Name: Joe Rogan Experience #2357 - Sarko Gergerian
Uploaded: 2025-07-30T17:00:18.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2357 - Sarko Gergerian' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-07-30. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2357 - Sarko Gergerian' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-07-30. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #2357 - Sarko Gergerian

Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
What's up, Sarko?
How are you?
Hey, how are you, Joe?
Good to see you.
Oh, it's great to see you.
It's great to be here, man.
How did you meet Paul?
So Paul Stamets introduced me to you.
So how did you meet Paul?
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.
In what way?
So Psychedelic Science had a lot of Jewish practitioners.
They had invited Palestinian practitioners in.
There was Arab practitioners there.
So there was a lot of education around sensitive topics happening, you know.
And I was invited in just to be available to help people feel secure.
What were they worried about?
Yeah.
Any protests building up.
Just because there was Jewish people and Palestinian people?
Well, you know, the nature of the environment, right?
There's like wars going on across the world.
But this is a psychedelic conference.
This is a psychedelic conference.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And they're worried about protests breaking out at psychedelic conferences?
Possible protests, possible people getting overwhelmed with emotion, you know,
because in Psychedelic Science 2023, there was a situation where when Rick Doblin
was on stage, a group came in and disrupted his presentation.
And they were allowed on stage, right?
But that's a type of disruption, right?
And it should be handled carefully.
And Rick handled it like a master.
What did he do?
He made space for them.
Oh, well, was that really the way to do it?
Well, it depends.
It depends.
It depends.
There's a time and a place, right?
And I think Psychedelic Science 2025 did it 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.
Why don't you tell everybody what your background is?
Sure, sure.
So I am currently a law enforcement professional at the rank of lieutenant out
of Massachusetts.
I've been in law enforcement.
You can tell by the accent.
I mean, my accent's going to kick in and on and off, on and off through this
whole discussion.
A couple beers in and you really go.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
So that's been about 15 years.
I'm also a therapist, a trained Psychedelic Assisted Therapist.
And I believe, a lot of people believe I'm the first law enforcement
professional who got a religious exemption at their place of work to access entheogens.
So how did your journey from being a law enforcement professional to someone
who's involved in psychedelics, how did that take place?
Okay, yeah, yeah.
I think I'm going to have to go a little bit further back.
Oh, sure.
For that, sure.
So I went to a little high school in Boston, Massachusetts, Newman Prep.
And when I graduated there, I was luckily accepted into Northeastern University.
So I go into Northeastern University in my 20s, and they ask you, what do you
want to major in, right?
And who knows what they want to major in at that age?
I was like, let's study psychology, right?
And get to know myself, figure things out.
Such a behavioral program.
What I mean by that is rats pressing levers, observable stuff.
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, right?
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, okay?
So five-year program.
I'm studying religion, and I'm working as a security guard in the 90s in the
nightclub scene in Boston.
I have a front row seat when ecstasy hits the scene, right?
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.
Actually, I've shared this story before.
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.
Wow.
All 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
society.
It was sustained remission.
Sustained remission.
From how many experiences?
I think the way it was set up was like two or three.
You know there's a model to the framework.
And then integration, experience, space, experience, space, space, experience,
and then integration.
And this is all done through MAP, so it's all done in a clinical environment?
Yes.
Very controlled?
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?
You know what I mean?
Like, there's this guy in front of me shaking his hand and saying, I have to
help with this.
And 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.
What?
What's that?
You had never heard of anything.
Never heard of any of that.
What year was this again?
Man, it must be five years ago.
Maybe more than that at this point.
Just working from memory.
It was Orlando, Florida.
IACP conference.
Yeah.
You said something really important, Joe.
Psychedelic-assisted therapist.
What?
What?
Medicalizing a Schedule I substance.
What?
You know?
Right.
How is this even possible?
But the story gets even more interesting.
He gives me his card, and he says, contact me.
All right?
I'm like, 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.
So you've got to know what's going on, right?
It's a, I mean, when someone's on MDMA, they're, you know, they're different.
And you've got to hold that.
You've got to hold that.
But not only did they do that, MAPS contacts me and says, we might be able to
get you into
a federally sanctioned research protocol as a healthy normal, because I'm an
example of a healthy normal, right?
Where you're going to be able to experience MDMA, because they think that it's
important for the
therapists to know what MDMA does.
So, I mean, really?
I go back to my police chief and I say, chief, I'm not only going to be able to
be trained
as an MDMA-assisted therapist to help people with PTSD, because it matters to
me, right?
What are cops doing to themselves?
They're blowing their heads off.
Right.
The suicide rate in cops is two to three times higher than the rate in
civilians.
More cops are dying by suicide, by the barrel of their own guns, than attack on
the street.
Right?
The way the media is portraying everything, that's not getting out there.
Right.
Right?
So, MDMA can help with that.
I'd say we're in an epidemic of suicide in first responders, if that's the
numbers.
No?
Yeah, for sure.
Right?
Yeah.
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.
Yeah, radical measures.
Radical measures.
Not when it comes to compounds on Schedule 1.
Why?
Well, because it's federally Scheduled 1.
It's supposed to have no medical use whatsoever, and the most dangerous and
addictive of compounds.
That's right.
May I?
Yeah.
Say something about that?
It's a lie.
Well, it's certainly a lie.
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.
I think the problem is, politically, it's very difficult to say what you're
saying if you're anyone who is running for office or anyone who's currently
seeking re-election.
Because it carries with this taboo, this narrative that has existed since the
1970s, that these are drugs that are ruining people's lives.
And it's going to waste.
You're just going to waste away.
It's going to...
You're just escaping reality.
They're for weak people.
They're for losers and addicts.
You couldn't have summed up the problem better.
Nicely done.
It's a public narrative that's out there that, unfortunately, it's going to
take a long time to turn that battleship around.
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've got to tell you, Joe, we're muzzled.
We're muzzled.
Not only are our mouths shut, but our hearts are put in a cage.
Like how so?
What do you mean?
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 mouths shut until they get to the point
where they put a barrel of their gun in their mouth.
Or they can go buy a giant bottle of whiskey and drink themselves into
depression.
Divorce, divorce, divorce, subclinical depression, anxiety, disordered eating,
disordered sexual practices.
Because you know, chronically activated autonomic nervous system, what does
that cause?
Fight, flight, freeze, fawn, hypersexuality.
I dropped the last F.
Right?
What does that destroy?
It destroys everything.
It destroys everything.
It destroys your life.
It destroys the human behind the badge.
Right?
Well, 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.
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, suicide, car accidents.
Baby head crushed.
Oof.
Yeah.
200.
Most civilians have five.
Critical incidents send people's lives sideways.
So, the first responder's nervous system is a carrier of trauma at a level unimaginable
by most people,
which is what you just brought into this conversation.
And then, so you got the gasoline, right?
And you got the match.
They fly off the handle and everyone acts surprised.
How could that happen?
How did that officer end up doing that?
Because it's a known risk of the job.
And you know when we die?
Five to ten years after retirement.
That's a d