--:-- Joe Rogan: The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. What's up, Sarko? How are you?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Hey, how are you, Joe? Good to see you.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, it's great to see you.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: It's great to be here, man.
--:-- Joe Rogan: How did you meet Paul?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: So Paul Stamets introduced me to you.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So how did you meet Paul?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Yeah. So I was aware of Paul for quite some time. 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.
--:-- Joe Rogan: In what way?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: So Psychedelic Science had a lot of Jewish practitioners. They had invited Palestinian practitioners in. There were Arab practitioners there. So there was a lot of education around sensitive topics happening. I was invited in just to be available to help people feel secure.
--:-- Joe Rogan: What were they worried about?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Any protests building up.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Just because there were Jewish people and Palestinian people?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Well, the nature of the environment, right? There are wars going on across the world.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But this is a psychedelic conference.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're worried about protests breaking out at psychedelic conferences? Possible protests, possible people getting overwhelmed with emotion. 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.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, boy.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Right. But that's a type of disruption.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Right. And it should be handled carefully.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: And Rick handled it like a master.
--:-- Joe Rogan: What did he do?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: He made space for them.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, well, is that really the way to do it?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Well, it depends. There's a time and a place, right? 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.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Why don't you tell everybody what your background is?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Sure, sure. So I am currently a law enforcement professional at the rank of lieutenant out of Massachusetts. I've been in law... You can tell by the accent. My accent's going to kick in on and off through this whole discussion.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Couple beers in and you really go.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Yeah, absolutely. So that's been about 15 years. I'm also a therapist, a trained psychedelic-assisted therapist. And 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.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So how did your journey from being a law enforcement professional to someone who's involved in psychedelics take place?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Okay. I think I'm going to have to go a little bit further back for that.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: So I went to a little high school in Boston, Massachusetts, Newman Prep. When I graduated, 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? Who knows what they want to major in at that age? I was like, let's study psychology, right? Get to know myself, figure things out.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Such a behavioral program.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: What I mean by that is rats pressing levers, observable stuff. I wasn't getting what I was looking for. 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. So I'm a seeker at that time as well. Northeastern is a co-op school, so you go to school for six months, you work for six months. 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.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: So five-year program, I'm studying religion and I'm working as a security guard in the nineties in the nightclub scene in Boston. I have a front row seat when ecstasy hits the scene. 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. I not only get to see how it affects people, but it affects the whole culture. 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. They're high-fiving each other when they meet up. They're hugging each other. I had that in my head in my 20s.
--:-- Okay. 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. This is a really important point. The IACP, it's a really serious, huge international conference with upper level, chief executive level officers there. I go one year when Rick Doblin's there in Florida. He's presenting on phase two clinical trials, the results for MDMA-assisted psychotherapy, its efficacy against treatment-resistant severe PTSD. I can't believe it. At the moment that he was going to present, to the left was Rick Doblin and to the right was Donald Trump. I'm not making this up.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Right. So I go left. I sit in the front row. And the room that they gave him, this huge room, has 10 people in it because everybody went right. 67% of people with treatment-resistant severe PTSD had their PTSD pushed into sustained remission. Sustained remission.
--:-- Joe Rogan: From how many experiences?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: I think the way it was set up was like two or three. There's a model to the framework. Preparation, experience, space, experience, space, experience, and then integration.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And this is all done through MAPS, so it's all done in a clinical environment?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Yes.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Very controlled?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Very controlled. Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies. Rick's presenting there. I'm in the front row. I'm shaking. I jump on stage. I beeline it to him. I introduce myself and I say, "I have to help." He says, "Why don't you tell me some stuff about who you are first?" This is a guy in front of me shaking his hand and saying I have to help with this. He finds out I'm a therapist too, cop and therapist. And he says the best way to help is to become a psychedelic-assisted therapist.
--:-- Joe Rogan: What? You'd never heard of anything like that?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Never heard of any of that.
--:-- Joe Rogan: What year was this again?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: It must be five years ago. Maybe more than that at this point. Just working from memory. It was Orlando, Florida, IACP conference.
--:-- Joe Rogan: You said something really important. Psychedelic-assisted therapist. Medicalizing a Schedule One substance. How is this even possible?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: But the story gets even more interesting. He gives me his card and he says, "Contact me." All right, what the heck is going on here? 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.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So you got to know what's going on. When someone's on MDMA, they're different, and you got to hold that.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Are you going to be able to experience MDMA? Because they think that it's important for the therapists to know what MDMA does.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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." What are cops doing to themselves? They're blowing their heads off.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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. 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.
--:-- Joe Rogan: No, for sure.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: And we've seen, Joe, you've seen this. You've had guests on that talk about this. You've seen what the government allows when we're in an epidemic. Radical measures. Not when it comes to compounds on Schedule One.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Because it's federally Schedule One. It's supposed to have no medical use whatsoever and be the most dangerous and addictive of compounds.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's right. May I say something about that? It's a lie.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Well, it's certainly a lie. And I need everybody to hear that. Because men and women are dying and suffering needlessly at the level of an epidemic. And we're upholding a lie.
--:-- Joe Rogan: 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. Because it carries this taboo, this narrative that has existed since the 1970s, that these are drugs that are ruining people's lives. You're just going to waste away. You're just escaping reality. They're for weak people. They're for losers and addicts.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: You couldn't have summed up the problem better. Nicely done.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's a public narrative that's out there that unfortunately is going to take a long time to turn that battleship around.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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. We are muzzled. Not only are our mouths shut, but our hearts are put in a cage.
--:-- Joe Rogan: How so? What do you mean?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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. 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, subclinical depression, anxiety, disordered eating, disordered sexual practices. Because a chronically activated autonomic nervous system causes fight, flight, freeze, fawn, hypersexuality. What does that destroy? It destroys everything. It destroys the human behind the badge.
