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Sarko Gergerian (2025) - Psychedelics: Medicine, Not a Crime · The Joe Rogan Recap

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  Welcome to the Joe Rogan recap. Today on The Deep Dive, we're
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  plunging into an absolutely fascinating conversation that
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  really challenges everything you thought you knew about law
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  enforcement, healing, and, well, the whole nature of what we call
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  drugs. Yeah, we've pulled out the most
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  compelling bits from a recent Joe Rogan Experience episode.
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  It featured Sarco Jarjarian. He's a pretty unique individual,
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  kind of sitting at this intersection of policing and
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  psychedelic therapy. Exactly.
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  And our mission today really is to unpack how these rigid
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  definitions, you know, the historical stories we tell about
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  certain substances, how they're being seriously challenged both
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  by, like, hard science and these incredible personal stories.
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  And we'll dig into what this could mean healing individuals,
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  especially, you know, our first responders, and also for just
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  the bigger picture, pursuit of truth, maybe even freedom in
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  society. OK, so let's get into it.
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  Our deep dive starts with Sarco Giugiri and himself.
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  He's a Massachusetts law enforcement professional
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  Lieutenant for, what, 15 years? Yeah, something like that.
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  And he's also a trained psychedelic assisted therapist.
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  And get this, he's believed to be the first police officer to
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  actually get a religious exemption at work to use in
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  theogens. Which are, you know, substances
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  used in a spiritual context basically to connect.
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  That's huge. It really is.
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  And his path into this whole field is, it's really telling.
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  He studied psychology 1st but apparently found it to
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  observable. Observable like not deep enough.
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  Yeah, sort of like rats pressing laborers was his take.
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  I think he was searching for something more drawn to
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  philosophy, religion, and then this is crucial.
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  He was a security guard back in the 90s, Boston nightclubs,
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  right? And he saw first hand that
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  social shift when MDMA, you know, XT, first hit the scene
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  big time. He literally watched people
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  change from being closed off. Like, who are you?
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  What do you want? He's set in connecting.
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  Yeah, genuinely connecting, high fiving, hugging.
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  That image, that feeling, it just stuck with him.
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  Wow. OK, so Fast forward, he's in his
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  30s, he's a cop now. He goes to his International
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  Association of Chiefs of Police conference, the IECP down in
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  Orlando. And this is where it gets almost
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  like surreal Rick Doblin from MAP.
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  PS That's the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic
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  Studies. He's there.
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  Presenting the phase two trial results Right for MDMA assisted
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  therapy for severe PTSD. Exactly.
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  And just to paint the picture in the next room, Donald Trump was
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  speaking at the same time. No way.
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  Yeah, Sarco chose the science presentation.
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  That says something. So what did Doblin present?
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  Were those results? They were, I mean, staggering
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  really. He showed that 67% of people,
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  these are folks with severe treatment resistant PTSD, 67%
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  experienced sustained remission. They got better and stayed
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  better. After just two or three
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  sessions. Within this very specific
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  controlled clinical model, preparation, the experience
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  itself and then integration afterwards, Sarco was just, you
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  know, floored by this. He felt like he had to do
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  something, had to help. He apparently jumped right up on
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  stage afterwards introduced himself to Doblin.
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  Cop and therapist background. Yeah, imagine Doblin's surprise.
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  He gets involved. He trains with maps.
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  And gets permission from his own police chief, which is pretty
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  remarkable in itself, to take part in a federally sanctioned
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  research study as a healthy normal, they called it.
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  And he actually experienced MDMA himself on camera.
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  It's in that Michael Pollan docu series How to Change Your Mind.
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  Right. He described it as a mystical
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  experience. That personal journey is pretty
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  powerful context for everything else he talks about.
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  Absolutely. Which brings us to the crisis.
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  He identified this hidden epidemic within law enforcement
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  and 1st responders. Yeah, this is really serious.
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  He points to suicide rights among officers being two to
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  three times higher than civilian rights.
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  Two to three times and more cops dying by suicide than being
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  killed in attacks on the street. Yeah, it's a sobering statistic.
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  It completely reframes the dangers they face.
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  So what's behind that? Obviously the job is tough, but.
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  It's the the sheer volume of trauma.
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  An average police career, he says, involves about 200
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  critical incidents. 200 like murders, suicides, horrific
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  accidents. Yeah, severe injuries.
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  Compare that to maybe five such incidents for the average
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  civilian over a lifetime. The constant exposure, we must
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  just wear you down. He talks about it creating a
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  deeply activated nervous system and this dark box perspective.
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  You're constantly seeing people at their absolute worst.
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  It's isolating. It's distressing.
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  And then you layer on things like the whole defund the police
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  movement, He mentioned the demoralization that caused.
