How A Crisis Cop Broke Through Stigma And Got Help

A lot of first responders can talk anyone through a crisis, then go home and quietly self-destruct. That tension sits at the center of my conversation with Joe Smarro, a former cop known for crisis work who’s also honest about the parts of his life that didn’t look “resilient” at all: shame, compulsive numbing, relationship fallout, and the kind of hopelessness that puts a gun belt in the room as a real option. Joe walks me through the moment he finally chose help, not hiding, by walking into the VA and starting a treatment journey that’s still evolving today. 

We dig into why stigma in police, fire, EMS, dispatch, and paramedicine keeps people performing at work while collapsing inside. Joe explains how looking in the mirror made him better at humanizing the people he served without turning it into trauma bonding, and why leaders matter when they say, out loud, “I’m going to therapy” instead of pointing to an EAP brochure. We also talk complex PTSD, ACE scores, and how unprocessed childhood trauma can shape adult threat responses, addiction risk, and the stories we live from. 

Then we get practical about trauma treatment. We unpack EMDR therapy with a simple “two strings” model that shows why the goal isn’t forgetting the event, it’s stopping the body from reacting like it’s happening right now. Joe also shares his experience with ketamine-assisted therapy, including research, safety, set and setting, at-home sessions, and why integration in the 48 to 72 hour window matters so much. If you care about first responder mental health, trauma recovery, PTSD treatment, and what real healing looks like off the clock, you’ll get a lot from this one. 

Subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more first responders can find these conversations.

https://solutionpointplus.com/
https://joesmarro.com/
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https://www.linkedin.com/in/joesmarro/

His book can be purchased here: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=joe+smarro+book&adgrpid=189489075594&hvadid=779590058605&hvdev=c&hvexpln=0&hvlocphy=9001838&hvnetw=g&hvocijid=11939440335994543591--&hvqmt=e&hvrand=11939440335994543591&hvtargid=kwd-2672616687752&hydadcr=22534_13730692_8442&mcid=210f362e2b1a34d4afd3b1dab807f421&tag=googhydr-20&ref=pd_sl_1i3b43osek_e

Transcript

Welcome And Episode Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Resilience Development in Action with Steve Bisson. This is the podcast dedicated to first responder mental health, helping police, fire, EMS, dispatchers, and paramedics create better growth environments for themselves and their teams. Let's get started.

SPEAKER_02 0:29

Hey, like magic, we are back. I think that you know what I love about these great interviews, and again, I'm gonna try again your name, Joe Smarrow. He is here again. I wanted a quick intro. We're having a great conversation, but I want to shift gears because I think we talked a lot about the departments and compartmentalization, challenging those thoughts for police and mental health, frankly, and frankly the world, if you ask me, the BS, as you called it. And if you don't know what that is, go back and listen to the episode before. We're not telling you. Sorry, I gotta promote my stuff too, man. But one of the things that I know happens a lot with particularly first responders, I kind of hinted at it the last

Stigma And The Cost Of Hiding

SPEAKER_02 1:05

episode, is that sometimes you do have your own challenges with mental health. You know, it's not but in most apartments, it's fairly stigmatized. I know there's been an evolution since I started in the two like late 1990s, early 2000s, but that stigma still frankly exists. I know that for you, you know, you you've had some unaddressed trauma that kind of brought in a little bit of this stuff. How you know how did you realize all that stuff? How did you bring it up and how did you deal with it?