--:-- Joe Rogan: The issue is that police officers experience trauma on a daily basis that most people can't even comprehend. And it's not discussed. All that's ever discussed with police officers is when a cop does something bad.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right. 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, suicides, car accidents. Baby head crushed.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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. So you got the gasoline, and you got the match. They fly off the handle and everyone acts surprised. "How could that happen? How did that officer end up doing that?" Because it's a known risk of the job. You know when we die? 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. There's no time to wait.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's an unspoken trauma. It's an unspoken issue that was really exacerbated during this whole "defund the police" shit that was going on a few years back.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Then you've got the demoralization. The fact that these people not only are they not appreciated, but they've been all turned into villains.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's right.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right. It makes it worse. I work with some really caring young people, men and women. 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 family or that person is okay, and then come back and feel unappreciated and not understood.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Not understood. They were used as political pawns, openly by politicians who are still in office. It was pretty disgusting. And just short-sighted and a complete lack of awareness of the difficulty of the job. Because if you're around cops, if you know cops, it is an insane job. It's an insane job that you're asking people, just regular people, to go out and do on a daily basis.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right. That's right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: 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. Because it's inherently a part of human nature at times for confusion to come through, for misunderstanding that leads to violence to happen. Someone has to show up and handle that. It's not a normal job.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: 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?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Okay.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Take us through. You find out about this. You bring it to the department. What was that like?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Yeah. So it was very interesting. 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. 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. I have a mystical experience. I have a mystical experience on film. The segment when I... you can't make this up... when I take the blue pill. Morpheus analogy there. You don't want to take the blue pill?
--:-- Joe Rogan: No, I think the red one. The red one's the one that lets you see reality.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Okay, so I'm flipping the colors. The blue one puts you right back at the reality. And then, yeah. But I experience MDMA on film. It makes it into Michael Pollan's *How to Change Your Mind* docu-series.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, that's right. The MDMA episode.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: And I have a mystical experience. So now I go back and I'm like, "Chief, what the hell? 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. You heard about what happened with the FDA. And the panel that was supposed to decide the final step before medicalization was allowed said no to Rick.
--:-- Joe Rogan: What did they say?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: They wanted more tests.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yes. And I love that you did that because I tend to have to correct people. It wasn't a no. They said, "We're going to delay you and we want another phase three clinical trial."
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Right. Right. Right. But some of the things that came up, I want to talk about real quick. They couldn't make sense of how good the data was.
--:-- Joe Rogan: You're going to use that as a reason to not go forward? Is that really what they said?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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. That was the goal.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, isn't there also an issue with doing double-blind placebo-controlled studies? Because it's very clear whether or not you've taken the drug.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right. That's right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So here's what I want to ask you about that. Is that a problem with the power and magic of MDMA, or is that a problem with where science is?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Well, it's a perception problem. Because obviously MDMA has profound impacts on soldiers with 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. And that this drug is also used by people who go to raves and wind up dying of heat exhaustion. 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.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right. You bring up something called the challenge of accessing safe supply. People need to track their drugs. Because the illicit supply isn't standardized. It isn't safe.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, the real barrier is the fact that it's illegal.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: 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.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: There it is.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And they're used to killing people. 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.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right. That's right. 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.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: They actually have an entire section on what prohibition of alcohol cost. And yet nobody applies that to other substances.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's exactly where I was going.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: It's kind of funny. Tragically funny.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Tragically funny.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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? Why?
--:-- Joe Rogan: In America? Really? When you say you aren't allowed to, is it because it will hinder your career?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: I think so. I think it's fear. I think it's programming. You mentioned the programming from the Nixon time till now. 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. And if those behaviors are risky, out goes your career.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I think we're in a very unique time now where the door's 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 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.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: 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.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And realizing that there is strength in seeking help. It's not a weakness to take these things. And these things are not drugs in the sense of something that allows you to escape reality. They allow you to see reality through a completely different lens and that can heal you. And this is not something that has been a narrative before. This narrative is very recent. And this narrative, particularly among right-wing people, among conservative people, among disciplined people, hardworking, disciplined people, now they're realizing this is a tool that's been denied us because of a corrupt government. A corrupt government that was seeking to silence the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement in the 1960s. This was what this is all about and we are still dealing with this shit 60 years later, which is really crazy.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: It is crazy. It's fucking crazy. It's so crazy because we know the facts now. We know what started it. We know who was involved. We know the conversations that they had, why they did it in the first place. And yet the public narrative is still the same. The public narrative is still drug takers are undisciplined losers who are trying to escape reality. "I don't want my kids doing drugs." That same shit that you hear over and over and over again.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's right.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right. 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 men and medicine women, wisdom keepers, which directly connects, I believe, to the war on drugs.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's gone on forever. I mean, that's the Eleusinian Mysteries. The Romans silenced that. 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 who go to Eleusis and they figure out life. We've got to stop that."
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: "We've got to put a fucking kibosh on that." And then they spread all throughout the world to try to do it.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: There it is. 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. 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? And I'm here to tell you it's hurting them and us.
--:-- Joe Rogan: For sure. For sure. Because anyone who's a law enforcement officer that's arresting someone for weed, they know that they're not doing anything good.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Moral injury.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's a moral injury on the person that's actually being forced to enforce those laws.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right. That's right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Because you can't feel good about yourself. You're arresting some guy who's got an ounce of weed who's sitting at home with his wife chilling. That's crazy. And that went on for decades in this country.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Well, it's still happening. Somewhere around 40 states have recreationalized or medicalized, so we still have work to do. 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 for nonviolent marijuana.
--:-- Joe Rogan: They're trying to go backwards in Texas. The lieutenant governor is trying to go backwards and he's against the legalization. They're trying to ban all THC products. It's completely inappropriate.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: It's not just inappropriate. It's funded.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's funded by the alcohol lobby and they know that they're losing people from drinking alcohol.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: 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.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: I agree with you. 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.
--:-- Joe Rogan: What a threat to pharma.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: It's definitely that. One plant.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I know. And it's not just a threat to pharma. I'm sure you're aware of the original reason why it was outlawed.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Hit me.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Remind me. William Randolph Hearst.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: So William Randolph Hearst. 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?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: I think that sounds right. When they created the cotton gin, now cotton took over for hemp clothing. So cannabis, hemp — the term cannabis, that was what canvas was. All paintings, the first draft, 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. Within a few months, you have these plants again. You harvest the stalks. You run it through the decorticator.
--:-- So in 1930-something, cover of Popular Science magazine: hemp, the new billion-dollar crop because of this invention. This invention was going to — because hemp makes superior clothes. I have a hemp jujitsu gi that I got from this company called Datsura. It's indestructible. My cotton gis rip apart all the time. They're good for a year or two, and then they tear. Hemp gis are way better. They're far superior.
--:-- Hemp paper — you grab it and pull it to 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. He also owned forests that he was growing trees in. He recognized this threat from this new industry. To combat that threat, he starts putting out propaganda pieces. They coined the term "marijuana." Marijuana was originally a slang term for a wild Mexican tobacco. It had nothing to do with cannabis, which had been used for thousands of years, and hemp, which had been used for thousands of years.
