In this episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, I sit down with Lt. Sockham Roy to talk about his journey from a law enforcement professional to someone who is involved in psychedelics. We talk about how he got into psychedelics, how he became a therapist, and what it's like to be involved in the psychedelic community.
00:00:27.000And 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.
00:01:23.000And they're worried about protests breaking out at psychedelic conferences?
00:01:26.000Possible protests, possible people getting overwhelmed with emotion.
00:01:31.000You 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 to speak.
00:02:00.000And 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.
00:02:11.000Why don't you tell everybody what your background is?
00:02:36.000I'm also a therapist, a trained psychedelic assisted therapist.
00:02:40.000And 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.
00:02:52.000So how did your journey from being a law enforcement professional to someone who's involved in psychedelics, how did that take place?
00:03:45.000Eventually, I take so many of those classes, I graduate with an undergraduate degree in religion and philosophy and a huge minor in psychology, right?
00:04:17.000I'm studying religion, and I'm working as a security guard in the 90s in the nightclub scene in Boston.
00:04:26.000I have a front row seat when ecstasy hits the scene.
00:04:31.000I 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.
00:04:43.000I not only get to see how it affects people, but it affects the whole culture.
00:04:49.000The people at the clubs are no longer looking at each other like, who are you and what do you want?
00:05:26.000It's a really serious, huge international conference with upper level, chief executive level officers there.
00:05:35.000I go one year when Rick Doblin's there in Florida.
00:05:41.000He's presenting on Phase 2 clinical trials the results for MDMA-assisted psychotherapy, its efficacy against treatment-resistant severe PTSD.
00:06:08.000All 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.
00:06:19.00067% of people with treatment-resistant severe PTSD had their PTSD pushed into sustained remission.
00:08:11.000And 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.
00:08:25.000So you got to know what's going on, right?
00:08:27.000I mean, when someone's on MDMA, they're different.
00:08:34.000But 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?
00:08:53.000Where you're going to be able to experience MDMA.
00:08:56.000Because they think that it's important for the therapists to know what MDMA does.
00:09:07.000I 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?
00:10:40.000Because men and women are dying and suffering needlessly at the level Of an epidemic, and we're upholding a lie.
00:10:50.000I 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, right?
00:11:00.000Because it carries with this 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.
00:11:27.000It's a public narrative that's out there that unfortunately it's going to take a long time to turn that battleship around.
00:11:35.000So 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.
00:11:54.000I am asking for their help because I'm active law enforcement, and I got to tell you, Joe, we're muzzled.
00:12:27.000But what they can do is keep their mouth shut until they get to the point where they put a barrel of their gun in their mouth, or they can go buy a giant bottle of whiskey and drink themselves into depression, divorce, divorce, divorce, subclinical depression, anxiety, disordered eating, disordered sexual practices, because you know, chronically activated autonomic nervous system.
00:13:58.000So 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.
00:14:10.000And then, so you got the gasoline, right?
00:14:52.000It's an unspoken issue that was really exacerbated during this whole defund the police shit that was going on a few years back.
00:15:02.000Then you've got the demoralization, you know, and the fact that these people, not only they're not appreciated, but then they've been all turned into villains.
00:15:28.000It hurt me watching them have to come to work and see them take the 911 calls for service and show up and do their best following the rules to make sure that that family or that person is okay and then come back and feel unappreciated and not understood.
00:16:38.000Because it's inherently a part of human nature at times for confusion to come through, for misunderstanding that leads to violence to happen.
00:16:50.000Someone has to show up and handle that.
00:16:57.000So 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?
00:21:20.000And that this drug is also used by people who go to raves and wind up dying of heat exhaustion.
00:21:27.000And 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.
00:21:38.000A 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.
00:22:08.000And 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.
00:23:38.000Well, I think we're in a very unique time now where the door is open.
00:23:43.000And credit to Rick Perry, Former Republican governor of Texas, who championed the Ibogaine initiative here, and it's now become a thing.
00:23:52.000They're going to start doing that, which is amazing and so beneficial for soldiers in particular.
00:23:59.000People with extreme PTSD and people that are suffering from severe drug addictions and they don't understand why, and they're just fucked.
