Transcription:

Victoria Maizes MD (00:02.21)

Lieutenant Sarko Gergerian is a Massachusetts police lieutenant, a clinical mental health counselor, and a national advocate working at the intersection of police, public health, trauma, recovery, and psychedelic care. He currently serves with the Winthrop, Massachusetts Police Department. Sarko co-founded Community and Law Enforcement Assisted Recovery.

An award-winning police to public health initiative. He serves as the co-program director at Sound Mind Institute. His work focuses on developing safer, more compassionate responses to crisis, altered states, trauma, addiction, and human suffering. Welcome, Sarko.

Sarko Gergerian (00:53.924)

Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Victoria Maizes MD (00:57.29)

Yes, well, you describe yourself as a critic of the war on drugs. Tell us how you navigate that publicly, given your role as a police lieutenant, and what's the response been from your colleagues?

Sarko Gergerian (01:14.228)

so I I navigate that publicly by embracing the truth. I I I speak about it openly and I was doing so right at the beginning of my career, which started in my thirties. So the response from other police has changed over time and I'll give you an example. In my thirties, that was over fifteen years ago. people would look at me like a black sheep, like I was bringing in ideas that were so outlandish.

Victoria Maizes MD (01:28.93)

Mm-hmm.

Sarko Gergerian (01:43.993)

Fifteen years later, President Trump signs an executive order fast tracking psychedelic research and allowing big pharma to medicalize the compounds and now I'm not viewed in such a way any longer. it was it it's quite the dramatic arc change of perspective.

Andrew Weil (01:54.286)

Yeah.

Andrew Weil (01:59.686)

Yeah.

Victoria Maizes MD (02:04.93)

Yes, Andy, maybe you wanna weigh in because you've certainly watched that across your career.

Andrew Weil (02:09.629)

Yes, and hang on, let me just get the dogs quite then Howard you gotta get the

Separate them. And keep her with you.

Victoria Maizes MD (02:22.166)

Yeah, that'll be one of those moments.

Andrew Weil (02:23.077)

Sorry about that. well I wrote one of the in one of my early books, the first line was Wars on Drugs A Always Lost.

And that should be a powerful lesson from history. y you know, f trying to fight drugs or make them go away just doesn't work and is often counterproductive. And one of the ironies in our society is that the two drugs that we've made legal and profit from, alcohol and tobacco, are by far the most dangerous drugs that are out there, both in terms of their effects on behavior, their effects on health, you know, and that's what we live with at the moment. So

So the the counterproductiveness of all this effort that's been put into fighting drugs is an enormous waste of resources. And as well, we've denied ourselves the potential benefits of many of these substances that have been prohibited, you know, including the ones that Sarko has been working with.

Sarko Gergerian (03:21.422)

Yeah, and you know, that brings to mind a couple other things. I I get this intense desire to say, what if the war wasn't ever intended to be won? And the objective was to target people through the particular substances, certain groups of people, and protect future profits of industry over watching out for people. That kind of starts bringing in a nefarious intent, which which really rubs me the wrong way. Yeah.

Andrew Weil (03:48.253)

You know?

Victoria Maizes MD (03:50.989)

Yeah, well we could say a lot more about policy and we may get to that, but I I want to stick with you for another minute, Sarko, which is you have a pretty unusual background. you're a police lieutenant and you studied Jungian psychology. So maybe you could tell a little bit about how your training and your experience in maybe those two very I would say different worlds influence the way you understand trauma and healing.

Sarko Gergerian (04:20.726)

Okay, yeah, sure. so I went to college at Northeastern University, you know, eighteen, nineteen, twenty year old. And they asked, What do you want to major in? And I I said, I I don't know what I want to major in. what do I know right now? So I picked psychology. And at the time the school psychology program was intensely behavioral. And I got right I gotta tell you, I did not get a kick out of watching rats press lovers.

Andrew Weil (04:42.002)

Yeah.

Andrew Weil (04:46.726)

I had the same experience at Harvard, so

Victoria Maizes MD (04:48.141)

Ha ha ha.