--:-- Then they start printing these stories that Blacks and Mexicans were taking this new drug and raping white women. Then you have the "Reefer Madness" films and all these propaganda films that show young people taking a smoke of marijuana and losing their mind. People acted quickly and passed laws, not even knowing that they're outlawing hemp, thinking that they're stopping this new drug, because most people were unaware. 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. Harry Anslinger, William Randolph Hearst — they all conspired to stop a commodity. 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.
--:-- To this day, you can make hempcrete. 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 from hemp seeds — not only are they good for you, they contain all the amino acids. It's a superior protein source. Hemp protein powder is fantastic for you. It's really good stuff in so many different ways.
--:-- And they put the kibosh on that in the 1930s. 90 years later, it's still this anchor around our necks that we're carrying. It's still in place.
--:-- Joe Rogan: One asshole.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: One asshole in the 1930s who didn't want to compete with hemp and had this incredible power because he owned the newspapers. He started this all.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right. I'm tracking.
--:-- Joe Rogan: You ever seen that article? Pull up that article, "Hemp, the New Billion Dollar Crop," because it's wild to watch. This machine, this decorticator — before that, it was brutal back-breaking work to take the hemp fiber and break it down because it's such a durable plant. If you ever pick up a hemp stalk — a hemp stalk that would be this size would be incredibly light like balsa wood but hard like oak. It's like an alien plant.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: It sounds amazing. It's different than everything else.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So here it is. "The new billion-dollar crop. 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 coolie and peasant labor and will provide thousands of jobs for American workers throughout the land."
--:-- That was the machine underneath it. That's the decorticator. That's this new machine they invented. This is what it's all about. It has nothing to do with marijuana being a real problem. People have been smoking marijuana and taking marijuana in edible form — the sadhus taking hashish — people have been using it for thousands and thousands of years without problems.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Can you abuse it? Of course. You can abuse cheeseburgers too.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: I was just going to say that.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But I don't think you should shut down Burger King. You should be able to get a cheeseburger if you want. There's a lot of things that people can abuse. You can abuse every single thing. You can abuse cake. Human beings tend to abuse things. That doesn't mean 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 crazy. It doesn't mean we should outlaw hammers.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right. There is a use for these things. It requires discipline and an understanding of what the thing is.
--:-- Joe Rogan: 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 — I support that. 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. I drank most of my life. Drink if you want to. I say the same thing about alcohol. But it's not good for you.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's a depressant that's a carcinogen. It's also fun. Tipsy's fun. But the point is we need freedom. You need the freedom to explore these things and find out what's right for you and wrong for you. You need the freedom 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. The fact that we're doing it in 2025 with all the information that we have available today — we have an abundance of information.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right. Look, I think it was, as you said, there was intentionality behind what was done. When you don't have 50 years of creating an evidence base, you have a weaker argument for decriminalization. That was intentional.
--:-- Joe Rogan: For sure.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Joe, you brought this up — "highly addictive, no known medical use." That's a lie. We can go through the list of Schedule I and point out which one it's a lie about, which one is actually anti-addictive. You take psilocybin and have an experience with psilocybin, magic mushrooms — you don't want to drink. We don't know why. We haven't been able to study that. Ibogaine — you want a reprieve from your opioid use disorder? Ibogaine will give it to you three, four months.
--:-- Joe Rogan: What's that about?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: One experience has an 80% success rate. 80% of people don't go back to opiates. With two experiences, it's in the high 90s. 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." I can respect that. But there's harm in not allowing access too.
--:-- You also have to make sense of it in a time where things are prescribed and you get them from a doctor that we absolutely know are addictive and highly damaging and kill people.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's right.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Make sense of it to me. Cannabis is the easy one. It doesn't kill anybody. Literally doesn't kill anybody.
--:-- Joe Rogan: The LD50 rate for cannabis is bananas. You'd have to — it's not even physically possible to consume enough to kill you. Same thing with psilocybin.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Exactly. There's this research study — you'd have to eat a mushroom the size of this table. You wouldn't physically be able to consume it. If that even kills. That's LD50 — 50% of the population would die of an overdose from that. You wouldn't be able to consume it. Physically, you wouldn't be able to fit it into your body enough to kill you.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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. Is it dangerous? Is it not? Is it a sacred sacrament? Is it not? Is it a medicine? Brazilian churches taking ayahuasca.
--:-- Again, I don't want to talk poorly about alcohol. I drink alcohol. I'm not talking poorly about these people — they should go get their rights. More power to them. But you can't have it both ways. Not them — I'm talking to the government. 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.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's right.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Because you don't make any sense. Here's another part of the problem. A vast majority of the people that are pushing for these laws and want these people to be locked up have not had these experiences themselves. That's a big part. They don't know what they're talking about.
--:-- Joe Rogan: They don't know what these experiences are.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right. "These drugs are going to ruin your mind." Are you sure? Because I don't think they are. I think they open your mind up to new possibilities and expand your consciousness in a way that I don't think is available without them.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I agree. It isn't available without them. That was intentionally blocked out. We're hearing the stories about the really brilliant tech people. You dig deep enough, they've had some experiences with these things.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: A large number of them. And still do, a large number of them.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: So these things that are so dangerous — or are we blocking out certain groups from having access? This is one of my primary things I try to talk about. I want the audience that's in law enforcement to go: Why? Why is this the case? Why do I feel uncomfortable not talking about this? Why do I feel uncomfortable saying that this sergeant who might be hurting needs access? Say it. Bring it up. Talk. Go into your power.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But people are scared of losing their career. For talking about something. Losing their career because most people are ignorant of it.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: The only way that's going to change is you and I and other people continuing to have these public conversations where more people hear it. I guarantee you there's people listening to this right now that have never heard this before, never considered this before. Am I wrong? Do I have these deep-held beliefs that are completely ignorant? Why do I have these beliefs? What started them? Why do I have this in my mind as what this stuff is?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Exactly. There's a lot of people out there that are stone-cold, sober, disciplined people, think that's the only way. "This is the way."
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's right. And you know what? Maybe — "this is the way." That's your way.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: We're human beings. 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. The more possibilities there are for creativity, the more possibilities there are for people to rethink their lives and get on a better path. There's a lot that people are missing just because you've been hoodwinked and led into this false narrative.
