Chapter Blue
Tyra Valeriano, host of Chapter Blue, comes with 11 years of law enforcement experience and talks about mental health, self-care, work-life balance and more. Through honest conversations and personal experience, Chapter Blue allows for officers worldwide to share their stories, struggles, and successes both on and off duty and to give the public an insight to what the media has made into such a controversial profession. The podcast will establish the connection to the important topics and struggles in law enforcement and open up to all first responder roles in the new year to address how interchangeable the roles relate to the struggle. Join the conversation, because it’s long overdue!
Chapter Blue
Robie Poynter: Breaking the Mental Health Stigma with Psilocybin
Ever wondered what happens when traditional mental health approaches fail our first responders? In this groundbreaking episode, I speak with Rob Poynter, a retired deputy sheriff, who took an unconventional path to healing the wounds left by his law enforcement career.
Rob's story begins with his upbringing as the son of a homicide detective who was an active father but struggled with alcoholism. He decided to follow in his dad's footsteps and after nearly 15 years of service, a motorcycle accident forced his medical retirement, leaving him to confront how his career had affected his relationships with his wife and son. Despite trying various wellness practices – from yoga to talk therapy – nothing seemed to break through the emotional armor he'd built up over years of service.
The conversation takes an unexpected turn as Rob describes his journey with the Siren Project, a nonprofit organization that facilitates psilocybin therapy retreats specifically for first responders. With remarkable candor, he details his experience with plant medicine in a ceremonial, medically-supervised setting in Mexico, and the profound insights he gained about his relationships and behavior patterns. Most surprisingly, he discovered his issues stemmed less from traumatic calls and more from childhood issues that had shaped his adult relationships.
What sets this episode apart is Rob's perspective as someone who once enforced drug laws now advocating for the healing potential of plant medicine. He emphasizes that he's "not some wavy gravy guy" but a typical law enforcement officer who found healing through an unconventional path. The lasting changes he describes – from daily meditation practices to newfound clarity in his relationships – challenge our assumptions about mental health treatment for those who serve.
Whether you're in law enforcement, another first responder field, or simply interested in alternative approaches to mental health, this conversation offers valuable insights into healing pathways that might not be found in traditional settings. Join us as we explore this aspect of first responder wellness and consider what it might mean for those struggling to process trauma in high-stress professions.
Ready to challenge your assumptions about healing? Listen now, share your thoughts, and help us continue this important conversation about mental health options for those who serve and protect.
🧰 Listener Resources from the Episode:
🌿 The Siren Project
A nonprofit organization offering plant medicine retreats for first responders
Website: www.thesirenproject.org
📬 Connect with Rob Poynter:
- Facebook: Rob Poynter
- Instagram: @rawb_zone
- Twitter: @RobZone1
- LinkedIn: Rob Poynter
- Email: Rawbzone@gmial.com
Let us know what you loved about this episode!
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Welcome to Chapter Blue, the podcast where we discuss the world of law enforcement through an honest conversation on tough or controversial topics, real stories, perspectives and experience from officers all around the world. Whether you're here for insights on mental health, self-care, work-life balance, getting into law enforcement, getting out of law enforcement, or just trying to learn about personal and professional challenges officers face every day, you've come to the right place. I'm your host, Tyra Valeriano, and whether I'm going solo or speaking with a guest, each episode will discuss different aspects of life behind the badge. Let's turn the page and step into Chapter Blue.
Tyra Valeriano :Welcome back to another episode of Chapter Blue. Today's episode is a little different and it's a taken perspective I have not yet discussed on the podcast, but it very much ties into mental health and wellness. For first responders, I'd like to welcome Rob Pointer out of California, who is a retired deputy sheriff with a very different approach on bridging the gap between mental health treatments and other options we may not have considered before. So thank you for making time to be here today. Rob, If you would share some of your background with our listeners and what you're doing today.
Robie Poynter:So happy to be here and I'm very grateful that you're letting me share this on your podcast. My name is Rob Pointer. I kind of the 50,000 foot view is. I grew up in a law enforcement. My dad was a deputy sheriff for 26 years in San Mateo County so I grew up around law enforcement. He was mostly a homicide detective so I really saw like the high stress, the pressure of law enforcement, the pressure of law enforcement. He was also a very high functioning alcoholic. So when I was about seven my mom split and then my dad raised me from seven on Solo dad. Law enforcement was there for all my games and all that stuff.
Robie Poynter:When it was about time 18 to 20 years old to decide what I wanted to do, I wanted to be in law enforcement because I loved watching him and the camaraderie he had with his buddies and that was super cool. And on the other side of it, I didn't like the alcohol part of it and how he handled his stress. So I kind of came to this crossroads about 2021. I started kind of testing and I was also heavily into health and fitness at that time, doing bodybuilding shows, and I chose to go the health and fitness route and I started making money. And I started I, you know, worked for one of the largest health club chains in the world, became a district manager, then a regional manager, then ended up owning my own club. Subsequently, when I owned my own club, one of the members her husband was the undersheriff of Alameda County, which is, I'd say, a medium-sized agency a thousand sworn, I'd say medium-sized agency, a thousand sworn started talking to her about really what my passion was and but my concerns, and she shared with me. Well, you know, law enforcement's not like that anymore. That's not how they handle stress and they don't, they don't go do that stuff anymore. And I was like, oh okay, well, let me, let me talk to your husband, talk to the undersheriff, you know. Again he was like, no, we don't, we don't do it like that anymore. And I was like, oh okay.