Sarko Gergerian (04:48.9)

So so I start taking classes in the philosophy department. I take so many religion and philosophy classes, my major shift. So I graduate with a philosophy religion bachelor's with a gigantic psychology, one lab shy minor in psychology. so I have all this information in my head from that training. and then I become a police officer in my thirties.

and I realized that this war that we're fighting is actually a war on people and their natural drives, their natural instincts. And and like Andy said, that is a war you're gonna fail against. When you're playing against natural inclinations of a creature, you're not gonna win. It's gonna cause more damage, which pulled my thinking right into harm reduction.

Victoria Maizes MD (05:46.903)

Yeah. Andy, you also going back many years wrote I think it was in The Natural Mind, but maybe it was chocolate to morphine about people's desires for altered states. Yeah.

Andrew Weil (05:53.896)

Yeah.

Andrew Weil (05:58.279)

It's in the natural mind. And I said that that this is a basic human impulse is to seek other states of consciousness. Drugs are only one way of doing that. There are many others. But drugs work and they work quickly. And I and people are always going to experiment with them. So it's very important to teach people how not to get hurt by them.

Sarko Gergerian (06:19.876)

Yeah. Yeah. And and in in the police work I came across people modulating their ego identity up and down in various ways. And that isn't a crime. When there is no harm to another person or harm to another person's property, in the United States there can't be a crime.

Victoria Maizes MD (06:21.09)

Yeah.

Andrew Weil (06:40.242)

Mm-hmm.

Victoria Maizes MD (06:41.334)

Yes.

Said that, I totally agree. I I feel like, in particular, for police, for first responders, I think there's this fear of, you know, what if the officer is high? You know, is that a group of people where we need some special rules? And I know that's been something that you have been an activist about because there's growing evidence about the value of psychedelic treatment for depression, for PTSD.

and even for a variety of of things we think of as physical, maybe addiction, for example. So how do you counter that argument?

Sarko Gergerian (07:24.726)

Okay, I absolutely love that question. And I would entertain it in a very different way if altered states weren't already at play, if officers already didn't have access to highly carcinogenic intoxicating substances that are allowed, right? So policy procedure rule regulation says you cannot come to work in an altered state that doesn't allow you to perform your duties as required.

That's my answer. It's already there. It's already there. So these other yeah, these other compounds are we have e there's a chart. There's evidence. There's Western scientific evidence showing how dangerous the substances are. The ones in question that fall under the psychedelic category have been proven to have the least risk, the least danger, the least addictive profile. And they're the ones that we're talking about, but but officers can access alcohol on every street corner.

Victoria Maizes MD (07:54.914)

Mm-hmm.

Andy, you look like

Sarko Gergerian (08:23.118)

They can get at tobacco, right? And they can get at other substances through prescription, which are on Schedule One, yet also medications. Think Adderall, think RIDLIN. It's unbelievable. The whole thing makes no sense.

Andrew Weil (08:27.901)

Mm-hmm.

Andrew Weil (08:32.989)

Yeah.

it's crazy. But you know, the I heard you speak a year ago at a psychedelic conference in Santa Fe. you gave a a very impressive presentation and particularly about the potential for use of psychedelics, MDMA in particular, as a tr as a treatment for first responders especially. Do you wanna comment on that?

Sarko Gergerian (09:00.036)

I would love you. And thank you for the opportunity and the lead-in. so MBMA is showing to be so effective at push pushing treatment resistant severe PTSD into sustained remission. Scientists in the Western model who have no knowledge base or live living experience with these things are having a hard time making sense of it. So tragically, they have delayed the availability of this compound to our people. So people are gonna suffer and they don't need to be suffering.

MDMA is a wonderful amygdala modulator. It tempers it down so a person can go into their traumas and their worst fears in a way that doesn't overwhelm them. And we know for you to get through something like that, you need to go into it, then come out of it. You need to refeel it to reprocess it and then create a new story around it. MDMA allows that to happen. Now why does this matter for first responders?

Andrew Weil (09:34.534)

Mm-hmm.

Sarko Gergerian (09:58.827)

Many of them come from military, then they enter policing, their nervous systems are no longer a normal civilian nervous system. They have two, three, four hundred critical incidents in their nervous systems. These people have changed because of the work and they need access so that they can heal, because we need a healed, fully resilient first responder taking calls for service.