--:-- There's also a problem with the term "drugs." I hear "drug," I hear "drugged." I hear someone is all fucked up and doesn't know what's going on. How are you putting all these things under the same blanket, including nicotine and caffeine and things that people use on a daily basis? These are all drugs.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's right.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: And then you have cannabis in there and you also have methamphetamine in that category. How do you have cannabis and methamphetamine in the same thing? How do you have psilocybin and heroin in the same group of things? This is crazy.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's right.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: How do you have industrial opiates? They're all in that same category? We've been stripped of our power to define what medicine is.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Have you heard people say community is medicine? Joy is medicine.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Oh, yeah, for sure. It is.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Ask a hardcore Western science model, is that medicine? They'd go, "Well, you've got to show us the evidence."
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Well, there is evidence that loneliness is worse than cigarette smoking in terms of how long you live.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's right.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: We can show that. But is community medicine? I say it is.
--:-- Joe Rogan: The point I'm trying to make is how did we lose the power to define what medicine is for ourselves?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Joy is medicine. Community is medicine. Maybe the term "medicine" is the wrong term. Maybe it's "good for you." But why define medicine in such a rigid way? Why only allow one methodology to create an evidence base for that medicine?
--:-- Let me give you an example. 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. They don't have to be attacking one another.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: The time of extractionary capitalistic relationships with this living planet might have to be coming to an end. What's going to replace it? Reciprocity, stewardship, care, community. These two eyes need to be in the same being.
--:-- It really makes you wonder: what would the world look like had they not placed that sweeping Psychedelic Act of 1970 and then imposed those standards on most of the rest of the world as well?
--:-- Joe Rogan: It would be radically different. I believe that it would be radically different. This is what they were scared of. The difference between the 1950s and the 1960s culturally is clear. It's evident in everything — the music, the artwork, the films, the cars, the design of automobiles. Everything changed. It changed because the culture was accepting psychedelics. It was a big part of it. LSD and psilocybin and marijuana and all these different things people were experimenting with. Out of that, you get Jimi Hendrix. You get this wild new form of expression that was radically different than music that appeared before that.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right. They were scared of that.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I just made a comment about my belief system to you. Who gets to experience and be with that and in that and of that? That's the divine. That's Jimi Hendrix outside of the box. That level of artistic expression — I think that's our purpose. You're right. We took that away. We pushed it into the underground. Then we hijacked our law enforcement to show up as enforcers, kick in doors, and take people to cages.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Members of our own community.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Who did we hurt? Our community and our law enforcement.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: This is what I want to be clear on here. I want law enforcement to ask why. Why are we in this current moment? Why are we still arresting people for wanting a relationship with plants, cacti, fungi, animal secretions? Why? Are we protecting and serving our community members or industry interests? When you start asking these questions, things shake. For me, they did. They made me into an activist — not only an advocate, but an activist.
--:-- I got behind Massachusetts Ballot Question Four in a very public way.
--:-- Joe Rogan: What is that?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's great.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, progress is being made. It happens at a snail's pace and it happens through backbreaking labor from people like you and Paul Stamets and Rick Doblin and so many more who are doing the Lord's work, literally. It's just a frustrating thing for a lot of people that know the truth behind this — how many people can be helped, and how many people are being damaged by these unfair, unjust, immoral, and illogical laws.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right. If you bend it — if you take on one end the enforcers, who 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. Trauma load is exponentially growing.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Exponentially growing.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: What does the media like to put out there? Not media like this, but standard media. The algorithm is based on hate, fear, division, isolation.
--:-- Joe Rogan: The algorithm is based on your interaction. Unfortunately, people tend to lean towards those things. That's the problem. The algorithm is not evil. The problem is human beings can be easily manipulated by their own ideas. These ideas they have, this inclination to pay more attention to things that outrage you.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: And fear.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And fear. Things that cause rage and fear and distrust. Unfortunately, things that you hate — those are the things you pay attention to the most. We're biologically created to worry about things that we fear.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: I'll give you an example from my community. I think about this all the time. There's about 20,000, 25,000 people in my community. Every day they wake up, go to work, interact with one another, and go to bed. 20, 25,000 people with one or two issues that the cops have to go to. That's amazing. People are wildly nice for the most part, in control and okay. But the problem is cops deal with the very small percentage of people that aren't.
--:-- Joe Rogan: There it is.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: There's this research article called "The Clinician's Delusion." I call it "The Enforcer's Delusion" — your perspective gets completely warped based on the people that you continually interact with. When you're continually showing up and helping people in their worst moment, you think everybody's in their worst moment all the time.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Of course.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's a box. A dark box, a lonely, terrible box to be in. To require officers to be able to escape that and have objectivity is crazy. Through what mechanism of the human mind allows you to ignore all the evidence that you see on a daily basis? Your evidence. Personal experience. That critical incident amplified data set. That activated nervous system actually makes you rely on your biases more. Instead of being able to check your biases, it actually listens to your biases more.
--:-- An officer now is taught: try to slow down if you can. Why? So you can breathe. Why? So you can check your bias before you act. Because you're amped up. The quicker you act, the safer you'll be. That's through that automatic process near the brainstem, not here.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's a dark predicament. A lot of people are going to fall victim before anything gets changed. I agree.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Joe, when that FDA committee 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 it — not for a month or two, but for years. At a cost that could hurt a person like Rick Doblin and MAPS and Lykos and the philanthropists that helped them get to this point. That's how expensive it is.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And the cost of human life.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: And the cost of human life. Which is compounded every year. And all the people they interact with — the butterfly effect of that.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's right. 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 could become their own versions of Jimi Hendrix?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: I know.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's really crazy when you think about it — that one president and one administration changed the course of civilization because they wanted control. They wanted to stop the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement. That's the fact. That's really what happened.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: I like that statement — "course of civilization" — because they succeeded at taking it on a road show into other countries through international treaties. This brings something up. I was blessed with being able to go and speak on a panel at the United Nations. 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.
--:-- We spoke about access for psychedelics for law enforcement. 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. Here's the two things I found out. 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. 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.
--:-- Joe Rogan: What was the word?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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. I went, "Oh my God." You said snail's pace. This is even slower than a snail's pace. It's painful.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Change happening is painful.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: It's incredible.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's what happens when people have laws and enforce those laws, and someone comes along and says those laws are unjust. It's very difficult to get back rights that you've already lost. Very difficult. Once they're lost — and this is what's really obvious about the 1970s Schedule I Act — it's like we're dealing with the same issue all these years later, but it's not the 1970s. We have all the access to the data now instantaneously. You could pull it up on ChatGPT right now, instantaneously. There's no excuse for it. Yet it's still difficult to get these laws changed. Insanely difficult. It takes so much time.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: The system that we have takes the power and then it doesn't want to give it back. 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. 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 the most radical thing ever.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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. It's that simple.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's what it should be. Let's talk about that. How do we get to the point where people realize that's the way it should be?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I think the big thing is public perception. 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 is politically in deep water because so many people have reacted so negatively to this Draconian attempt to ban all THC products. People are like, "Why? What are you doing? And what are you being paid by?"