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  Yeah, feeling unappreciated, misunderstood, used as political
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  footballs, basically. While still running towards the
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  danger. When that 911 call comes in,
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  it's a heavy burden. Which leads right back to the
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  core question. If these substances like MDMA
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  show such incredible promise for healing exactly this kind of
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  trauma, why are they still so hard to access?
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  Why the stigma? Sarko's take is pretty blunt on
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  this. He says the classification
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  schedule like no medical use whatsoever.
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  Most dangerous, most addictive. He just calls it a lie.
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  A lie. That's strong language,
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  especially coming from a cop. So if it is a lie, what's the
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  real world damage beyond just blocking access for people who
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  might benefit? Well the damage is immense.
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  Human suffering isn't it? It's denying potentially life
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  changing treatment. Look at psilocybin magic
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  mushrooms. The data shows anti addictive
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  properties. Right, like 8090% success rates
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  reported for opioid addiction with just one or two sessions?
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  Exactly, and almost no physical toxicity.
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  Same goes for MDMA in clinical settings.
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  Then there's ibogaine, which even former Governor Rick Perry
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  in Texas has championed for veterans with PTSD and
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  addiction. And cannabis, obviously clear
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  medical use is not physically lethal by any stretch.
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  You literally can't overdose fatally.
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  Right. So the schedule, I think it
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  just, it doesn't hold up against the science for these specific
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  compounds and controlled contexts.
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  It feels like the system is prioritizing an old narrative
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  over actual health outcomes. And the roots of that narrative,
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  they go way back, don't they? Oh, absolutely.
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  You can trace lines from, you know, Spanish colonizers
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  stamping out indigenous plant medicine right through to the US
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  war on drugs in the 70s, which we now know from Nixon's own
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  AIDS was partly designed to target anti war protesters and
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  black communities. It's about control, isn't it?
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  Control over consciousness maybe?
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  It certainly looks that way sometimes.
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  And the cannabis story is, wow, particularly specific.
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  It links right back to one guy's business interests, William
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  Randolph Hearst. The newspaper magnate?
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  Yep. Back in the 1930s, this machine
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  called the Decordicator was invented, made processing hemp
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  way easier. Suddenly, hemp was being called
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  the new billion dollar crop. And Hearst owned massive
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  Timberleans and pooper mills, right?
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  So hemp was direct competition. Big time.
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  So he uses his media empire, his newspapers, his movie studios to
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  launch this huge propaganda campaign.
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  Coins. The term marijuana makes it
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  sound foreign and scary. Links it to racist tropes,
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  Reefer madness stuff, you know, black people and Mexicans
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  attacking white women. Just awful stuff.
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  Truly awful and totally fabricated, but it worked.
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  It LED directly to cannabis prohibition.
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  And sideline temp, which is actually a superior material for
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  paper textiles, even building. All seemingly to protect one
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  man's profits. It's kind of incredible how that
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  lie took root and shaped policy for decades, and that system
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  profit over well-being arguably persists.
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  So even with all this history, all this new science, the
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  roadblocks are still there. Yeah, like the FDA recently
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  delaying MDMA approval. What was the reason they gave
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  something about the data being too good?
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  That was reportedly part of it, Yeah.
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  Concerns about how to manage expectations, maybe, and
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  challenges with approving a drug that has to be paired with
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  therapy. It's not just a pill you take
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  home. But that delay it costs
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  organizations like Maps millions, sets back access for
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  potentially thousands of people suffering right now.
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  It really highlights the perception problem, as Sarco
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  calls it. NDMA gets lumped in with, you
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  know, dangerous St. drugs that raves people dying from fentanyl
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  contamination. Which is a direct result of
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  prohibition itself. It creates the dangerous black
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  market. Exactly.
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  The illegality forces it underground into the hands of
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  criminals who don't care about safety or purity.
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  It's a vicious cycle. Plus, there's the political
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  taboo, right? Totally.
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  Politicians are scared to touch it that 1970 70s narrative.
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  Drugs are for weak people. They ruin lives.
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  It's deeply baked in. And cops themselves, Sarco says,
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  are muzzled. They can't even talk about this,
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  let alone seek treatment, potentially for fear of losing
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  their jobs. Even though alcohol, which is
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  legal, is a known carcinogen and physically addictive, the logic
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  is just inconsistent. But what are the counter
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  arguments? What are the opponents say and
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  how does Sarco or the data push back?
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  Well, the main fear is usually about uncontrolled use, right?
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  Pointing to bad outcomes in the illicit market market.
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  But Sarco and the research, they constantly stress the context.
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  This isn't about just legalizing everything tomorrow with no
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  rules. It's about regulated medical,
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  therapeutic use, controlled settings, guidance, integration.
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  Precisely. It's a medical intervention, not
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  just recreational free for all. And the good news, maybe, is
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  that public perception is shifting.
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  Definitely thanks to the Internet, podcasts like Rogan's,
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  people talking more openly, you hear stories now, anecdotes from
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  friends, family. Oh this helped my cousin quit
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  smoking, or my friend got off opiates, or it lifted someone's
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  severe depression. It changes the story from
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  dangerous drug to potential tool for healing.