Robie Poynter:So subsequently I got into the academy, loved it. Let me kind of back up a little bit. I came home and I told my wife, hey, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to apply. And I'd never shared with her that I wanted to do this and be in law enforcement. So it was kind of blindsided her and she's like what are you talking about. You've never even talked about this before, but like everything she's, she's always been supportive of me and we went down this road. And you know, in in our agency start off in a jail, did that for a few years, then you go out to different duty stations. So I went to the airport, then I went to patrol, then I started doing different special operations groups, you know community policing special duty unit. Subsequently I ended up in the motor unit and then ended up crashing. The motor ripped my thumb tendon, ripped my shoulder, and then I just I could not get the mobility back and subsequently I retired, medically retired, because of a shoulder injury. So do you have questions?
Tyra Valeriano :Yeah, so how long were you with that agency before that happened?
Robie Poynter:About 14 and a half years.
Tyra Valeriano :Oh man, that must have been tough to have to medically retire after being there for 14 years.
Robie Poynter:It was very difficult in that, you know, like most retirements, you kind of you know you plan it out and it was kind of a lead up to it.
Robie Poynter:When you, when something like that happens all of a sudden, it's just like the rugs pulled out from underneath you and you know, like on one day I'm there, I'm with my buddies and we're, you know, smoking and joking, having a good time, and then the next day I'm gone, smoking and joking, having a good time, and then the next day I'm gone, and then it's like I'm never really back.
Robie Poynter:And so that's extremely difficult, especially if you're, you know, enjoying yourself, you're enjoying your career, and you know, out of sight, out of mind, so people just kind of you don't, you're not really talking to anybody anymore. You'll get the call from the captain, like every. You don't, you're not really talking to anybody anymore. You'll get the the call from the captain, like every, you know, four weeks, and it's not really that he gives a shit, it's that he just wants to kind of know when you're coming back. Right, and in the back of my head I know that and you know he's kind of, you know, acting like hey, how you doing, how's the recovery, but I know what's really going on and you know what I mean. So extremely difficult.
Tyra Valeriano :I actually just touching on the motor unit and your accident. There is a officer I used to work with in my agency who was in. He was in the motor unit but he crashed in his personal bike and they ended up having to amputate his leg and I have to give it to him. In fact, I'm probably going to want to bring him onto the podcast one day, but he's a champ, he did not let it bother him, he worked through it. He got back on patrol, I want to say within a year, and now he's a sergeant. So he yeah.
Robie Poynter:That's impressive.
Tyra Valeriano :It is. He has a really cool story, but it just kind of brought me back to that, and you know. Let's go back to your medical retirement. I've heard a lot of stories about how difficult, um, getting medically retired can be. I have a close friend who medically retired, but it took her four years, maybe a little more, and it's not the easiest process. Was that the same?
Robie Poynter:way for you, the easiest process. Was that? The same way for you? Yeah, no, it's really not. It's um, I think, because some people have kind of taken advantage of the system. They um like.
Robie Poynter:So when, like you know, I crashed my motorcycle, I had, you know, tendon surgery on my right thumb, I had my glenorol humeral joint, my left bicep had to get reattached, a lot of stuff, both knees I had to get surgery on. So that's kind of a no-brainer. It's like, well, I mean, if I don't have mobility I'm a liability to the agency. So that took about I'd say, two, two and a half years to go through all the surgeries and then trying to do the rehab and then seeing if I have the mobility. Um, but I have friends that are going through it now that you know they've been kind of the same thing, three, four years dealing with this stuff and um, you know it's, it's unfortunate, they don't. They don't like, just take it like a case-by-case basis and just look at that. I think that they look at it broadly and they really push you to the edge literally. It's not fun, it's very stressful.
Tyra Valeriano :So how did you deal with that Once you got out and you realized, hey, I'm not going to be able to go back. What toll did that take on you, and what did you do after that?
Robie Poynter:Okay, yeah, and that's kind of where this all begins. So I'm, you know, sitting in my man cave with you know, I got one arm, this hand. I can't do anything with it. It's got a cast on the shoulder and bicep. I'm in a sling and I'm a I'm a workout guy and so I I can't really do anything other than, like, get on my stationary bike and just kind of pedal. But they didn't really want me doing that because they didn't want me to jar this.
Robie Poynter:So I had a lot of time to just sit there and think and the the, the thing that was coming up as I was thinking was how for lack of a better term horrible I had really been to my wife and my son during, kind of my whole career in law enforcement, how short I was with them, how I had high expectations of them, how the littlest thing would just, you know, piss me off. And it really, you know, got me thinking like why, what is going on with it? Why was I like that? Why did that happen? And it started me on this kind of journey of I've got to be the best person I could be. I've got to be the best, you know, husband, I've got to be the best person I can be. I've got to be the best, you know, husband, father, that I can be.