--:-- Joe Rogan: Like what lobbies are enforcing this idea? Like, what? Where is this coming from?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Right. Right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So it weakens his position.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Yeah. Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, it's going to weaken his career. And rightly so. It should. He's on the wrong side of history.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: There it is. There it is. Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And the public perception has changed. It's changed pretty radically. And I credit the internet with that because over the last 20 years, you've seen this massive shift in this idea that psychedelics are dangerous, you could lose your mind, to, "Hey, that's how my uncle quit smoking. Hey, that's how my aunt got off of opiates." And everyone knows somebody that's had positive experiences, that was deeply depressed and now is a different person. And they're so much happier and healthier because of it. And so the narrative publicly has shifted.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Has shifted.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And a lot of it is because of conversations. And a lot of it is because of podcasts. A lot of it is access to information. There's plenty of online documentaries about it now.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right. That's right. 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. The gold and sharing it. Yeah. And having the courage. That's a courageous act.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, especially if you're in a business like yourself, like law enforcement, you know, where it's like that's a forbidden topic.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right. That's right. That's right. 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, wholly, completely, I have to accept my light and dark aspect as well. I have to accept my traumas as well. I have to accept 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 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.
--:-- Joe Rogan: What do you mean "streams"? Like in what way? Energetic streams?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: So on ketamine, I felt like there was a bit of a disembodiment that occurred, right? And we can label what that disembodiment is. It's a dissociative anesthetic. People say it feels like their spirit, soul, or identity disconnected from their body. I had that happen, but the energy wasn't just one. I had remembrances of these three. I felt like I needed to give gratitude to God. I felt like the presence of my wife was with me and my martial arts instructor as well, Doreen Cogliandro. And her energetic, 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, you know, 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? That's weird. Why did that just happen?
--:-- Joe Rogan: I don't know. Well, it's been going on for quite a bit. I mean, I know people in Los Angeles were doing it a decade ago.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Well, here's the thing, let's broaden that. How long were the people partying with it?
--:-- Joe Rogan: I don't know. I knew a guy who had a problem with it. He was an MMA fighter. He got addicted to ketamine. I remember a friend of mine went to visit him in a rehab center and he was all fucked up. But that was the narrative, that he was doing ketamine. I was like, "Oh, he's doing a tranquilizer." This was the 1990s, late 90s.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Okay. Well, you can get addicted.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Ketamine is addictive?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: You can get addicted to ketamine. Not like an opiate.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Is it a psychological addiction or is it a physical addiction?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I know a lot of people in the Austin area use it recreationally. We actually had a girl go into a k-hole at my club. She was in the middle of the comedy club.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Just, yeah, yeah, yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I mean, that's full disembodiment. You're in another place. And your somatic self has to be kept... 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.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Hmm. Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So you could kind of double pump and go a little overboard. Or triple pump. Yeah. Do it all day long if you want.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: If you wanted to. Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's a problem with everything, right? You know, it's a problem with any... I mean, if you really need Adderall, you have chronic fatigue and Adderall is the only thing that lifts you out of that, what's to stop you from taking two pills?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: I'm glad you did that.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Three pills. That's right. Or even coffee, right? Yeah. Double espresso can become a quad. Yeah. Then you're drinking six. Oh, I know a lot of people are addicted. I mean, I'm kind of addicted to caffeine. Yeah. I quit it when I was on my vacation. I was on vacation for 10 days and I didn't have any coffee, any caffeine at all for five, six days. And I was like, "Ooh, I sleep so much better. I feel so much better." But I feel like when it comes to conversations, it's like I lean on it.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: I lean on caffeine. Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Lean on it to get me going. I'm a happier person on caffeine. I really enjoy that substance. I like it. I just wanted to know that I could stop taking it and there wouldn't be any problem. It was no problem at all. I stopped taking nicotine pouches and I stopped taking caffeine for – I stopped the nicotine pouches for 10 whole days. And I was like, "I'm fine." And I stopped the caffeine for five or six days. Then I said, "Ah, I feel like having a cup of coffee." And I limited myself to one cup a day.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Yeah, I get – I have a hard time coming off of caffeine.
--:-- Joe Rogan: You get headaches?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: But I've done it. Yeah, I get headaches. It affects my mood a little bit.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I like it. I like the caffeine. Yeah, I don't think it's overall detrimental. I don't think it affects your judgment. I don't think it makes you do anything squirrely. Yeah. It just gives you a little, it peps you up a little bit. I mean, most of the world is having it in the morning. Yeah. Right. And then most of the world is having a drink at night. Yeah.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Well, 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.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's right.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: And unfortunately, somebody figured out how to synthesize it and turn it into cocaine and then it became illegal.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Illegal. Yeah. Now you can't get – because if you get just coca leaves and just chew on coca leaves in America, I mean maybe that's superior to coffee. We don't know because we can't try.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Exactly. And that is the block of experimentation that's unjust. Yeah. Right?
--:-- Joe Rogan: You know what's interesting about cocaine is it's medically appropriate. I think they use it for eye surgery.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Yeah, there's medical uses for it.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So I can't off the top of my head remember if it's on Schedule 1. I don't think it is.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Cocaine is not on Schedule 1? Really?
--:-- Joe Rogan: I mean we could look it up. That's interesting. Well, here's the thing. If it can be used for eye surgery. Right. Right? So it would be interesting to see. Yeah. So is it like a numbing agent? Is that what it is? They've just, I've heard that they've realized before it was, it became a big issue that it's safe for eyeball.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Numbing agent.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, I know there's medical cocaine. I do know that. I just don't know what the applications are.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
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--:-- Joe Rogan: You know the number one manufacturer of it? Coca-Cola.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Coca-Cola. Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: They still use the coca leaf for flavor for Coca-Cola. Like they shut down the cocaine molecule somehow. They extract it. Right. And they use it to produce medical grade cocaine.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Interesting. Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And then something of that still gets into Coca-Cola. The flavor is what's in Coke. I guess it's the flavonoids. That's what's in Coca-Cola. And it used to be cocaine was in Coca-Cola. I would like to go back and try some of that. I'd like to go, like, what was that like? Like how much cocaine was in there? You think they have original recipe Coke bottles at the factory? With cocaine? At Coca-Cola. I mean, what year was that? At Coke headquarters. 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 how cocaine was in Coca-Cola in the first place. But cocaine used to be prescribed, 1929. So in 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. So in 1903, they started removing cocaine.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Interesting.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But they're still using cocaine-free coca leaf extracts. Yes. Yes. And they're the only company, I believe, that's allowed to do that. I think they're grandfathered in. And how did—who invented Coca-Cola with cocaine? 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 nine milligrams of cocaine per glass. For comparison, a typical dose or a 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 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 Mallinckrodt, the only company in the United States licensed to purify cocaine for medical use. Wild. The ad says it's an intellectual beverage.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Intellectual beverage.