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  Sarco really believes that open conversation is how you start to
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  turn the battleship as he puts. It OK, so if perception is
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  shifting and the data is there, how do we move forward safely?
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  That's the $1,000,000 question, isn't it?
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  The idea of safe supply comes up regulated access.
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  Because we learn from alcohol prohibition.
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  Making something illegal doesn't stop demand.
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  Nope. It just empowers dangerous
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  criminals, cartels, the mob back in the day.
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  But we also saw experiments like in Portland, OR, where broad
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  decriminalization without enough support systems kind of went
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  sideways. Yeah, that anything goes
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  approach led to real problems. Public drug use, homelessness
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  spikes. It showed you need more than
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  just decriminalization. You need the infrastructure.
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  Right, robust public health support, which brings us back to
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  Sarcos community, Winfruit, Massachusetts.
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  He talks about this model. They developed the police to
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  public health pipeline. They call it clear.
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  Community and law enforcement assisted recovery, How does that
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  actually work? Like on the street.
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  Well, the idea is when officers respond to 911 calls, they're
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  trained to look beyond just the potential crime.
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  They identify underlying public health issues, addiction, mental
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  health crises, homelessness. Instead of just making an
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  arrest. Exactly.
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  They approach the person not as a suspect necessarily, but as
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  someone needing help. They offer a direct connection,
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  a warm handoff to public health services, treatment centers,
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  mental health support. So they're not like digging for
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  warrants. No, the focus shifts.
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  It's about offering a helping hand, recognizing suffering
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  isn't always a criminal issue. It's a different model of
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  community policing. A.
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  More compassionate one, it sounds like.
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  Potentially much more effective for certain problems, yeah.
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  But the challenge, of course, is getting the funding for those
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  robust public health services and getting buy in across the
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  board. Now the conversation also went
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  into some a deeper territory, the actual experience of these
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  substances. Oh yeah, Serger described his
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  own MDMA session. The one film for the docu series
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  called it a numinous experience. Feeling surrounded by love,
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  immense gratitude, total self acceptance, good parts and bad.
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  And his ketamine experience too. He described that as like a
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  luscious massage of his soul. Feeling connected energetically
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  to his wife, his martial arts teacher, even God.
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  It's fascinating how these experiences seem to bridge that
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  gap sometimes between maybe agnosticism or atheism and a
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  sense of spirituality. It touches on ancient practices,
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  maybe even controversial theories like John Marco
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  Allegra's idea about early Christianity and psychedelic
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  mushrooms. Sacred Mushroom in the Cross?
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  Yeah, that book caused a stir. But it points to this long
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  history of humans seeking altered states, seeking
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  connection. And it makes you question our
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  narrow definition of medicine doesn't.
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  It totally if things like community, joy, even exercise,
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  which Asarco points out is often statistically better than SSRIs
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  for depression, if those can be medicine.
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  Then why do we usually reserve the term just for pills from a
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  pharmacy? Have we sort of lost the power
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  to define healing for ourselves? It feels like it sometimes.
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  And stepping back, Sarco suggests this historical
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  suppression of psychedelics starting around 1970.
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  It wasn't just about the substances, it was about
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  controlling consciousness, controlling expression.
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  He wonders how different the world might be if that cultural
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  shift, that burst of creativity like Jimi Hendrix represented,
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  hadn't been stifled. Maybe less conflict?
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  It's a big what if he also talks about the clinician's enforcers
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  delusion, that constant exposure to the worst.
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  It warps your perception, makes you rely on biases.
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  Yeah. And the system often operates
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  from that place of fear, designing laws around the, you
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  know, tiny percentage of truly bad actors, the sociopaths,
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  instead of designing for the vast majority, the 98% who are
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  empathic and generally good. And that system, maybe
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  unintentionally, maybe not, has often profited more from keeping
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  people sick than from truly making them well.
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  It's a heavy thought. Wow.
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  What an incredible journey we've taken today, really, from the
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  front lines of policing to these like profound inner worlds
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  opened up by psychedelics, We've seen how one person's really
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  unique path is helping challenge decades of, well,
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  misinformation. Yeah, and shining a light on the
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  silent suffering of first responders advocating for more
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  compassion, evidence based ways forward in public health.
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  It makes you think, doesn't it, if the system, as Sarco
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  suggests, has sometimes profited from illness rather than
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  healing? What other parts of our lives
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  might look radically different if we started reclaiming our own
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  power? If we decided for ourselves what
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  truly serves our health, our well-being, our freedom.
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  So maybe the question for you listening is what truths do you
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  hold about these substances? Sure, but maybe also by human
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  nature or how society has to work?
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  Where do those beliefs actually come from?
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  And you know, what might you discover if you just allowed
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  yourself to question them, to maybe explore just a little bit
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  further?