00:24:08.000A lot of soldiers and a lot of really traditionally right-wing people are getting involved in psychedelics.
00:24:17.000They're going to psychedelic retreats.
00:24:19.000A 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.
00:24:29.000So 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.
00:25:04.000This narrative, particularly among right-wing people, among conservative people, among disciplined people, hardworking, disciplined people.
00:25:11.000Now they're realizing this is a tool that's been denied us because of a corrupt government.
00:25:17.000A corrupt government that was seeking to silence the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement in the 1970s and the 1960s.
00:26:04.000And 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.
00:26:13.000It was actually part of the program to destroy the medicine and women, medicine men and medicine women wisdom keepers, which directly connects, I believe, to the war on drugs.
00:26:34.000You go to Siberian shaman, they were silenced by the powers that be in those days.
00:26:42.000It'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.
00:26:52.000And then they get a bunch of other people that follow them and they don't want to listen to propaganda anymore.
00:26:56.000And then people go, hey, this is a real problem.
00:27:27.000And it moves law enforcement away from protecting and serving life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, and the First Amendment, religious expression, into industry interest profits without us even knowing it.
00:27:43.000I'm not pointing a finger at any one law enforcement professional.
00:27:46.000I'm challenging people to wake up to what's going on.
00:27:49.000Because when we kick indoors 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?
00:28:06.000And I'm here to tell you, it's hurting them and us.
00:28:12.000For sure, because anyone who's a law enforcement officer that's arresting someone for weed, they know that they're not doing anything good.
00:29:52.000So if you go back to the 1930s when alcohol prohibition ended, you have a bunch of enforcement officers that aren't doing anything anymore.
00:30:02.000Then you have William Randolph Hearst, and then there's a machine, an invention called the decorticator.
00:30:08.000And the decorticator allowed them to effectively process hemp fiber.
00:30:13.000Hemp was always a very difficult Plant to process.
00:30:17.000And when Eli Whitney, was it Eli Whitney created the cotton gin?
00:30:50.000You 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.
00:31:37.000My cotton gis, they rip apart all the time.
00:31:40.000They're good for a year or two, and then they tear, and you got to buy a new one, or you just show up at class with a fucked up gi, which a lot of people do.
00:32:30.000Cannabis, which had been used for thousands of years, and hemp, which had been used for thousands of years.
00:32:36.000So then they started printing these stories that blacks and Mexicans were taking this new drug and raping white women.
00:32:43.000And then you have the Reaper Madness films and all these propaganda films that show young people taking a smoke of marijuana and losing their mind.
00:32:53.000So people act quickly and they pass laws, not even knowing that they're outlawing hemp, thinking that they're stopping this new drug, because most people are unaware of it.
00:33:03.000Clearly, this is a time before the internet.
00:33:05.000Very difficult to access information and understand exactly what's going on.
00:34:34.000Because this machine, this decorticator, before that, it was really, it was brutal, back-breaking work to take the hemp fiber and break it down because it's such a durable plant.
00:34:46.000Like if you ever pick up a hemp stalk, a hemp stalk that would, this is a mammoth tusk, but this is heavy.
00:34:53.000But if you had a hemp stalk that was this size, it would be incredibly light like balsa wood, but hard like oak.
00:35:10.000American 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.
00:35:22.000It is hemp, a crop that will compete with other American products.
00:35:27.000Instead, it will displace imports of raw materials and manufactured products produced by underpaid, what does that mean, coolie and peasant labor, and will provide thousands of jobs for American workers throughout the land.
00:35:41.000So that was the machine underneath it.
00:35:43.000That's the decorticator, and that's this new machine that they invented.
00:36:35.000And it requires an understanding of what the thing is.
00:36:38.000Well, 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 that I support.
00:37:13.000And you need the freedom to be able to explore these things and find out what's right for you and wrong for you.
00:37:18.000And you need the freedom to be able 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.
00:37:37.000We need to have information to put a blockade on this in the form of prohibition is stupid.
00:37:44.000And the fact that we're doing it in 2025 with all the information that we have available today, we have an abundance of information.
00:39:10.000You also have to make sense of it in a time where things are prescribed and you can get them from a doctor that we absolutely know are addictive and highly damaging and kill people.