Andrew Weil (10:01.47)

Mm-hmm.

Andrew Weil (10:11.4)

Hm.

Andrew Weil (10:23.562)

Now you are very aware of the high rate of suicide among in that in that group, and you've recommended psychedelic therapy as part of suicide prevention strategy. what's what has your experience been with that?

Sarko Gergerian (10:36.365)

Absolutely.

Okay, so my experience with that, I do sit and hold space for vets and civilians. it has to be done in states that have decriminalized because you need layers of safety. and it's working with different compounds. So I've seen suicidality lift in a week. I've seen people come in to sit with these compounds in sacred settings who are

Hopeless and helpless considering suicide and leave with those ideations no longer haunting them.

Victoria Maizes MD (11:18.158)

So listening to you, I am going to imagine that you see MDMA assisted psychotherapy and maybe some of the other psychedelic as a first line rather than everything else has failed. Is that true? Y yeah, please.

Sarko Gergerian (11:33.605)

I can say something about that. Yeah, I do. You know, you know, we talked about some of the things in the model in the system that we are in as being crazy. And I think this is one of those things that's crazy. When we start off with a highly processed, intense chemical first, when we could start with a less processed natural compound, it makes no sense to me. I think we jumped over opportunities where the less toxic, more horrible

whole molecule could be used for the person that also can have less side effects and then we can move forward from there into the processed powerful compounds that pharma has to offer. I think the spectrum is flipped, it's reversed. And we're we're coming out of the era where one range of the spectrum, the natural molecule compound and sacred practices have been criminalized.

And we can only access the highly processed molecule. So that needs to open up the whole spectrum of opportunity needs to get created and people need to move through it with logic and care. If that made sense, I I I

Victoria Maizes MD (12:44.93)

Yes, and that's actually one of the principles of integrative medicine that we like to begin with the most natural, least invasive therapy as is required by the situation or the diagnosis that in for what we're treating. But

as we know, psychedelics are decriminalized in some states and cities, but they're certainly not legalized and access is rather limited. So just to ask a provocative question, what does it say about the state of our policy in the United States that our first responders often have to go outside of the country to seek care?

Sarko Gergerian (13:30.661)

Well the word unjust comes to mind and the phrase the system is doing exactly what it was designed to do comes to mind. the system's designed to give opportunity to industry to patent things and extract capital from those patents. the unjust part is artificially caging natural compounds, practices, medicines.

and then causing further harm to civilians and first responders who have to police these laws which don't have any harm associated with them, which are f you know it.

Victoria Maizes MD (14:12.034)

Yeah. I'm gonna push you a little because MDMA is a synthetic drug. And okay, SEMI, thank you for the correction, Andy. And ketamine and anesthetic, which is the one legal, widely available medication, don't quite fit that paradigm.

Andrew Weil (14:18.288)

Semi, semi synthetic.

Sarko Gergerian (14:18.297)

Yeah.

Sarko Gergerian (14:33.112)

That's true. I mean, I like the way you gave one that doesn't fit, ketamine, right? And then MDMA is kind of an in between because there is a natural source of a molecule that's in the same family, right? so so but there is so many that are that we have access to that are plant based, that are within that cage. And ketamine didn't ha was already medicalized and on a different category.

Victoria Maizes MD (14:48.397)

Right.

Victoria Maizes MD (14:57.1)

Right. Right.

Sarko Gergerian (14:58.774)

So brave practitioners were able to utilize it off label with proper justification. So it didn't have all this additional baggage and all this money that you that that has to come into play to prove its uses.

Victoria Maizes MD (15:15.694)

Yeah. Andy, certainly you are a proponent of the whole plant and actually the whole plant with the context in which it was used, can you speak to that a bit?

Andrew Weil (15:30.034)

Yeah, I mean as you know, not just with mind affecting drugs but with medicines as well, I think whole plant products are

generally safer and often more effective than components that are isolated from them. And that's a principle I've been advocating for many years. I I think also there's a lot of wisdom in the indigenous uses of these plant medicines and there are things we can learn from the ways those people use them. So I think that that there is now interest in that. Sarkar, I wanted to ask you in the course of your doing this work over

The past few years. Have you seen attitudes change in your profession and in the circles that you move in?