--:-- Joe Rogan: A valuable brain tonic.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: A valuable brain tonic.
--:-- Joe Rogan: A cure for all nervous afflictions. Sick headache, neurologica, whatever that is, hysteria, melancholy, etc. The particular or peculiar flavor of Coca-Cola delights every palate. It is dispensed from the soda fountains in the same manner as any of the fruit syrups. Wow. What an advertisement. Wow. I'd like to go back and try that. I'd like to go back to 1900 and get a glass and see what's up. You hear the pop and the bubbly poured over ice right out of the fountain. Yeah, what was that? Oh, that's a beautiful advertisement. Wow. Long after the syrup ceased to contain any significant amounts of cocaine in North Carolina, "dope" remained a common colloquialism for Coca-Cola. And "dope wagons" were trucks that transported it. Wow. It must have been good. It must have been real good.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: It must have been real good.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Like just a little bit of a juice. The cola nut. Cola nuts for caffeine. 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.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Interesting.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's interesting. Court found that 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 to pay the government's legal cost to settle and avoid further litigation. Wow, that was all over caffeine content per eight and now it's 46 per 12.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Yeah, but like what is a Red Bull?
--:-- Joe Rogan: I was going to say what's in a Monster. Right. So let's find out how much caffeine is in a Monster. One of the things that Monster, I don't know if Monster does it, but some of these companies do it. It's kind of tricky. By the way, I like Monster. I drink them all the time when I do the UFC. The problem is it'll say like two servings. Who's splitting a Monster with their friends? It's like I'm going to drink half. You have some. 86. Per serving. Yeah. And how many servings are in a can of Monster? Well, this just says... Per serving. Does it say it in a can? Like when you get a big old can. I just want to Google it. It just said one serving. Because they have big cans. Yeah. Those are monsters. This is a jumbo size. I had a friend who was a Mormon, and he wasn't allowed to drink coffee. And that motherfucker would pound energy drinks all day. I was like, "Hey, dude. What are you doing, man?" It's a gray area in the room. 140. A Monster is... Oh, my God. 140 for zero sugar. A regular monster has 160. 160. Mountain Dew Rise has 180. That's incredible. Beyond Raw Lit. That has 250. Bang with 300. Five-hour energy shots has 200? Holy shit, man. Those little tiny energy shots, those five-hour energy drinks has 200 milligrams of caffeine? Wow. Bang has 300. Holy shit, man. And Coca-Cola led the battle. When was that? 1911 or something? Something. About caffeine. Yeah. The amount being in it.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Interesting.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, it's like people have always tried to control other people for whatever reason, especially when the government has the power to do it. For whatever reason, human beings really enjoy controlling other people. Yeah. They really do. And once they have power, they really enjoy exercising that power. And keeping it and controlling it and not giving it back. And you've got to resist.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Yeah, you do. You've got to resist.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But the problem is legalizing these things would cause a big problem. It would be a big problem. If you just legalize them, there's a lot of people who would never try an 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 there 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 on your hands. It's like, but this infantilization 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.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: And I completely agree with you. And I don't want to do cocaine. I've never done cocaine my whole life. 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." Right, right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But listen, you made that decision for yourself. Yeah, right.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: And, um, and look, we know we were just touching upon examples of people having a relationship with the coca plant without it causing an issue. Yeah. I don't think it's that addictive when you're just chewing the leaves. Right. I think those people do it without much problems. There's also mate de coca, which is a tea that they make from the leaves.
--:-- Joe Rogan: 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?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: But the problem is even with decriminalization, what's the supply? Where are people getting it from? If you can't sell it legally, then how do I know it's pure?
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's right. That's the real issue. The real issue with cocaine is probably not cocaine itself. The real issue is getting cocaine that's stepped on and cut and cut a lot of times with fentanyl. I mean, we all know people that have died from fentanyl overdoses. I know a bunch of people that have.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Yeah, 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." That's a tragedy. But, but, but, but Joe, you're jumping to this next idea that we should probably explore, which is called safe supply. Yeah. 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. Look, when we were kids, the cartels weren't an issue.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's right. Do you ever remember any talk? I don't. How old are you?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: I'm 48. I grew up in Chelsea, Mass.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I'm almost 58. I grew up in Newton. I didn't ever hear about cartels.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right. You never heard about Mexican cartels. You never heard about the problem. Now it's like all over the news. It's a big thing. Why is it a big thing? Because they control the drug supply into the United States because drugs are illegal. So only outlaws sell drugs. And what happens with value when you make something illegal?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. Shoots through the roof.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right. And the most violent come in and replace the less violent.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Exactly. You know? Just like during Prohibition when the mob took over. That's right. That's how they gained power. That's how they got money. That's right. They were selling alcohol.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: And 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. Right. Yeah. You know you're getting actual real alcohol. That's it. 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.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yes. And I think education, what you just said, is a huge part of it. And to let people understand, like, hey, everyone knows there's giant problems with alcohol use. There's alcoholism. There's liver failure. There's a host of different diseases that come from being an alcoholic. And then there's also operating motor vehicles when you're drunk and drunk driving kills a ton of people every year. And also a bunch of violent acts that get perpetrated by people that are drunk. There's a lot of things wrong with alcohol. But yet we allow alcohol, you know. And alcohol is one of the worst drugs. It's one of the worst drugs for you physically. Yeah. It's one of the only drugs that if you become addicted to it, you can't quit cold turkey or you'll fucking die.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right. Right then and there. Exactly. So working with this logic, Joe, right? Because people sometimes make me out to be out of my mind when I say this stuff.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Of course.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: If the most dangerous, toxic, and carcinogenic is available and the least dangerous, helpful, non-addictive is not available, let's fix that. Yeah. Why do I sound wild when I say that?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. Well, I think the mushroom one is the easiest one because of the fact that it genuinely can't kill people. Cocaine is a lot harder sell because also like I don't necessarily think it's good for you. But I know people that have done pure cocaine that really enjoyed the experience and didn't get addicted to it. So I don't, I don't, I can't speak on that. I just, I just think that things that are physically addictive that have been known to ruin your life are things you should probably avoid. And we can teach upon that and we can educate upon that. I mean, look at the, the, the wonderful job we've done at kind of putting the reins on nicotine through advertisement and education. Well, cigarette smoking in particular, because the problem isn't really the nicotine, which we've found to be, yeah, it's like nicotine actually has health benefits to it, which sounds crazy to people. It's a neuroprotectant that it actually stopped people from getting COVID. So there's a lot of weird stuff with the compound nicotine, but then there's the delivery method and it's not even just like, it's hard to know what's true or what's not true. But I'm sure you saw that Russell Crowe movie, *The Insider*.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: I haven't.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's a great movie. 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 who 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.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Well, I was told that those scientists were absorbed into the food industry.