00:40:02.000And 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.
00:40:49.000You 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.
00:41:00.000And here's another part of the problem.
00:41:02.000A 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.
00:42:31.000And the only way that that's going to change is you and I and other people to continue to have these public conversations where more people hear it.
00:42:39.000And I guarantee you, there's people listening to this right now that have never heard this before, never considered this before, and am I wrong?
00:42:47.000Do I have these deep-held beliefs that are completely ignorant?
00:43:13.000We're called To create an artistic expression of a unique life.
00:43:19.000To me, that's what the divine is commanding.
00:43:22.000That's what the divine gets to experience.
00:43:25.000The 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.
00:43:37.000Well, the more possibilities there are for creativity, the more possibilities there are for people to rethink their lives, get on a better path, there's a lot that people are missing just because you've been hoodwinked and you've been led into this false narrative.
00:46:17.000It really makes you wonder what would the world look like had they not placed that sweeping psychedelic act of 1970 and then impose those standards on most of the rest of the world as well.
00:48:37.000Well, listen to what I just found out before I came to your show today.
00:48:42.000The Psychiatric Society of Massachusetts just endorsed or got behind three psilocybin bills.
00:48:50.000They didn't get behind the ballot question, which failed, but they're now getting behind decriminalizing psilocybin measures that are at the state house.
00:49:04.000It happens at a snail's pace, and it happens through back-breaking labor from people like you and Paul Stamitz and Rick Doblin and so many more who are doing the Lord's work, literally.
00:49:16.000But this is, it's just a frustrating thing for a lot of people that know the truth behind this, that how many people it can help, and then how many people who are being damaged by these unfair, unjust, immoral, and illogical laws.
00:49:31.000And if we bend it, if we bend it, if you take on one end the enforcers, right, which I believe are called to be peace officers and guardians, and the other end, the civilians, which are being split up into groups and pitted Against one another, and you bend them, everybody's getting hurt, and trauma load is exponentially growing.
00:52:56.000And you know, Joe, when back to that FDA committee that delayed everything with MDMA, I ended up really, really sad for like three months because of what you just said.
00:53:11.000A lot of people who will benefit from MDMA are not going to be able to access, not for a month or two, for years, for years.
00:53:21.000At a cost that could hurt a person like Rick Doblin and Maps and Lycos and the philanthropists that help him get to this point.
00:53:47.000And let's take that thread back to what you said.
00:53:49.000Could you imagine the world we could live in if these things were available to people so that they could heal, so that they could dream, so that they can become their own versions of Jimi Hendrix?
00:54:03.000It's really crazy when you think about it that one president and one administration changed the course of civilization because they wanted control and they wanted to stop the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement.
00:54:17.000And I like that statement, course of civilization, because they succeeded at taking it on a road show into other countries through international treaties.
00:54:31.000I was blessed with being able to go and speak on a panel at the United Nations, and it was put together by an organization called LEAP Law Enforcement Action Partnership.
00:54:40.000I 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.
00:54:49.000And we spoke about access for psychedelics for law enforcement.
00:54:55.000And 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.
00:55:04.000And here's the two things that I found out I wanted to get to this point.
00:55:07.000The World Health Organization has now recognized that Schedule I is a fraud.
00:55:13.000They're going to try to create their own, right?
00:55:16.000And 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.
00:56:22.000Once they're lost, and this is what's really obvious about the 1970s Schedule I Act, because it's like we're dealing with the same issue all these years later, but it's not the 1970s, right?
00:56:34.000So we have all the access to the data now instantaneously.
00:57:27.000People 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.
00:57:48.000It'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.
00:58:00.000As long as it doesn't harm another human being.
00:58:20.000We get the politicians to help create safe space for the exploration of these topics.
00:58:28.000We meet up in conversation and break bread in safety.
00:58:34.000Well, I think the big thing is public perception.
00:58:37.000Public 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.
00:58:49.000He's politically in deep water because so many people have reacted so negatively to this draconian attempt to ban all THC products where people are like, why?
00:59:26.000And 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.
00:59:33.000You could lose your mind to, hey, that's how my uncle quit smoking.
00:59:38.000You know, hey, that's how my aunt got off of opiates.