Robie Poynter:I have no excuse, because I think a lot of times what happens when, and as you know, when you're in law enforcement, you you're just grinding, and I've heard you talk about, you know, just kind of wanting to go home and just wanting to relax and sleep and not really not really do anything. And so, you know, same with me is that I would, you know, be going to say 10 to 20 calls a night. Half the people that I go there, you know, on these calls, they don't want me there. I've got to make, you know, decisions, silly decisions a lot of times, like you know, like the family disputes, or what should I do with my son, and it's like, well, you know, I guess I'll be the dad, here's what we're gonna do. Um, all these decisions, and you know you're making these decisions, and then when you get home you're just like I don't want to do anything, I'm gonna you know I'm gonna sit on the couch, I'm gonna just watch, I don't, I don't care what we're having for dinner, just make dinner.
Robie Poynter:And so I just started thinking about that and how horrible that was.
Robie Poynter:And so, um started thinking about you know, wellness, yoga, journaling, doing all of the. I started doing all those things and started like really like doing all of that. I started doing all those things and started like really like, okay, reading a lot of self-help, um, really trying to better myself and it was, you know, somewhat working and and um, I was, um also listening to a lot of podcasts and I kept hearing about plant medicine and I was like that seems interesting. But, as you said in the very beginning, you know law enforcement, you know we are arresting people for, you know, having drugs, possession of drugs, and you think about, you know, psilocybin, you think about mushrooms, that's you know that's a drug. That's how you know. I mean, to be honest, I've never arrested anybody for psilocybin or mushrooms, but in my realm that's a drug. So it was kind of a hard, you know, transition to think about it as plant medicine. But I started researching it. Okay, this stuff is not addictive. Uh, you know a lot of this stuff that they've been using for thousands of years. Tribes have been using it for thousands and thousands of years. It's, it's, you know, um, something that has been shown to work. The military, you know, uses it. Um, they use MD. So I started researching where can I go do this?
Robie Poynter:Because what also was happening is I was getting frustrated because I was doing a lot of work, I was putting in a lot of work and I was still. My fuse was still short. I was still, you know, not being the best husband I could be, not being the best dad I could be, and that was frustrating. So it was just kind of like adding on to my already my frustration with how I treated them. So I was kind of I was beating myself up for how I'd been in the past. And then I was also like looking towards the future and seeing that this wasn't working and what can I do? And I was also like looking towards the future and seeing that this wasn't working and what can I do? Wasn't really seeing anything for civilians as far as plant medicine. I was seeing a lot of stuff for veterans, and so I finally I found this one place called the Siren Project, and I had thought it was for firefighters and so, because it was founded by a firefighter and her story I'll just give you briefly.
Robie Poynter:Her story is much like, you know, most first responders um, stressed out, packing a lot of stuff in um going, you know, getting woke up in the middle of the night, call to call, seeing horrible things. You can't really deal with it because you got another call you got to go to, and so she was finding that she was having a problem with her anger, anxiety, sleep. She was able to go to one of these military plant medicine retreats and when she was there she realized that, oh my gosh, this is exactly what I've needed. She told the main facilitator there hey, I'm going to start a nonprofit and I'm going to do it from first responders and I'm going to do it from first responders. And, you know, within a year, I'd like you meaning the facilitator that was there be my point person down in Mexico and the facilitator's like, okay, yeah, sure, whatever, that sounds great.
Robie Poynter:And Angela, who's the name of the founder of the project Siren Project, I'm sorry. Within a um, cyber project, I'm sorry. Uh, within a year, she had, you know, established nonprofit. Um, she had secured funding because part of it is that she wanted to send first responders down there but they don't have to pay. So she wanted to like, essentially get funding, um, and then just say, hey, if you need to get down there, we're going to send you down to retreat. We're going to pay for retreat. So retreats usually around, say, two to four grand right per person. So she established all this stuff.
Robie Poynter:She did it. I found them. I thought of a buddy that needed it. He passed. I called her. I said is this for any first responder? Because he passed, I called her. I said is this for any first responder? Because I think that I could definitely use this. She said yeah, and I was like OK, sign me up, I'm in.
Robie Poynter:So I applied and she, she explained well, we're stacked up until 2025. And I said, ok, that's fine, I mean no problem. But I just kept calling every couple of weeks. I've got free time, I'm retired. I knew someone would probably drop out. Just for the nature of it, it's not an easy thing to go down to Mexico with a bunch of people that you don't know. It's very scary a little bit. Um, so around august, july, august in the summertime, I did my two-week call, just said hey, I just want to keep you on my radar, keep me on your radar, um, you know, and she's, and she, I left a message. She called me back, said hey, can you go september 18th? And I was like yeah, told my wife I'm going again, very supportive and um, so then I went.
Tyra Valeriano :So how was it? I mean, what happened? What did you have to do? What is I?