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Yeah, so I I realized it really quickly when I got on the mental health unit. So my first five years on the department, you know, I'm just I'm on patrol. I became an absolute mess. My vice, my drug, if you will, became pornography and women. And so my first several years on the department, I was just absolutely self-loathing, whatever I could do to just hate myself, live with a ton of shame and regret. And so making poor choice after poor choice, but it never really bled into my job. So I was always early. I was a great cop. I never got in trouble, I never got jammed up. But then when I went to the mental health unit and 100% of my calls became mental health related, my choices started to catch up to me. So, you know, I had multiple divorces, had kids from different women, paying a lot of money in child support. And yet I show up every day in the mental health unit with great advice. And, you know, showing up with a smile and telling very sad, depressed, uh, you know, disconnected, disoriented, detached humans that are very sick, this great counsel of, you know, hey, you should talk to a professional and maybe look at medication and get into different treatment and all this great advice. And then I'd go home and I would just jam on six to ten beers, trying to get some sleep, watching hours of pornography, and looking for my next way to like numb and avoid. And it was my second wife leaving me who was like, Hey, look, I hate you. Uh, because you know, I was unfaithful, I cheated, I got caught. And that was the narrative. That was the not the narrative, that was the fact. Like it just kept happening because I I was incapable of loving myself. And so any girl that would give me attention, I'm like, this is awesome. And it made me feel something. And then I what it really made me feel was just more hatred towards myself because I was able to live in more shame and guilt. So then she she was leaving and she was like, I'm taking the kids, I'm moving up to Dallas, which is five hours north. And I was like, all right, I remember sitting in my my, I was in a townhouse at the time, and I was sitting

Hitting Bottom And Walking Into The VA

SPEAKER_01 3:35

in my home and I was staring at my gun belt, and I remember vividly, like, okay, I either need to eat my gun and just end it because I'm tired of all these poor choices I'm making. I'm tired, again, victim. I'm a victim. I'm tired of it being so easy for me to to cheat. I'm tired of getting caught. I'm tired of me having kids that I don't get to raise. I'm so frustrated. Woe is me. So I need to end my life, or I need to walk into the VA and tell them, like, I don't know what, but like, I've got all my limbs. I'm not burnt. Yeah, I deployed, but like, I don't know, something must be wrong with my brain. And then thank God, like luckily, I decided to walk into the VA. And so it was about two years after I got in the mental health unit. So this was this was in 2011. And so we're talking 15 years ago, where I walked into the vet center with my DD214, saying, I was deployed, I meet the criteria, I need to talk to somebody because I don't know what's going on with me. And that was it. Like it, that was the beginning of my journey. And I very quickly realized that the more I was willing to look at my own stuff, right? The more mirrors I was willing to look into, if you will, the more I could see myself and my suffering and all of the people that I was dealing with professionally. And all it did was unite me. And again, not in an unsafe way, not in a like, oh God, Joe's a freaking, you know, woo-woo, like the guy's a hippie out here loving on people. But also, yes, like I could find myself in other people just as I could find their struggling in my own life. And it gave us some common ground, not trauma bonding, but it in a complex crisis situation, it allowed me to humanize the interaction and be really effective at my job. And then it also allowed me to be very effective within my own unit with the other officers, being a champion, not saying, hey, we have peer support, we have an EAP, we have a brochure, you can call this 800 number and have no idea who's going to answer. This is what I'm doing. I'm leaving work today and I'm going to therapy. Hey, they put me on Lexapro. I'll let you know how this goes. Like there was no, I wasn't embarrassed about getting help because it felt really good to try to get better. And then to again, as I was processing it, as I was getting through it, then I would advocate for it and and help other people with it. But as I tell in my own company, when we bring in facilitators, there's a huge difference between

Getting Help Out Loud At Work

SPEAKER_01 5:55

speaking from scars and scabs. And if it's still a scab, do not, do not share, do not pick at it trying to help someone else. It wasn't until it becomes a scar when you should be sharing stuff like that. And and again, like I'm still actively my treatment has evolved from just traditional cognitive behavioral therapy to even now, like I'm in EMDR, but with ketamine, and I'm doing ketamine sessions right into EMDR sessions. I'm doing, you know, IFS, the internal family systems, which has been really good for me. And, you know, diagnosed with PTSD, which now we're learning is actually complex PTSD, but because complex PTSD didn't make it into the DSM, but they're like, like, without a doubt, unequivocally, you have complex PTSD, but the suits that make the decisions were like, nah, it's basically PTSD. It's not because you're, and just for the audience listening, and I think this is a lot of first responders that get into the profession with unprocessed trauma. Basically, here's the assessment, and I'm not diagnosing, but if you're familiar with ACEs, the adverse childhood experiences, if you have a four or higher ACE score and you've never been into treatment and you get into public safety, there's a really good chance that you have complex PTSD because you're