--:-- Joe Rogan: 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 flaunt it. "I bet you can't eat one chip."
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right. That's right. "Give it a try. Open a bag of Doritos." Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I mean, that's the thing. And again, I think you should be able to eat Doritos. I like them. They're delicious.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Same here.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Nothing wrong with them. But they are addictive. And why are they addictive? Because they're chemically designed to be addictive. That's right. Because these food manufacturing companies want you to buy more of them. Simple. It's like, how do we get people to eat more chips? Make the chips impossible to put down. Or very difficult to put down. 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. You're going to get fentanyl potato chips.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right. Which is so crazy. What an image. Imagine if they outlawed all processed foods and you had to get fucking contraband Twinkies. Right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Good Lord. Right. Like, yeah, I think you should be able to buy Ring Dings. They should be legal. But I wouldn't recommend eating them every day. They're fucking terrible for you. But they taste delicious.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Exactly.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And if you want one every now and again. And that's the environment that we're in. Yes. With some things and not others. Right. Right. And that's the problem. It's illogical.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: It's illogical. 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 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.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's right.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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? Yeah. What are the rules? Tell me 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? Right. 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. And in our system, how do we battle? What's the appropriate way to unleash violence? It's with lawyers. It's frowned upon to physically be violent. So he had to fight. He had to fight with the government. And what really makes me nuts, Joe, is, you know, 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. Right. And they get a "let's wait." It's interesting. The results were too good. You know, I mean, just from the ones I hold in my heart. Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So what kind of pressure do you think they're under to not allow these things? Like, 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.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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. 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.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Sure. Let's call that a flare up.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Right, especially when you deal with things like there's a giant business in keeping people, I don't want to say happy, but not depressed. Right? Like there's a giant industry in people that are on SSRIs and anti-depression and anti-anxiety medication. When it's been proven that exercise is far more effective than SSRIs are. Far more. Medically proven, statistically proven that SSRIs are not as effective as regular exercise.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Well, let me throw something in there. Is that a medicine?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Right. Yeah, well, exercise is definitely a medicine.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Right. So there's an organization, I think it's called Exercise as Medicine. But a mainstream medical doctor is going to be able to prescribe exercise to somebody? They can't.
--:-- Joe Rogan: We should be able to. They should be able to. Yeah, they really should. But the problem is there's no profit in that. Right. Unless you own the gym. I'll do it on you. You do it on your own. Right. Join the gym yourself and you know half the people aren't gonna go because they're scared. They don't want to look goofy. Right. The other quarter who do go might not appropriately approach it correctly and then blow out a tendon, hurt themselves. Yeah. You need trainers, right?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. 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.
--:-- Joe Rogan: 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. Spirituality. Wild.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Wild. Have you ever heard of John Marco Allegro's book, *The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross*?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: No.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's a book that he wrote after he was one of the people 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. Like, what's the real religion and root of this all, or origin rather and root of this all?
--:-- Joe Rogan: So he wrote this book after 14 years where he – I'm 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 and 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 both of them.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, both of 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.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Okay.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And it's a fascinating book. I'll have to check that out for sure. 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.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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? Right. This isn't a radical concept. This is accepted. This is like a billion followers strong type of Christianity that is through sacred ritual transforming food into the body and blood of God.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, it's all a mystery. 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. It absolutely is wild. 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. Very weird.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: And what about that image of the Ouroboros, the snake or dragon eating itself? 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?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: You know, I got a big sense of that when I went into Old Growth Rainforest in Costa Rica for the first time. I touched the handle of a bridge and it felt like it was moving because every drop of everything is alive. Everything is either competing, going along with, helping, supporting, or eating one another in that space. And it's like, what is happening in here? Everything is alive.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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 partition 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.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Which makes you think, like, if you were an ancient person and you had this experience, of course you would think you're communing with God.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. I agree. And look, we're all ancient persons right now in this moment in time. And I believe that.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Yeah. Well, we are ancient. And, you know, if you go 5,000 years from now, how they're going to look at us like these dorks. Look at all the shit that was illegal. That they were fighting and arguing about.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Yeah, yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I can't wait till war is old technology that we all laugh about.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: God, isn't that a crazy thing? That if you asked a person, is it possible in your lifetime for war to not exist? Most people would be like, there's no way. Which is insane. It's so insane. Because in small groups, it's clearly easy. Like if it was just you, me, and Jamie, and we were the only people on earth, it would be super easy to not go to war with each other.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: We would just communicate. 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.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Manipulation.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, and manipulate them into thinking that the only way is we have to go over there and kill these people.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Exactly.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's the only way to fight for your freedom.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Yep. Yep. 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?
--:-- Joe Rogan: There's a few moments in history.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: The Toba volcano. And how did we survive that? Did we eat each other or hurt each other? We probably helped each other.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, there was probably so few people they had to.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Yeah. That's right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, this is also the point of Allegro's work, that fertility rituals were important because people didn't really survive much. You know, it was very difficult. Just labor, just childbirth killed a lot of women, killed a lot of babies. Infections killed a lot of people. You break your leg, you're dead. There's a lot of things that cause people to die. So it was very important to have as many children as possible because most of them weren't going to live.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right. That's right. 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. The most critical of all processes. And that's been reduced to a thing now that's like trivialized.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Trivialized or even still taboo.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of crazy. I mean, there's people out there that love people that don't want to have children. I'm like, okay. Why wouldn't want to bring a child into this world?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Like, yeah, why would you with all the books and medicine and shit?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Nicely said.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, like 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.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: And fear. The fear of others.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And fear. 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. And hopefully if you live to be 80 or 90 years old, you'll be wiser. Hopefully. Right. Hopefully. You'll get more of an understanding of what you've done wrong and why have I lived my life in this foolish way? What can I do to correct that? What can I do to make a more positive impact on people around me and live my life in a more harmonious way? But, you know, some people, they're 80 years old. They just watch Fox News and yell at the TV.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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. There's a handful of problems, but that's not how it's presented. It's miraculous if you think about it.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: The amount of negative interactions that people have are incredibly small.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I mean, think about the sheer number of humans.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's right. We concentrate on the fear.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Exactly.