Robie Poynter:mean, okay, from the beginning it's, it's the the person that's running it down there. Her name is Dr Andrea Lucy, and so she worked for the Department of Defense, the Marines, for like 20 years. So she had been dealing with veterans up here in the United States, and how they do it up here is they treat them with MDMA. And so Andrea got to a point where she really wanted to do it the tribal way, the ceremonial way that she's from Chile, and so that's kind of what she wanted to get back to, because she just feels like that's the proper way to do it. So she came down to Mexico, puerto Vallarta, established a team and she has a phenomenal protocol. So basically, once you're in, you're part of a group that goes, and I went with five firefighters and an EMS guy, so, and I was the only law enforcement guy there haven't been too many law enforcement guys that have gone down and done it and so there is a whole program that you have to that you go through. Obviously, you get medically checked through and she has a workbook that you're going through every day. Basically, you're setting intentions on what you want to accomplish. You know you're not setting expectations, you're setting intentions on what you want to accomplish, because the whole thing with when you're doing psilocybin and plant medicine is to have the product. You're going to hear a lot of proper set and setting. So it's the proper mindset and it's the proper setting, like where you're at. So this isn't, you know, some willy-nilly. You know you're going to drop a bunch of mushrooms and then see what happens. Right, this is you are, you know, meeting with your whole group. Every couple weeks we do a group phone call prior this is all leading up prior meeting one-on-one. You have a coach, so you get a coach as well. Meeting with andrea, so she knows kind of what your backstory is.
Robie Poynter:Um, and you are also, you've got to be clean. You, you know no alcohol if you're on ssris. You, you've got to. You got to get off ssris if you're, you know, doing any sort of drugs, whether whether they be prescription or anything. So for me, I drink a little bit of beer, not much Like Friday drink beer with pizza. I was doing a lot of edibles so I had a hard time sleeping. So edibles, every single day I was taking edibles, so I had to cut all that, which wasn't difficult. No caffeine, they really put you um, suggest that you, your diet gets really tight, so like a non-inflammation diet, no sugar. Um, again, you want your, your body clean so that when the medicine comes through it's basically doing its job, it's not fighting all those other things. You know, I believe if you're schizophrenic you wouldn't be going down there. Psychedelics don't work really well with that. So there's a lead up, there's a plan, and I can shoot you the actual workbook so you could have a good idea too, sure. And so then basically you go through this for I came in a little bit late because someone dropped out, but I think the lead up is usually six to eight weeks. So I think I had about a five week lead up is usually six to eight weeks, so I think I had about a five-week lead up Flew down to Puerto Vallarta and then you know you meet your whole group the night before it starts.
Robie Poynter:You guys all go to dinner and you know everybody's kind of nervous and you go through and you meet everybody and you kind of tell your story and why you're there. And then you meet everybody and you kind of tell your story and why you're there, and and then you meet, um, the dr andrea, and then the next day they come pick you up at your hotel and they take you to this, you know, beautiful mansion on the water, right? Um, that's the perfect setting, right, because I was talking about set and setting, so perfect setting. Um, you know there's a cook there. You're fed um, the first day you go and you basically, um, you meet, there's a medicine man. So medicine man comes and he introduced himself and and blesses us, um with tobacco at that point, and then not like he's smoking a Marlboro, but traditional tobacco, and and blesses us.
Robie Poynter:And then the first evening you're there, he goes through, there's, there's obviously different medicines and one of them is called Rappe and he explains we're going to do Rappe, and basically he shoots it up your nostrils. It's wild with this tube and it's supposed to help cleanse you and it burns like crazy and so you just can't, but you got to kind of like suck it up and take it. And then he puts something in your eyes which is also supposed to cleanse you, another plant medicine, and I'm not clear on what exactly that was called. But again, these are all just kind of stair-stepping you into the next day. But what it does is, when they're going through all these things. It shows how much they care because they're really taking care of you as they're doing this with you. Much they care because they're really taking care of you as they're doing this with you.
Robie Poynter:And it, the, the medicine man was his name was oscar incredibly intelligent, um, you know, kind of broke down why we're taking all these things and why we're doing it before we do the psilocybin. Um, so do that the first night. The next day, you fast in the morning and you, um, there's another like ceremony. It's very ceremonial, it's very tribal, uh, it's very beautiful, and so you do a another ceremony, then you do a rose petal bath and then we went to a covered patio and the covered patio had seven beds, um, and basically the, the medicine man has the, the psilocybin.
Robie Poynter:It's in a powder form and he mixes it with orange juice and they kind of give you, um, a little bit of an interview based on you know, have you ever done this before? How much do you weigh All that stuff? And they base their dosage on that. So the dosages were, yeah, like five grams. It's called a hero's dose. Like most people, when they're screwing around with mushrooms, they'll take a couple grams or two, like an eighth or something, two and a half grams, so a hero's dose is a pretty significant dose. So, um, he mixes them up, does a blessing. We're all sitting at the edge of our little bed, we drink our, our psilocybin and orange juice, um, and then they sit you back down, they lay you down, they put eye shades on and, about 30 minutes in, you start going through your journey. And do you want me to explain my journey?