Sarko Gergerian (16:17.164)

y yes, I I have. y you know, there's more the the primary thing that comes to mind with that question is there's there's more interest. And the space is slowly but surely becoming safer for that thought. Because prior the this era that we were in, there there was no safety. You didn't even want to entertain those thoughts and you didn't even want to open your mouth to talk.

Andrew Weil (16:45.318)

Mm-hmm. You know, with the the psychedelics, one of the I think main forces that's been moving toward decriminalization and legalization is veterans, you know, who have been advocating for their use and that has been a very effective political lobby that's really moved the needle.

Sarko Gergerian (17:06.196)

we should we should tip our hats to them. I completely agree with you. And our veterans who go off into war and come back, they basically need to have access to whatever they need to do.

Andrew Weil (17:08.35)

Yeah.

Andrew Weil (17:19.122)

Well this is this is a very powerful method for helping them be well and the conventional methods do not work very well for PTSD and the other problems that they suffer. So here is a very effective method and I think in I I really hope that in the next few years we'll see that become much more available.

Sarko Gergerian (17:38.105)

Yes, I I agree. I mean the the the methods that we have now, I describe as band-aid band band-aid medications, right? but we're trying to make sense of these compounds and practices that allow you to go into the root cause and s sit with it, see it, understand it, reframe it, restory it and be well. It is unbelievable what is happening.

Andrew Weil (17:54.919)

Yeah.

Sarko Gergerian (18:05.385)

and people need access and they need to know this is why I'm grateful you're doing these types of

Victoria Maizes MD (18:10.454)

Yeah, I I would love, Andy, for you to speak a little bit more to how an either an MDMA assisted psychotherapy experience or a psilocybin experience is different really in a transformational way in terms of the potential for, let's say, resolution and full recovery as opposed to the word you use Sarko, a band-aid.

Andrew Weil (18:36.956)

I think, you know, there there is evidence and research supporting this that a single experience with one of these agents properly structured can really change the brain and can change the way people think. And I've also said that I think that you know, I'm a little disappointed that all the emphasis right now is on mental emotional conditions because I think there's a huge role for these in physical medicine as well. I've seen very dramatic cures, remissions of chronic

pain of allergies, of autoimmune diseases, you know, that that that they can give a person they can show a person in a very powerful way that it's possible for them not to have the suffering that they've been having. Very dramatic. Yeah. Yeah.

Victoria Maizes MD (19:23.757)

Yeah.

Sarko Gergerian (19:23.874)

Well they're yeah.

I was gonna say, well, there there they we're we're also contending with this idea that the body and mind are split. Right? The body mind is one system. It's one energetic system. And there's

Andrew Weil (19:34.518)

huh.

Andrew Weil (19:39.836)

You sound like one of our our faculty members in integrative medicines, hard.

Sarko Gergerian (19:45.38)

Well I'm gonna be with you and your group in a in a little while, right? So I'm looking forward to it. Yeah.

Andrew Weil (19:48.476)

Yes, greedy. Great.

True.

Victoria Maizes MD (19:54.727)

Sarka, one thing I imagine you're very proud of is the organization that you co-founded, CLEAR, which is the Community and Law Enforcement Assisted Recovery, which is a way of connecting people who have substance abuse and perhaps a mental health crisis with community care and thereby avoiding the criminal justice system. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? And is it local in Massachusetts only or has it spread at all?

Sarko Gergerian (20:24.804)

Sure, sure. so community and law enforcement assisted recovery came about at this point fourteen years ago. It did start local, and it was because I would come across information in the police computer systems that directly indicated challenges our civilians were having. And the interesting thing is this is at a police department and with no coercion we're collecting this information every single day. I'd like to also say this is happening at every police department across the whole country. So

Andrew Weil (20:53.906)

Really, huh?

Sarko Gergerian (20:54.998)

Yeah, people call nine one one and they give you their medical condition, they give you what challenges their families are having freely. And these get logged in dispatch logs and these create police reports. And if you look at those police reports and logs with a certain heart and mindset, you will know what the person's struggling with. And if you know what somebody's struggling with, I believe you're morally on the hook to help them with that. I believe that every police department across the whole country

Can close the service loop by identifying these people, finding them, and offering them the legitimate help they need so they don't die and so they don't get arrested. And on the final question that you asked, this is catching on. We became a BJA COSOP training site for three years, and we seeded these ideas somewhere around eight states. But we need to speed this up. Our communities are yearning for police officers to come back.