00:59:40.000Hey, that's, you know, and everyone knows somebody that's had positive experiences that was deeply depressed and now's a different person.
00:59:49.000And they're so much happier and healthier because of it.
00:59:51.000And so it's the narrative publicly has shifted.
01:00:05.000And 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?
01:04:28.000Yeah, that's a problem with, well, that's a problem with everything, right?
01:04:31.000You know, it's a problem with any, I mean, if you really need Adderall, you have like chronic fatigue and Adderall is the only thing that lifts you out of that.
01:04:39.000What's to stop you from taking two pills?
01:06:05.000It'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.
01:06:15.000And unfortunately, somebody figured out how to synthesize it and turn it into cocaine and then it became illegal.
01:08:10.000What year did they, let's find out what year they took cocaine out of Coca-Cola?
01:08:16.000Because I remember the whole story for, I don't remember exactly the details of, like, how cocaine was in Coca-Cola for the first place.
01:08:25.000But cocaine used to be prescribed, 1929.
01:08:31.000So 1903, fresh coca leaves were removed from the formula.
01:08:34.000After 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.
01:08:43.000And since then, by 1929, they've used cocaine-free.
01:08:46.000So in 1903, they started removing cocaine.
01:08:53.000But they're still using cocaine-free coca leaf extracts.
01:09:34.000Coca-Cola once contained an estimated 9 milligrams of cocaine per glass.
01:09:39.000For comparison, a typical dose or line of cocaine is 50 to 75 milligrams.
01:09:45.000So it was like a mild pick-me-up, nine milligrams.
01:09:49.000After 1904, instead of using fresh leaves, Coca-Cola started using spent leaves.
01:09:53.000Today, that extract is prepared at a Stephan company, 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.
01:10:11.000Stepan Company extracts cocaine from the leaves, which it sells to Mallencrock, the only company in the United States licensed to purify cocaine for medical use.
01:11:13.000Long after the syrup ceased to contain any significant amounts of cocaine in North Carolina, dope remained a common colloquialism for Coca-Cola.
01:11:21.000And dope wagons were trucks that transported it.
01:11:34.000Cola nut acts as a flavoring and the original source of caffeine in Coca-Cola.
01:11:38.000It contains 2 to 3.5% caffeine and has a bitter flavor.
01:11:43.000In 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.
01:11:57.000Court found the syrup, when diluted as directed, would result in a beverage containing 1.21 grains, 78.4 milligrams, of caffeine per eight fluid ounces.
01:12:08.000The 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.
01:12:26.000In 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.
01:12:41.000The company then voluntarily reduced the amount of caffeine in its product and offered rather to pay the government's legal costs to settle and avoid further litigation.
01:14:40.000Well, it's like people have always tried to control other people for whatever reason, especially when the government has the power to do it.
01:15:12.000If you just legalize them, there's a lot of people who would never try any illegal drug who would try a legal drug.
01:15:19.000You 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.
01:15:38.000So it would be a period of time where it would cause damage.
01:15:42.000And that would be really problematic for politicians, lawmakers, anybody who enforced these ideas.
01:15:49.000You know, there'd be blood is on your hands.
01:15:51.000but this infidelization of human beings, like turning them into babies that need to be controlled by the state.
01:16:10.000I've never done cocaine in my whole life.
01:16:12.000I 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.
01:16:33.000I think those people do it without much problems.
01:16:35.000There's also mate de cocoa, which is a tea that they make from the leaves.
01:16:39.000Well, 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.
01:16:49.000Why don't we talk about decriminalization and regulation?
01:16:53.000But the problem is, even with decriminalization, what's the supply?
01:17:39.000But let me remind our audience, and let me bring this back into the conversation.
01:17:44.000Our police promotional books, we're not talking radical here.
01:17:50.000Our police promotion books talk about the problem with prohibition and criminalization, unleashing gangsters and dangerous supply on our civilians.
01:18:00.000And that's where the cartels come into play.
01:20:01.000So working with this logic, Joe, right?
01:20:03.000Because people sometimes make me out to be out of my mind when I say this stuff.
01:20:07.000If the most dangerous, toxic, and carcinogenic is available, and the least dangerous, helpful, non-addictic is not available, let's fix that.