Tyra Valeriano :Sure, let's hear it.
Robie Poynter:All right. So my intention going down was I wanted to obviously the overall was be a better person, right, but I had intentions of I wanted to communicate with my grandparents. I want to communicate with my dad, who's passed away. I wanted to have a communication with my, my wife. I wanted to communicate with my son, and that was really. That was really it. That was kind of like, okay, okay, this is what I want to do.
Robie Poynter:Um, so, 30, 30 minutes in, I, you know, start seeing lights and you start, you feel your muscles twitch a little bit. And let me just also preface this with I'm very conservative. Um, I'm not a drug guy, I'm not, you know, uh, that at all. I'm extremely conservative. I'm extremely, um, I think a lot about what I put into my body and, you know, food intake I'm tight, I'm dialed my food intake, so I didn't take any of this lightly. And it wasn't like, um, I'm gonna go down to mexico and, you know, shroom my ass off or like that it it was. I want to go down there and I want to, um, see that this helps me and and put this in as another tool in my toolbox. So start getting into the journey. Um, you know, start seeing some lights, feeling my muscles twitch a little bit, so I knew it was starting to affect me and then pretty much boom right into it.
Robie Poynter:I, I started talking to my grandpa and which was, you know, incredible in that, you know, like he's been dead for several years, but I wanted to explain to him and my grandma how much I appreciated them and how much they meant to me and how I have kind of structured my life as I watched them, you know, as they had their life together, and I, you know, explain to him hey, I'm sorry if you think this is bad, I'm doing this, but if I didn't do this, I wouldn't be able to talk to you and share this with you and explain this to you, because when my grandpa died I was 20. I didn't really have any life experience. I couldn't share with him how much I appreciated him, nor my grandma, and so this was very, very, very real. It was like I was communicating with my grandparents, and some people may say, well, that's drug-induced and blah, blah, blah. If you go through this, you know you were communicating with them. It's a different realm. And then I was able to talk to my grandma and I explained to her how much I loved her and that when she did, I was there when she died, and so I wasn't able to really like share all these things when she died, because she was just not in a good state.
Robie Poynter:So I was able to do that and share that with her, which kept seeing this dark figure, this very scary thing, was popping up. And so when you're preparing for a journey like this, they tell you whatever comes up, you know, and if it's scary, you've got to lean into it. You can't run away from it, you've got to lean into it. So I was like, all right, well, I guess it's time for me leaning into this dark, scary thing it's on. And so I would go towards this and inevitably it would change into something good. So it would be like, okay, here's the dark thing, I'm going towards it, and then it would change into something good within my journey. I'm going towards it and then it would change into something good within my journey. And so my takeaway from that was that you know, you've got to in life, you've got to lean into really hard things, because most of the time it's not nearly as bad as you think that it's going to be, and we make up a lot of the stuff in our head, but it was just interesting throughout this journey that that kept popping up. It never turned out bad, it always turned into something good.
Robie Poynter:So the next part was I communicated with my dad and so, um, when my dad left or, I'm sorry, when my mom left, I was seven and she stayed friends with my grandparents, and so my dad you know, I was, I'm in this journey with my dad and he told me he's like you know, that really bothered me, that you didn't, you know, say anything about that. And I was like, well, you know, I was seven years old, I I didn't know any better, but now that I'm older, I I'm sorry that that happened to you and I'm and I can see where that would bother you and I was just like, hey, I was just doing the best I could do. And he was like, yeah, I was doing the best I could do too. So during the journey also, all these little messages of very common, all this stuff we know doing the best you can do or your parents are doing the best that they can do, we all know that stuff on the surface level. But when I was in this I, I felt it like, and so now I'm like, okay, yeah, I am doing the best I can do and you are doing the best you can do. And it was a, it was a feeling, more than just like this surface, saying, uh, the next part was really the only thing that had to do with law enforcement, because and here's the thing that I you know, I talked to a lot of guys that have gone through this is they think that you know, that one call is the thing that's just put me over the top, or this job has just crushed me. And you know, it was weird with this. It was just this, this, this is the one thing that happened with law enforcement. Or I don't want to go do that because I've seen some dark things, man, and I, you know, I don't want that to come up, and you know we've all seen dark things and I'm not I'm not trying to belittle that, but, um, most of the things that you see when you go on these journeys have very little to do with law enforcement. They have a lot to do with your childhood.
Robie Poynter:So when it was finally time for me to retire, they said, hey, you got to bring your gun down, you got to turn it into the regional training center and I was like, all right, you know, no problem, I've got another gun, I've got other guns I don't. All right, you know, no problem, I've got another gun, I've got other guns I don't need. You know, that's fine. So I drove down the regional training center and I go to get the gun out of my trunk and um, and I just I lost it. I was like, oh my god, I'm, you know, basically crying here at the regional training center and it's like I've got all kinds of other agencies walking around behind me and people that I know from other agencies, and I got one, a buddy, from a different agency. He's like Whoa, what's going on? And I'm like, dude, I don't know.
