsters and dangerous supply on our civilians.
And that's where the cartels come into play.
Do you ever remember any talk?
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.
And what happens with value when you make something illegal?
Shoots through the roof.
And the most violent come in and replace the less violent.
So what's safe supply or safe use room?
I would purport to say that a bar is a safe use room where you can get safe supply.
And how about we incorporate treating adults like adults?
Powerful education and decide who's going to control safe supply, because right now the most dangerous people on Earth control it.
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
Right then and there.
So working with this logic, Joe, right?
Because people sometimes make me out to be out of my mind when I say this stuff.
If the most dangerous, toxic, and carcinogenic is available...
And the least dangerous, helpful, non-addictive is not available.
Why do I sound wild when I say that?
There was Arab practitioners there.
And we can teach upon that.
And we can educate upon that.
I mean, look at the wonderful job we've done at kind of putting the reins on nicotine through advertisement and education.
as a healthy normal, because I'm an example of a healthy normal, right?
Well, I was told that those scientists were absorbed into the food industry.
Open a bag of Doritos.
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 that's the environment that we're in.
With some things and not others.
So there was a lot of...
I think that his work is leading to one of the first big kinks in the armor of the system.
And you speak to the value of the way that he did it.
You know what I mean?
We'll operate within them.
What kind of data do I have to create?
Well, let me make that data.
How do I access the compound?
How are you going to let me?
And if we don't know how, we need the rules.
And sometimes the rules weren't there.
And Rick and MAPS had to push, right?
And in our system, how do we battle?
What's the appropriate way to unleash violence?
It's with lawyers, right?
It's frowned upon to physically be violent.
He had to fight with the government.
And what really makes me nuts, Joe, is the amount of back and forth, again, I heard that they did with
The FDA with the regulators, they knew what they were doing, the design of the process, everything was being talked about.
And they get a let's wait.
You know, I mean, just from the ones I hold in my heart.
Look, I think that's a component, right?
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.
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.
Let's call that a flare up.
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.
education around sensitive topics happening, you know, and I was invited in just to be available to help people feel secure.
Well, let me throw something in there.
So there's an organization, I think it's called Exercise as Medicine.
But a mainstream medical doctor going to be able to prescribe exercise to somebody?
They should be able to.
Unless you're on the gym.
Join the gym yourself.
And you know half the people aren't going to go because they're scared.
They don't want to look goofy.
The other quarter who do go might not approach it correctly.
And blow out a tendon.
They can hurt themselves.
They'll hurt themselves.
It's a really interesting thing here.
So back to your question.
This is going to be a paradigm shifting thing.
I believe that psychedelic assisted talk therapy is going to allow talk therapy to live up to its promise as a talking cure.
I believe the psychedelics are going to be able to cure or push into remission a lot of these unshakable challenges.
And that's going to be a big hit to the SSRIs.
That's going to be a big hit to certain medicines.
You know what else I think it's going to do?
I think it's going to move people from agnosticism or atheism towards religion and spirituality.
And it's also going to be a boon for religion.
Which is wild to think about, right?
And it's a fascinating book.
I'll have to check that out for sure.
Well, you know what that brings up in me, Joe, is the sacredness of sexuality.
One, I don't know why that – what you just said triggered that in me.
And the other is what about every Sunday magically transmuting –
Bread and wine into flesh and blood of God.
This isn't a radical concept.
This is this is accepted.
This is like a billion followers strong.
Type of Christianity that is through sacred ritual transforming food into.
into the body and blood of god right right um 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
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?
It absolutely is wild.
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 it's like, what is happening in here?
It's like everything is alive.
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.
And those energetic forces are pushing me around right now as we speak.
And look, we're all ancient persons right now in this moment in time.
They were fighting and arguing about.
I can't wait till war is old technology that we all laugh about.
And Joe, you know, 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.
It's out there, right?
Have you seen that research?
How did we survive that?
Did we eat each other or hurt each other?
We probably helped each other.
And you bring up a point the woman might not have made it through the process itself.
And what an important process.
For the overall species well-being.
Trivialized or even still taboo.
I mean, look at what's happening with our life expectancy, like you said, and good medicine keeping people alive.