01:21:45.000He was a chemist that was working at this company.
01:21:47.000Russell Crowe was playing this doctor.
01:21:49.000He 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.
01:22:04.000Well, I was told that those scientists were absorbed into the food industry.
01:22:11.000Well, 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.
01:22:22.000Once they lost a bunch of money, they went out and bought all the processed food companies.
01:22:27.000And now they made those more addictive.
01:22:29.000And so now, like, you know, they even openly flaunted.
01:22:54.000It's like, how do we get people to eat more chips?
01:22:57.000Make the chips impossible to put down or very difficult to put down.
01:23:01.000And 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.
01:23:11.000You're going to get fentanyl potato chips.
01:23:44.000And 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.
01:23:57.000And this is why guys like Rick Doblin are so courageous, like, 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.
01:25:49.000Because 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.
01:25:57.000You're contributing to the deterioration of society by allowing this use of MDMA to push forward.
01:26:04.000And 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.
01:26:16.000Look, I think that's a component, right?
01:26:20.000We were talking about public perception and that changing and then that pressuring and things changing as well.
01:26:26.000I 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.
01:29:26.000It's a book that he wrote after he was one of the people that was contracted to decipher the Dead Sea Scrolls.
01:29:35.000It was like a 14-year job where they were deciphering the Dead Sea Scrolls.
01:29:39.000And he was the only one on the committee that was agnostic.
01:29:42.000He 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.
01:29:52.000And like, what's the real religion and root of this all?
01:29:55.000Or origin rather and root of this all.
01:29:58.000So he wrote this book after 14 years where he's going to sort of paraphrase, but he thought that the entire Christian religion was based on the consumption of psychedelic mushrooms and fertility rituals.
01:30:12.000And that this was what it was all about.
01:30:15.000And I believe the book, because I've said this before, but I need to know it's true, was the book bought up by the Catholic Church?
01:30:21.000I think it was bought up by the Catholic Church, and they stopped production of it.
01:30:26.000And then he released a new book called The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth.
01:30:49.000It'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.
01:31:06.000And 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.
01:31:27.000And they would consume these mushrooms and have these religious experiences.
01:31:31.000And this was a hugely controversial book, of course.
01:31:35.000And 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.
01:31:45.000Well, you know what that brings up in me, Joe, is the sacredness of sexuality.
01:32:09.000This is like a billion follower strong type of Christianity that is through sacred ritual transforming food into the body and blood of God.
01:32:23.000Just 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.
01:32:35.000And I don't think we need to allow that process to happen.
01:33:02.000We've become accustomed to the mystery, so it seems normal.
01:33:05.000But, 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.
01:33:14.000Being 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.
01:33:34.000I mean, let's talk about sacred sexuality and the fact that every living thing is in a system that's eating and birthing itself continuously in all directions.
01:33:44.000How do you wrap your mind around that?
01:33:46.000You know, I got a big sense of that when I went into Old Growth Rainforest in Costa Rica for the first time.
01:33:52.000And I touched like the handle of a bridge and it felt like it was moving because like every drop of everything is alive and everything is either competing, going along with and helping, supporting or eating one another in that space.
01:34:07.000And it's like, what is happening in here?
01:34:11.000And I had that type of an experience on psychedelics in the religious context, psilocybin.
01:34:18.000I felt like I dropped into the collective conscience and I got to see the partitioned section that was my psychic space where all my complexes and traumas were pulsing energetically into one another and how that energy was spilling over on my family and community.
01:34:36.000That was the access that was given to me through psilocybin.
01:34:42.000And those energetic forces are pushing me around right now as we speak.
01:34:45.000Well, 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.
01:35:02.000And, you know, if you go 5,000 years from now, how they're going to look at us like these dorks, like they were fighting and arguing about.
01:35:37.000But 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.
01:35:56.000And Joe, you know, when we, 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.
01:37:31.000You 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.
01:38:32.000And then, you know, there's a choice point here, Joe, where you can, you, sometimes it's hard because there's things in the psyche that are manipulating what you're focusing on.
01:38:45.000But 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, right, every day waking up, they go to work, they go home.