Robie Poynter:And the thing is, I think what it was was that you know, the gun was the thing that was gonna get me home. And every single night when I pulled a car over four deep on East 14th and 165th and my cover wasn't there yet, my gun was gonna get me home. And now I've got a, I've got to turn it in, I got to give it up, and so I was crushed. And this is going to tie into my journey here in a second. So I turned it in and I thought I'd put that through. I thought I was done with that and but I guess I wasn't, because during the journey that it came up and so again, I started just bawling during the, during the journey, um, just, I've never cried so hard in my life. I could just feel the air going out of me.
Robie Poynter:And what ended up happening?
Robie Poynter:This sounds a lot of this stuff's going to sound really odd, but what ended up happening during the journey is there was I had a funeral for the gun and it was like this okay, now it's now, it's now it's finally over, and now you are, um, ready to move on to the next chapter of your life, and basically it was like you're done with law enforcement, um, and that funeral was like the ending for and if it just once that happened, I felt so at ease in the, in the journey, also throughout the journey is they're playing music this whole time they're playing music, they're playing tribal music, like they're singing, and so you are, you're, you're getting taken for this. Really it's a wonderful ride, and you have male singing, you have female singing, and so they they kind of they're steering this journey too. So the next thing, um put the gun in funeral. All done, and then I connected with my wife, um, who has just been so supportive of me throughout my whole career. She's a dispatcher, so there were times where you know she was sending me on calls, where you know 245 or you know like, and not knowing what she was sending me into. So she's been through a lot of stuff too and I just, in that journey, I was able to let her know that you know, we will be together forever, um, and that it was just this blissful feeling of love that I had. That, you know, I'm not even necessarily talking about this lifetime, I'm saying forever Um. And you know, and I'm not that's not usually how I think or anything but within the journey that's how I felt and it was an incredible feeling to be able to share that with her.
Robie Poynter:Again, this stuff I know it probably sounds very bizarre, but when you're in it it's very real and it was very necessary to kind of put that behind. Necessary to kind of put that behind. And I wrapped it up kind of with my son, who's 20 years old, but he's felt the brunt of my you know, anger, high expectations, just you know, short fuse throughout his whole life. And you know, I explained to him that you know, I'm I'm basically I'm sorry and that from from this day forth, it's we're turning over a new leaf. And he, you know, shared with me. I get it, you know. Again, it was I'm doing the best I can do. That's what he said. And I said, you know, and I'm doing the best I can do too, and so it was a very simple but heartfelt feeling that we both had. And then, after when I was done with all this, I talked to my wife, I talked to my son, I explained everything to them, and so it was.
Robie Poynter:It's very interesting, and I know that I'm kind of missing some of the pieces to it, but medically, there's a doctor there, you know, because you don't want to at least I didn't I didn't want to go into something that was hey, we're going to take you into the jungle, um, we're going to bury you up to your neck, you're going to take mushrooms. This was, you know, checked by the doctor prior to to going into the psilocybin um journey. And then, when you're done, you're there to your check, there's a doctor there checking you. Um, it was very um, I felt very good about it. It was, it was literally it was, it was very. I felt very good about it. It was, it was literally it was.
Robie Poynter:It was life changing. Because once you go through that, that's just part of the deal, you know, because when you go through it I could see that what my life really should be like. So I have this like North star and obviously I can't be like that all the time, like I don't live in a mansion, I'm not in the proper setting all the time Life happens and I you know I was, I was in the ideal setting, right, so everything's perfectly set up. I'm getting fed, but I do have this North Star now that you know you strive to reach and there's ways to do it and you shorten the times that are rough with all the tools that you learn. So throughout the retreat you're also, you know you're doing yoga, she's giving you, we're doing different little workshops too to help you when you get back.
Tyra Valeriano :So I have a lot of questions. I have a lot of questions, but I want to first make a couple of observations based on your story. So first, you did mention that there's a lot of firefighters that go there. Are these firefighters who are already retired or are they still currently working as firefighters? What is the majority of the people that go to these um projects? What? What is their current status with their agency?
Robie Poynter:they're all the ones that I went with are active. Most of them are active. Um, this is another thing that I was thinking a lot about is, you know, like law enforcement again, drugs we arrest people for we have a little different mindset than most other first responders, right, I mean, firefighters aren't arresting anybody for drugs. I mean they'll arrest them for arson, but it's different, and so it's a little more difficult for law enforcement to make that transition into looking at this like this is medicine, this is really medicine. So that's a good question, though.
Tyra Valeriano :Yeah. So the reason why I ask that is because I'm listening to your story and you went in retired and, of course, some of the guests that I have talked to, they talk about their journey after law enforcement, the struggles that they've had, and I can see how something like this would be beneficial for them. But you know you also have law enforcement officers that are still police officers, wherever they're at, who are struggling and you're right, we have that mindset that, oh, what the heck Like I'm not going to do that. You know I'm going to look like a crazy guy. I'm over here dealing with the meth addict that's, you know, on freaking corner of Broadway and Grimes, and you know I'm taking him to jail and they're acting all crazy and here I come with my story and people are going to think that I'm just as crazy.