And we're living to be 80, 90 years old.
You know, the image that went through my head is somebody turning the TV off, maybe picking up a book.
And then, you know, there's a choice point here, Joe, where you can – 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
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.
It's miraculous if you think about it.
And the media zooms in on someone who doesn't have a house, someone who has an addiction problem.
Someone who's violent.
Someone who's violent.
Someone who's a criminal.
Someone who's stealing.
I heard a statistic that the military knows about 2%.
of people are sociopathic or psychopathic, they don't have that same conscience that we automatically assume a human has.
Right, they don't have any empathy.
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.
The mainstream culture, the laws that we operate under out of concern for the 2% rather than celebration of the 98%.
That do feel empathy.
Yeah, and the algorithm, Joe, like you brought up so eloquently, it takes you down the path that you click towards.
And I recall intentionally starting to click towards.
things outside of my comfort zone and follow thinkers and presenters not within my bubble.
And that's what it starts filling with as well.
ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire.
Are you going to be able to experience MDMA?
And that kind of speaks to the fact that we are lucky to be able to have access to social media in that way.
Because they think that it's important for the therapists to know what MDMA does.
There's nations that don't allow that type of access.
So the power, the power of our method is liberty and freedom.
Not criminalization and prohibition.
You see the jump I'm trying to make there.
And I think you're pointing at
something that's important to keep in mind is be careful about what you let in.
I think that's like a, that's a universal principle, but it's eloquently shared in Buddhism where they say, guard your Dharma gates, right?
I go back to my police chief and I say, chief, I'm not only gonna be able to be trained as an MDMA assisted therapist to help people with PTSD, because it matters to me, right?
Your eyes, your ears, your nose, your mind, right?
What are you taking in?
Cause you know, there's other philosophies that say thoughts are things.
Be careful what you think, you know?
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 been 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.
What were they worried about?
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 them.
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, right?
There's legal states.
There's less legal states.
I can talk to them about the substances, right?
I'm not prescribing.
But if you come to talk to me, I can listen.
See what I'm saying?
What are cops doing to themselves?
And I know from direct experience some things.
I'm also able to fight off fear and I can go into these territories with people.
Therapists need to know that themselves.
You don't want to step outside of the lanes that you're comfortable being in.
They're blowing their heads off, right?
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.
And I've gotten that experience.
I'm just in my process of awakening.
And I can share from that reference point.
You know, 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.
Yeah, any protests building up.
The suicide rate in cops is two to three times higher than the rate in civilians.
And legally, I'm allowed to talk harm reduction.
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.
Just a thing or two.
Decriminalized everything.
More cops are dying by suicide by the barrel of their own guns than attack on the street.
And be that on the streets.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So let me bring some things up about that.
So, you know, I believe in decriminalization, but there's a right and a not so right way to do something.
And I'm going to use examples of laws we already have on the book.
This might not be a popular statement, but it's my truth.
If you say you're going to decriminalize, you can look at the way we handle alcohol.
We don't allow public drunkenness.
We don't have to allow it.
A lot of places say you can't walk around and be inebriated, an open bottle drink, even the most liberal places.
They can protective custody you into a cage or they can help you get home.
Why don't those rules apply?
If you're in public, we can say we're not going to want you to use openly in public.
The way the media is portraying everything, that's not getting out there.
Well, we can agree that we don't want that.
And in many places, like there's local ordinances against that.
There's state level laws against that.
And we can go all the way up.
Well, that's the thing we can analyze.
Why wasn't the funding in place to ensure that public areas with public access followed some rules?
You know, I think that can be figured out.
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 right you have to take a shit over here we can all agree we don't want human feces over here right right that that's not a shot against that person we got to figure out what's going on why are they pooping over there not in the porta potty over here or how about have a location where those people can go that isn't a prison right where we have wraparound services where we have maybe access to what they need maybe access to what they're addicted to
So MDMA can help with that.
Now we're starting to talk about safe supply with care and medical intervention.
No one's ever done that successfully though, right?
So I've heard that Canada is exploring the medical access of medical grade heroin for certain people.
I'd say we're in an epidemic of suicide in first responders.
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.
