Lieutenant Sarko Gergerian explores the potential of psychedelic medicine for the wellbeing of first responders.
About the event
Psychedelic medicines have long been shrouded in controversy and are currently illegal, making them inaccessible to medical professionals, firefighters and police officers. However, amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the consequential increase in mental and emotional anguish among these essential workers, the healthcare and law enforcement communities are seeking innovative methods to manage the toll of daily work. Lieutenant Sarko Gergerian will speak about his experiences as police peace officer trained in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and the potential psychedelic medicine holds not only for mental health and wellbeing of first responders, but for society.
This event will take place on Zoom. Once you book your ticket, the link to the event will be sent closer to the date.
About the speakers
Lieutenant Sarko Gergerian is a Masters-level clinical mental health counsellor with a background in philosophy, religion and psychology and is currently doing doctorate level work at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Depth Psychology. He currently works as a police peace officer at the rank of Lieutenant and as a psychotherapist. In these roles, he founded one of the first Guardianship police models in the US known as Community & Law Enforcement Assisted Recovery (CLEAR). He is a certified police peer professional who works to not only find and help civilians stay out of cages and coffins, but also connect with first responders so they do not succumb to job related stress injury. He is the first working peace officer in the country to earn the Certified Addiction Recovery Coach (CARC) credential from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a certified HeartMath meditation instructor and trainer, and is trained in psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. Additionally, he holds the 100-hour certificate from the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) and is a recognized subject matter expert by the Federal Government of the integration of people with lived experience into public safety and health systems. Lt Gergerian is a speaker with the Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP) and one of 120 people who was able to experience pharmaceutical grade MDMA in a federally sanctioned research protocol MT1 as shared in the Netflix Documentary How to Change Your Mind.
Dr Daniela Gandorfer is a lecturer (Assistant Professor) at University of Westminster Law School and founder of The Logische Phantasie Lab (LoPh), a social startup working on future forms of law and governance through community-empowerment. LoPh’s current initiative works towards a decentralised right to breathe at the intersection of Web3 and climate change. Daniela’s research focuses on scientific and technological frontier spaces — such as quantum physics, new digital technologies and psychedelics — and their implications for emerging forms of governance. Special interest lies on the possibilities for an ethics of sensing and sense-making (synaesethics) attentive to these phenomena. She is the recipient of the 2021 ASciNA Young Scientist Award for her forthcoming book Matterphorics: On the Laws of Theory (Duke UP) and the Vienna Content Grant for A Thousand Breaths. She has co-edited the Research Handbook in Law and Literature (Edward Elgar Publishing, with Peter Goodrich and Cecilia Gebruers) as well as the Theory & Event special issue Matterphorical (Johns Hopkins Press, with Zulaikha Ayub).