Ask what's going on, extend a helping hand and connect them to that legitimate help.

Victoria Maizes MD (21:59.267)

Yeah, that's awesome. Real primary prevention. I'm gonna ask one last question. for a listener who is a first responder or cares for one and who wants to see psychedelic care made more widely available, what are the most important actions that they can take?

Sarko Gergerian (22:02.307)

Yes.

Sarko Gergerian (22:08.312)

Yeah.

Sarko Gergerian (22:24.924)

link up with other people. Broaden from your local position out to other states. The movement needs people to link their arms and lawfully demand access. There is a movement that's building in mass and size and we need to stay united and not break apart for for little differences in opinion.

And we need to decriminalize more states. So as pharma gets patented molecules, our first responders and civilians have access to whole plants with no fear.

Andrew Weil (23:06.182)

Hmm. You know, at that psychedelic conference where we met, Sarko, someone came up to me and said, Isn't don't you feel that it's wonderful what's happening now? And I my response was it's about time. You know, this should have happened in the nineteen sixties when we saw the potential of these agents. And it's taken this long before there has been momentum toward change. So I I would love to see this accelerate.

Sarko Gergerian (23:35.52)

Nicely said. Yeah.

Victoria Maizes MD (23:35.798)

Andy, do you have a recommendation for our listeners besides Sarko's of an action people could take?

Andrew Weil (23:41.715)

Well, I think, you know, j be aware of the organizations out there that are working for this, like MAPS, you know, the multidisciplinary association for psychedelic studies, the centers that are offer offering training for psychedelic therapists. As you know, Victoria, among our fellows there's a great demand for information in this area. You know, they wanna know w how to use psychedelics, where they can get training, where they can get them and so forth. So we wanna answer that need.

Victoria Maizes MD (23:45.272)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Victoria Maizes MD (24:01.708)

Yes.

Victoria Maizes MD (24:12.076)

Yeah, and I'm proud that some of our graduates of our fellowship are actually leading this space in terms of research, in terms of providing clinical care. So if anyone wants to do a fellowship in integrative medicine, we do teach about the use of psychedelics.

Sarko Gergerian (24:12.332)

You know.

Sarko Gergerian (24:22.628)

Mm.

Andrew Weil (24:27.876)

And you know, this is why I was so excited to meet Sarko a year ago, because I think he's a very powerful and articulate spokesman for the value of these agents, especially among people who deal with, you know, those who are suffering from this kind of trauma.

Sarko Gergerian (24:44.782)

You know, I w Yeah, right. I w I would like to plug in a couple of things that go along with the the questioning that came up. One of them is is an organization that I know of called Decriminalized Nature. So so Andy brought up maps, the multidisciplinary association of psychedelic studies. Absolutely, people should look that up and link up and support the conference. Decriminalize Nature is the movement that started decriminalizing cities and now it's helping

Victoria Maizes MD (24:44.866)

Yes, and in the police.

Andrew Weil (24:47.036)

Yeah, yeah.

Victoria Maizes MD (24:51.285)

Mm-hmm.

Sarko Gergerian (25:14.094)

To decriminalize states so that people can have access to their birthright, which is communal relationship with nature in in my way of thinking. And then there's Soundmine Institute, founded by Dr. Hannah McLean, which is a year long training, which holds the tension between Western science and indigenous wisdom and sacredness appropriately and properly. So it's a beautiful, beautiful training program too.

Victoria Maizes MD (25:41.326)

Well, thank you so much. Those are really important organizations and resources to be aware of. And really thank you for the pioneering work that you are doing within policing and public health and you know for your unique perspective. It was wonderful to be in conversation with you.

Andrew Weil (25:59.88)

Yes, couldn't agree more.

Sarko Gergerian (26:00.228)

Thank you. Thank you so much. And I hope this continues and deepens. I appreciate

Andrew Weil (26:06.333)

Yes.