Well, that's the example that we can have rules, local ordinances that say this isn't a campground.
And what do you need for this not to be a campground?
Come talk in this building over here.
We can even figure out what kind of – I mean, what's that going to cost?
We can figure that out.
And why isn't it being funded?
If that's the numbers...
And why aren't the police properly funded to act –
In a guardianship way in those situations, right?
Because look, our efforts go in the direction that our funding goes because people build their lives around that.
And if funding is 90% on enforcement, then that's what you're going to get.
And we talked about the problems and how hurtful defund was.
How about properly funding law enforcement to work in a guardianship paradigm for these situations that aren't necessarily criminal?
They might be public health.
Now you're keeping the cops involved.
You're not saying we're going to defund you.
You play a vital role in our society.
maybe that'll have to be incorporated in drips and drabs and carefully into training, right?
And we've seen, Joe, you've seen this.
But I got an example for you.
I got an example for you.
I think it's really important.
It's from where I come, right?
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.
You've had guests on that talk about this.
And I went and talked to the police chief.
I said – his name is Terrence Delahunty.
On patrol when I'm in, will you let me make a pile of work?
You've seen what the government allows when we're in an epidemic.
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 their 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.
Public safety connected with public health.
We created what I call the public, the police to public health pipeline.
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?
Not when it comes to compounds on Schedule 1.
What do you need to be well?
We don't want you to die.
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 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.
I think we have room to expand it across the whole country.
Police departments are repositories of information on human suffering.
You know what we're doing with that?
If it's not traditional enforcement-based policing to make cases for court, nothing.
You know what that is?
That's community policing.
We call it recovery-oriented community policing.
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.
Say something about that?
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.
Well, they can look up my name, Sarco Gergerian.
I'm out of Winthrop, Massachusetts.
It's G-E-R-G-E-R-I-A-N.
I'm out of Winthrop, Massachusetts.
Well, you know, the nature of the environment, right?
I'm a lieutenant with the Winthrop Police Department.
Joe, let me plug this in.
I am here speaking of my own beliefs, sharing about the positives, about my community, my department, the safety I found there.
Well, it's certainly a lie.
But these are my ideas.
I'm not purporting to talk on behalf of Winthrop Police, Winthrop Mass.
I just need people to know that.
But they can find me online.
They can get a hold of me at my work email.
I liberally share my personal email.
And if they send me an email, I'll respond.
How do they get your email?
You know, it's just my last name at gmail.com.
G-E-R-G-E-R-I-A-N at gmail.com.
And I need everybody to hear that.
Joe, let me say something back to you, man.
This was a really special moment for me.
I'm not only a colleague of yours, man.
And a number of close personal friends, one in particular, Billy Reinstein, who I love to death, said, tell Joe that he has helped me so tremendously.
His show has helped me stay well, be well, be happy.
Because men and women are dying and suffering needlessly at the level of an epidemic.
And I wanted to get that message.
And we're upholding a lie.
There's like wars going on across the world.
This is a psychedelic conference.
You couldn't have summed up the problem better.
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'm asking for their help because I'm active law enforcement.
And I got to tell you, Joe, we're muzzled.
Not only are our mouths shut, but our hearts are put in a cage.
Law enforcement aspiring to build a career in the system can't talk about this stuff.
They not only can't talk about this stuff, they can't do this stuff.
Possible protests, possible people getting overwhelmed with emotion.
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 what does that cause fight flight freeze fawn hypersexuality i dropped the last f right what does that destroy it destroys everything it destroys everything it destroys the human behind the badge right
You know, because in psychedelic science 2023, there was a situation where when Rick Doblin was on stage.
Let me paint a picture based on what you just brought in.
There's research out there that says the amount of critical incident exposure in an average law enforcement career is 200.
So 200 murders, suicide, car accidents.
Most civilians have five.
Critical incidents send people's lives sideways.
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.
How could that happen?
A group came in and disrupted his presentation and they were allowed on stage to speak.
How did that officer end up doing that?
Because it's a known risk of the job.
Five to ten years after retirement.
That's a dirty little secret.
So you strive to get to retirement.
You carry the dark underbelly of society.
And then you die five years after you get out.