Lt. Gergerian Wants to Get to the Root of the Problem

This personal approach eventually evolved into Winthrop’s Community and Law Enforcement Assisted Recovery (CLEAR) Team. Gergerian’s initiative uses the information from dispatch logs and incident reports to proactively reach out to affected community members and connect them with resources that can help. The CLEAR program involves a network of community resources, recovery coaches, social workers, resource navigators, case managers for domestic violence and sexual assault, the Winthrop Police Department, and the Winthrop Public Health Department. Years after Gergerian initially looked into community outreach, the program has grown and evolved.

“We now have officers at the initial emergency call for service getting verbal consent to get the CLEAR Team involved right at the initial call. We have officers putting in their police reports that the person being helped wants the CLEAR Team to follow up. It’s important to do something like this for long enough while collecting data to truly see, learn, and adjust.”

As Winthrop’s first police lieutenant to be assigned concurrently to Public Safety and Public Health, Gergerian sees that bridging police work and public health is a way to respond to the needs of the community.

“We are called to service and protect people,” he said. With CLEAR, Gergerian aims to support people who live with mental health or substance use challenges toward recovery and well-being. Instead of making unnecessary arrests or ineffectively responding to 911 callers, the goal is, ultimately, to be proactive. “We could be helping someone not die and helping someone not get put in a cage,” he explained.

A turning point for Gergerian was when he met Dr. Rick Doblin, the founder of the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), at the International Association of Chiefs of Police Conference in Florida in 2018. Doblin was presenting his case on the clinical trials on the efficacy of MDMA assisted therapy to help heal posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

“When I saw the findings, I jumped on stage and introduced myself to him. I said, ‘my name is Sarko, I’m a police officer and a therapist, and I need to help in any way shape or form that I can.’ He invited me in to be trained as an MDMA assisted therapist in the MAPS training protocol,” he recalled.

MAPS sponsored clinical trials to explore the potential risks and benefits of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in chronic PTSD participants. That training led to an invitation to be a part of a federally sanctioned research protocol for Gergerian to actually take MDMA. When he did, he saw that the possible positive outcomes for MDMA-assisted therapy are not accessible for many people who may benefit from it.

He explained, “I realized what people don’t have access to, the tragedy connected to it, the injustice connected to it, inappropriateness connected to it.”

Part of the issue for Gergerian lies in the fact that the drugs used in this research are Schedule I substances. According to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), “schedule I drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”

Gergerian finds that this categorization limits the medicinal potential of a drug like MDMA while drugs that have known addictive and harmful effects are accepted in medical use.

“Schedule I is where MDMA is, but that’s not where fentanyl is,” he says. For Gergerian, the inconsistencies across the DEA schedules have major effects in many communities. Highly addictive substances such as fentanyl, oxycodone, and methamphetamine

can be prescribed and administered to patients, while substances such as cannabis, LSD, and MDMA are not allowed to be “prescribed, dispensed, or administered.” Gergerian is not condoning or encouraging people to take addictive drugs, but he understands that is the reality for some people. Community members who are struggling with addiction can benefit from holistic policing, according to Gergerian and the CLEAR program.

“There’s a proper and not so proper, a safe and a not so safe way to approach it. It’s time for adults to have access, it’s time for first responders to have access.”

Getting to the root of the cause and getting community members what they need to be better would be more useful than making arrests or other high stakes police situations.

“People who decide to use drugs, they aren’t criminals. Self- directed behavior isn’t a real crime. This is leading to community police mistrust, high stakes police and community member interactions, which is leading to trauma, which is leading to explosive situations that we might never have needed to be participating in the first place,” he says.

While explosive situations are harmful for community members, Gergerian highlighted another effect: the harm on police and first responders.

He said, “Police action has a consequence on the individual officer. What are we policing? People should have access to whatever they need to be well. Police officers and first responders should have access to whatever they need to be well.”

Taking care of the community should also include taking care of the police force, stresses Gergerian. “What comes to mind is moral injury, and the police suicide rate is through the roof. Clinical depression, anxiety, marriages falling apart, officers who pass away 5-10 years after retirement…we could be doing something better.”

Gergerian advocates for MDMA-assisted psychotherapy because he experienced first-hand how it could be used in a positive way to help the community at large. He believes that keeping people safe can start by addressing people’s emotional needs and a tool like MDMA should not be overlooked. He cites his own physician-monitored MDMA experience as evidence of the possible benefits.

“The impact of generational trauma in my lineage, a common point for Armenians, and the extent to which that has impacted every part of my life, all the way to the point that I felt like I had to continually put myself in more and more dangerous situations to help people. I got to see this in my psyche [with MDMA]. I felt safe within this energetic field of love that was permeating everything, and was able to go there without being overwhelmed. That’s the power of MDMA, of psychedelics, to do hard work in the psyche, and come back to baseline reality with a new perspective. It’s a gift, and there’s nothing easy about it.”

Gergerian hopes to speak to the injustice in keeping adults from psychedelic-assisted self-care and change the perception that it is “inappropriate, harmful, and immoral.”

“I can extend hope to adults at their wits’ end that there are states which have opened up access to life-saving, mystical experience-producing, and nature communing methods, like Oregon and Colorado. I wish Massachusetts had become the third state in the union to offer above-ground access to adults,” he added.

Gergerian knows there’s not a straightforward path ahead but he hopes to make an impact by being proactive. Through advocating for alternative therapies, increased trust in the community, and recovery-oriented policing, Gergerian shows an optimistic outlook as he continues to combine his beliefs and work. His program, CLEAR, emphasizes that recovery and well-being are something that anyone can achieve.

This line of work can be difficult and controversial, but fortunately for Gergerian, his family continues to be a solid support system. “My wife and kids know everything that I do. My wife has my back in a deep, loving way. My kids know that I believe, what I practice, and why. I’m sure you have heard the phrase, ‘know your why?’ I know mine. They also know I would expect them to know theirs if they are ever called to go into this territory.”

He adds that he is proud to have his family witness his journey so far and to continue seeing his advocacy unfold.

“It was a joy to be able to have them see me do the work because of Michael Pollen’s docuseries ‘How to Change Your Mind’ on Netflix. I am eager to have them see me doing the work in the upcoming documentary by Kerthy Fix and Paul Kloss titled ‘Ecstatic.’”

Tellingly, Gergerian prefers the title of Peace Officer. The reimagining of the traditional title brings to mind a more gentle and holistic approach to a profession that has, in recent years, seen negative backlash from the public. Perhaps the efforts with recovery-oriented community policing could lead to increased community peace. Working towards keeping the community safe and healthy, keeping officers and first responders safe and healthy could lead to personal peace. Whatever his own interpretation is, Gergerian’s motto remains: “I’m a Peace Officer. I show up to help.”

(Gergerian’s views are his own, and do not necessarily represent the Winthrop Police Department or town of Winthrop.)