Tyra Valeriano :So, being that this is a medical treatment, what in California? Specifically? Because I know that in I told you prior to the podcast I have an aunt who is a psychologist and she is from the last that I had talked to her. She's doing this study in Texas to medicate her clients with psilocybin, but I don't know what is going on with that. As of right now. It's not legal right now. So what is the? What is it that's surrounding a project like this in California, and how do first responders get approved for something like this?
Robie Poynter:Yeah, that's the, that's the thing. I think Oregon, you can do it with medical approval. I think Colorado, maybe California, no. So basically, the SIREN project facilitates. You know, hey, we're going to send you down there. What the doctor does down there is what the doctor does. They're not, you know, saying that you need to do this. This is you know what I mean. They're not doing anything like that, Um, they're just providing you the venue, um, to go down there. So, yeah, California, even still, I mean that's, I don't believe that you can get, um, like a medical release to do it, which and I can give you, I give you my reasons why I think that it's not legal. And if you'd like to hear that, Sure.
Robie Poynter:Okay, um, well, it's not a very good business model because you can go like, for instance, me I've done all kinds of stuff yoga, you know, talk therapy, I've done all kinds of stuff. None of it worked and I'll be honest with you, none of it would have worked. My mind was so calloused over the neuroplasticity was just muscled over, and I'll tell you why. I think that happened, happen. But business model wise, if I go down and I do one treatment right when, you know, when you have SSR, you got to take those, you know, every single day, you know, like it's just the prescription drug companies don't want something like this to to work for people. They want to be able to put it into a pill, they want to be able to, you know, say you need to take three of these every single day, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or you need to see the therapist three times a week. So that's really, I think, because they're close to doing it with MDMA, they're very close, but I just, you know it doesn't make a business model sense to them. They're not thinking about it like hey, we can really help some people. And you know, that's not, that's just not how it is Right, business wise.
Robie Poynter:So that's that's my theory. We're going to give you a vaccine that doesn't work, but we're not going to give you a medicine that's been around for 7,000 years that works. It can really help a lot of people, and it could help people before they get to. You know they've got a gun in their mouth, that type of thing. It really reboots your system, clears your cash out. You kind of just go, oh shit, okay, why have I been so worried about that? That's nothing. It's amazing, amazing.
Tyra Valeriano :You know, and I think that it's a very interesting story. I mean, like I said in the beginning, this is a perspective and a take that most law enforcement officers are probably not going to be very open to, and I like this because I think that this is what I want to bring to the podcast. This is what I want to put out there is that not everybody's journey is the same. The podcast this is what I want to put out there is that not everybody's journey is the same. So my question for you is once you completed this project, what did it do for you for your life afterwards? What was it? What was the changes that you saw in your life?
Robie Poynter:That's a great question. So when you get done, you go through what's called the integration and the integration is the most important thing. Like what I did, that's like 10% of it. Integration is coming back and really kind of taking action on everything that you've just learned. And so part of my integration was like coming back and, and you know, telling my and my wife, you know she's like I came back and I was a completely different, relaxed, not on edge person and she's like whoa, what the heck is going on with you? Because we've been together for 23 years, I am just on edge all the time, like, you know, always doing something, that type of person, and I was completely relaxed. A little side note Also when I came back, I had no desire and I still don't, and I'm not saying that I this will be forever but I had no desire to drink alcohol, no desire to do any edibles, and it was kind of like this weird, weird thing that not that I drank a lot, but I just think I realized that I had been kind of masking things with drinking a few beers, um, and masking things with with um taking those edibles and so, um, yeah, now I don't even know desire.
Robie Poynter:So that was kind of a little difficult for my wife, because once a week there's a brewery by our house. We'd go to the brewery, we would drink a few beers and we would have these like just incredible talks, right. And so she's like, well, are we not going to go do that anymore? And I'm like, well, I'll still go. But you know, I don't, I just don't feel like drinking, I don't, I don't want to, um, and so. So that was kind of hard for her, you know, cause she was like who's this dude, who's this guy? That came back, so we had to work through some stuff, um, and so part of the integration is, you know, I've always wanted to take transcendental meditation and really get into that meditation, Wanted to do it for years, and so I just told her hey, you know what, why don't we take this together? So we took this transcendental meditation course together and we do it every single day, twice a day, and it's been phenomenal. So those talks that I was talking about after the beers, we have those talks every day, like we meditate together in the morning and then we have these just really good talks. And which was, which has been great is you have to take what you've learned and you've got to basically figure out what your routine is going to be to get you closer to that spot, like a morning routine. So for me, I get up and I read, I journal, exercise, meditate. These are all the things that you need to be doing to get in the proper headspace.
Robie Poynter:So I was also like I wasn't quite there as far as like my expectations on my family, and so I've always had these like too high of expectations, especially for my wife, and one day I was pissed this was after I got back. I was pissed because she didn't do something that I thought, you know, everybody should just know to do. You know, like you should just know that it's the right thing to do. We gotten into a little bit of an argument, meditated and I had thought about you know, like what? Why am I like this? What is it? Is it possibly because my mom left when I was seven and I have an abandonment issue or something, and so I, you know, started doing a bunch of research and, lo and behold, every single thing that I have done, you know, towards my wife and my son as far as setting high expectations, um, basically pushing them away, is because I was waiting for them to both like bail on me, because that's what my mom did when I was seven.