01:39:04.000Yeah, there's a handful of problems, but that's not how it's presented.
01:39:08.000It's miraculous if you think about it.
01:39:55.000And 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.
01:40:07.000We build the mainstream culture, the laws that we operate under, out of concern for the 2% rather than celebration of the 98% that do care, that do feel empathy, that do.
01:40:24.000And that is the problem with the algorithm.
01:40:27.000That'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.
01:40:35.000You're constantly interacting with the worst aspects of life on earth and not appreciating all the good that's around you all the time.
01:41:16.000One of the great things about social media is just the access to new and fascinating information.
01:41:21.000You're constantly, if you do follow the right people and do go down the right roads, you'll be constantly inundated with fascinating information.
01:41:31.000New 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.
01:43:59.000And I've come to notice, let's call it the CBT triangle, cognitive behavioral therapy or theory triangle, right?
01:44:07.000Thoughts lead to emotions, lead to actions, right?
01:44:12.000Because of psychedelic work, I've 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.
01:44:26.000As a therapist, how have you incorporated this in everyday life with your patients?
01:44:33.000Two things come to mind when you ask that question.
01:44:35.000It'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.
01:44:51.000The 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.
01:45:32.000You don't want to step outside of the lanes that you're comfortable being in.
01:45:36.000If you're not comfortable being in a certain lane, you've got to go get training, training and experience to be an ethical practitioner before you talk about something, right?
01:46:43.000And 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.
01:47:05.000And then they just sort of opened the doors for everything.
01:47:07.000And then people went there specifically because they could do these things.
01:48:11.000But 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.
01:48:25.000Because you've already allowed people to do something that you know publicly is frowned upon, to just like be shitting on the street and to open drug use everywhere.
01:48:38.000Have people camped out, homeless people like covering up sidewalks where you can't get around, and there's needles everywhere and it's like garbage everywhere.
01:48:46.000Well, we can agree that we don't want that.
01:48:48.000And in many places, like there's local ordinances against that.
01:48:53.000There's state-level laws against that.
01:49:16.000So we realize that if we say full-scale decriminalization, anything goes, doesn't work, I would have told you right from the beginning, well, that's kind of freaky.
01:49:51.000Where we have wraparound services, where we have maybe access to what they need, maybe access to what they're addicted to.
01:50:01.000Now we're starting to talk about safe supply with care and medical intervention.
01:50:06.000Yeah, no one's ever done that successfully, though, right?
01:50:09.000Like, 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?
01:50:22.000So I've heard that Canada is exploring the medical access of medical-grade heroin for certain people.
01:50:28.000And 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.
01:50:41.000We know these things work, but they've got to be curated properly.
01:52:27.000In Winthrop, Massachusetts, Winthrop, Massachusetts, 10 years ago, when I was a patrol officer and I kept coming in seeing public health issues in the police logs and police incidents, public health issue, mental health challenge, a person not having access to their psychiatrist running out of their medicine, overdose save, overdose loss tragically, over and over and over again.
01:53:33.000People 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.
01:53:50.000And 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.
01:55:38.000It's the way these problems are approached and that they need new solutions.
01:55:43.000Solutions 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.
01:56:03.000We call it recovery-oriented community policing.
01:56:08.000Now let me plug something else in that I think is a sophisticated, important point that people got to keep in mind.
01:56:16.000This isn't an attack on traditional enforcement type of policing.
01:56:26.000If 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.
01:56:38.000Unfortunately, the dark side is a part of human nature.
01:56:43.000And that type of policing done right is important and it keeps us well.
01:56:48.000But when it's the only type of policing, we're missing something.
01:56:53.000We're missing something important and special.
01:56:57.000And our people are expecting our officers to show up and put a hand out, a hand, a helping hand and say, we know what's going on and we want you to be well.
01:58:39.000I 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.
01:58:49.000Joe, let me say something back to you, man.
01:58:52.000This was a really special, special moment for me.
01:58:57.000I'm not only a colleague of yours, man, I'm a fan.
01:59:01.000And a number of close personal friends, one in particular, Billy Reinstein, who I love to death, said, tell Joe that he has helped me so tremendously.
01:59:12.000His show has helped me stay well, be well, be happy.