--:-- Joe Rogan: We concentrate on the dangers. 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 a criminal. That's all you hear.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: That's right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: 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.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Right, they don't have any empathy.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Right? 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%.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Yeah. That do care. That do feel empathy. That do. And that is the problem with the algorithm. 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.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's right.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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 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.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh yeah, you certainly can do that. If you curate a good feed, you can ignore the negative. And there's a lot of great stuff. One of the great things about social media is just the access to new and fascinating information. If you follow the right people and go down the right roads, you'll be constantly inundated with fascinating information. 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.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Right, right. And that kind of speaks to the fact that we are lucky to be able to have access to social media in that way. There's nations that don't allow that type of access by design. So the power of our method is liberty and freedom, not criminalization and prohibition. You see the jump I'm trying to make there. And the jump also is what you were talking about before with education. And I think we need education too with people in social media use. People need to be coached and understand how to use it correctly.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Right. And, you know, I've been trying to express to as many people as I can, especially people in the public eye, don't read comments. You got to stop doing that. Don't read things about you. Don't read negative things about you. It's bad for you.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's bad for you. And also you're dealing with the percentage of people that are commenting negative things. Those people almost entirely live lives that you would not envy.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Nicely said.
--:-- Joe Rogan: They're almost all a mess. And so you're interacting with the – I don't want to say the worst aspects of society – but the most troubled human beings. The people that are thinking in the most ridiculous way. They're constantly focusing on negative aspects of either human beings or of society in general. And they're feeding off of it. And that's their focus all day long. And they spend most of their time arguing with people online. Do you want to be involved in that? When we live in what is primarily a beautiful world.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Nicely said.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: And I think you're pointing at something that's important to keep in mind: be careful about what you let in.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Right? I think that's a universal principle, but it's eloquently shared in Buddhism where they say guard your Dharma gates. Your eyes, your ears, your nose, your mind. Your senses. What are you taking in? Because there's other philosophies that say thoughts are things, be careful what you think.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: I've come to notice, let's call it the CBT triangle, cognitive behavioral therapy triangle: thoughts lead to emotions lead to actions. 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. As a therapist, how have you incorporated this in everyday life with your patients?
--:-- Joe Rogan: 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.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: See what I'm saying?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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. If you're not comfortable being in a certain lane, you've got to go get training and experience to be an ethical practitioner before you talk about something. 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. 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. Not everything. Just a thing or two.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I think one of the best arguments against decriminalization is what happened with Portland. So, you know, they went down this path. It was Portland, right? It wasn't Seattle that went on this path of pure legalization. Oregon. Everything. Decriminalized. And it went sideways. 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. And be that on the streets. And also be subsidized.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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 with an open bottle. Even the most liberal places, a cop can come up. 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.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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 publicly is frowned upon, to just be shitting on the street and to open drug use everywhere. Have people camped out, homeless people covering up sidewalks where you can't get around and there's needles everywhere and it's garbage everywhere. Well, we can agree that we don't want that. In many places, there's local ordinances against that. There's state-level laws against that. And we can go all the way up. But they're not doing anything about that.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, that's the thing we can analyze. Why? Why wasn't the funding in place to ensure that public areas with public access followed some rules? Why? What happened?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: You know, I think that can be figured out.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: So we realized 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, you have to take a shit over here? We can all agree we don't want human feces over here. That's not a shot against that person. We gotta 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 where we have wraparound services, where we have maybe access to what they need, maybe access to what they're addicted to. Now we're starting to talk about safe supply with care and medical intervention.
--:-- Joe Rogan: No one's ever done that successfully though, right? 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?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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. When you also can't impose it on all the rest of society by allowing people to just camp out everywhere on the streets.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, that's the example. Like we can have rules, local ordinances that say this isn't a campground.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And what do you need for this not to be a campground? Let's talk. 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? And why aren't the police properly funded to act in a guardianship way in those situations?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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. We don't need you. We do need you. You play a vital role in our society.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But that would require like a fundamental shift to progressive ideology. They'd have to change the way they view cops. Maybe that'll have to be incorporated in drips and drabs and carefully into training.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Right. But I got an example for you. I think it's really important. It's from where I come, in Winthrop, Massachusetts. 10 years ago when I was a patrol officer, 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. I went to talk to the police chief. His name's Terrence Delahunty. 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. Cause 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."
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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." Bang. Public safety connected with public health. We created what I call the police to public health pipeline.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Picture this, a cop showing up to your house because they know what's going on in your house, 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 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.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, that's hopeful. You've got to expand something like that.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: I think we have room to expand it across the whole country. We are repositories, 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. That's not right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So it's the way it's approached. 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.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: There it is. 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 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. This and that.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, well said. That might be a good way to end this. Tell people how they can get a hold of you, social media, like where you are.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: Sure, I appreciate that. Well, they can look up my name, Sarko Gergerian. I'm out of Winthrop. Last name because they're not going to be able to get that right. It's G-E-R-G-E-R-I-A-N. I'm out of Winthrop, Massachusetts. I'm a lieutenant with the Winthrop Police Department. I want to 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. 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.
--:-- Joe Rogan: How do they get your email?
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: You know, it's just my last name at gmail.com. G-E-R-G-E-R-I-A-N at gmail.com.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Okay, good luck with the amount of emails you're going to get after this.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: All right, let's do it. Give me some time to get back to you.
--:-- Joe Rogan: All right, well, thanks, brother. I appreciate you. 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. It means a lot.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: 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, I'm a fan. And a number of close personal friends, one in particular, Billy Reinstein, who I love to death, said to tell Joe that he has helped me so tremendously. His show has helped me stay well, be well, be happy. And I wanted to get that message.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's awesome. Shout out to Billy.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: All right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
--:-- Sarko Gergerian: All right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Bye, everybody.