Robie Poynter:So from basically the time I was seven I had been pushing people away, overcompensating with stuff. And then I had to go tell her. I was like, hey, you know, I just realized that I've been wrong for like about the last 23 years on pretty much everything. And you know she said, yeah, no, I've known that you've had this issue for about a month since we've been going out. I just I didn't want to open up these old wounds, so I just took it, and so that was hard, that was hard for her and it was hard for me, and so. But the bigger point is I would have never come to this if I hadn't gone on that journey. My mindset was not even close to that. It completely opened up my mind for lack of a better term but just radically open to things now and compared to how I was in the past, and so I'm extremely grateful for that. Like that, that literally changed my life. I look at things through a completely new lens to what it was in the past. I had just much like when we get a physical injury and we. You know, I blew out my knee. I overcompensate, so now my left hip hurts.
Robie Poynter:We've muscled through this stuff Mental health-wise. I think. You know we do the same thing. You know, like when I was seven my mom bailed, I was abandonment issues, but I just muscled through it, just kept muscling through it. Then you get into this job and then you're just packing it in and that I mean, it's just. You know, one call to the next and you can't even worry about that call that. You know this little boy was hit on east 14th, the same age as your son, um, and you got to take the report, you got to sit in the morgue with it, like all those things. You just you got to go to the next call, um, so you just pack it in, pack it in, pack it in and then it manifests into, you know, anger, anxiety, insomnia. So yeah, I don't know if I answered your question, but I talked a lot.
Tyra Valeriano :No, no, that's fine. It's been interesting. We are running out of time and I'm curious, before we end our episode today, what would you want to share with listeners based on your experience?
Robie Poynter:I would share that. You know, just be open, be open to the possibility of plant medicine, because it literally changed my life. I've really have tried a lot of different things and it's. I know that it's there's a stigma, there's a. There's a stigma with mental health, but there's, you know, obviously a stigma with plant medicine.
Robie Poynter:But I am very much like most guys in law enforcement and I'm not, you know, some wavy gravy guy or woo woo guy. I just the reason that I'm even on here is because if one person's like, wow, okay, I feel like that too, I should, I should explore that. That's really what I want to do and I am so grateful that you have the courage to like talk to someone like me, because there there's really not, there's not a lot of people in law enforcement that are talking about this. Um, there's military is talking about it. There's a there's one other guy in um, massachusetts who's talking about it, lieutenant um sarco gregarian. But there's really not a lot, and I think that it can really benefit people If you kind of muck past the stigma of it. Please be open to it. Look at the Siren Project. They want to help. They're sending people down, you know, at no cost. So that's what I would say, and thank you very much.
Tyra Valeriano :So that's what I would say, and thank you very much yeah you're welcome, I think I mean I was honestly, I'm not going to lie I was intrigued because I was thinking this is very different and, just like most listeners, I'm sure they're going to think this is very different, but for me I feel that it's important. On the topic of mental health and wellness, because not everybody just like my story. We don't struggle with things technically in the law enforcement side, but mine was more personal and a lot of people are out there not knowing how to deal with the issues that they're facing and in the law enforcement realm, this is a hot topic right now.
Tyra Valeriano :Mental health and wellness is a hot topic because of the things that we go through the things that we see and nobody really knows how to deal with it. So I am completely open to anything in this space because, even though it's not for everyone, there is, just like you said, maybe somebody out there who's going to be like hey, you know what? I'm interested in this, let me just look at it and who knows, maybe they'll do it and it'll change their life, and that's all that really matters.
Tyra Valeriano :And you know no judgment here. I think it's pretty crazy. Like I said, I have a gnat who's doing this. So it's not that it's very foreign to me the idea of treating people with plant medicine, but I think in the law enforcement space it is very different.
Tyra Valeriano :It's very hard to open up your mind to think that this is acceptable and that this is good for you because of what we are and what we stand for and what we, you know, enforce on people. So I'm very open to it and I appreciate your time and for sharing your journey with us. I think it's great. Is there any points of contact that you have, in case some of the listeners would like to reach out to you?
Robie Poynter:Yeah, absolutely. I'm on Facebook at just Rob Pointer P-O-Y-N-T-E-R. Instagram at R-A-W-B underscore zone. Twitter at Rob Zone 1. Linkedin Rob Pointer and then the sirenprojectorg.
Tyra Valeriano :Well, thank you so much, Rob. I again appreciate your time For the listeners out there. I hope you guys got a good dose of perspective and maybe some variety into your toolbox. As always. Thank you guys for turning in, be safe and I'll see you on the next one. Thank you for joining me on Chapter Blue. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to follow and tag me on social media and share with your friends and fellow officers. If you're interested in joining an episode, I'd love for you to be a part of the conversation. Until next time, stay safe, take care of yourself and remember you're never alone in this journey.