Complex PTSD And ACE Scores

SPEAKER_01 7:10

not responding from this is now let's say that you have a first responder who has a zero ACE score and they get into a traumatic situation at work. That event could create PTSD. If you come from a chaotic, complex, trauma-ridden childhood and it was on repeat, a lot of abuse, whatever type, over and over and over and over, and then deploy overseas a couple times, and then you get into policing or EMS or whatever, you probably have complex PTSD, which is very different, by the way, and also very different to treat because you're not treating an event, you're treating a lot of built-in neuropathways of narratives and stories that have led to a lot of poor behavior and maladaptive coping. And there is help out there, and uh it's worth it.

SPEAKER_02 7:54

Well, I think that you brought up something that I've you talked about complex BTSD. I treat symptoms first and foremost. I don't treat diagnosis, and complex BTSD should be a diagnosis. Yep. Learning more about post-why am I blanking on it? But basically an enraged disorder, basically, like I I can't think of the E right now, but it we and they they talk about how moral injuries come from that too. And when I do the MDR, most people are like, Oh, I came in because you know, I saw a dead cat on the side road. That's always my default. Uh try not to trigger my audience too much. Sure. Usually it goes back to something that happened in the childhood. This is not in whether you're a police officer, firefighter, whatever, it's always comes back to something else, and it's usually complex BTSD. Yeah, I've done the audit and I've done the PG PHQ 9 for a while, but I've done ACES for years, and most of my law enforcement people hit over four. And we need to heal that in order because when it does happen, that's the trigger from the past. And I I I really talk about EMDR a lot with them. And EMDR is the other part, too, is since I have this platform and I want you to tell me a little more about your experience.

EMDR Explained With A Simple Model

SPEAKER_02 9:05

But I tell people, EMDR is not gonna make you forget about it. This is not the goal. The goal is not to forget about it because you want to learn from it, but it's to make it manageable today so that it doesn't affect you today. That's what EMDR does. And I think that that's the misconception, especially from law enforcement. Oh, you're gonna make it go away. Oh, I didn't know I had my magic hat is upstairs. I gotta go get it first. Oh, right, that doesn't work that way. But you know, tell me a little bit more about your experience because I love EMDR. I've been a practitioner for over 10 years, and it's probably the most effective treatment that I've ever dealt with. I know there's brain spotting, there's other types, and I'm not putting those down. I'm just saying for me.

SPEAKER_01 9:41

Yeah. So I remember when my current therapist, it was brilliant because I like things to be as simple as possible, especially in the beginning. I'm very cerebral, heady, intellectual. I really like to think through and understand everything, and it's just been a survival pattern. But what she did was she drew two stick figures on a whiteboard, and then she had like a red string going from person on the left to person on the right, and then another one going from the person on the right to the person on the left. And it's basically these two red strings. And all she said was the goal of EMDR is that the one string is still gonna be there, but when that second string, we're trying to cut that second string so that, and just as you outlined right there, Steve, but this made so much sense to me because what she said is look, it's not that the event's gonna go away or that you're still not even gonna have similar thoughts. The goal is that those thoughts no longer activate any physiological response in you to where you feel like you have to behaviorally go into, in my case, like preservation, self-preservation. Uh oh, the world's on fire. We're not safe. We need to, you know, if I see, you know, my spouse talking to someone and I'm like, oh no, abandonment's kicking in. She's for sure gonna leave me, she's for sure gonna cheat on me, she's for sure gonna do all this stuff. So then I'm like, well, if that's gonna happen for sure, because I'm so convinced it's reality, well, then I need to go and make sure I protect myself and I can protect myself by stepping out and doing something wild. Then I step out and then, oh, look, you got caught. Then my spouse leaves and it reinforces the thought, which was she was never gonna stay anyway because I'm not worthy and lovable. That that to me, what EMDR is is like I can witness something, the thought's still there. I can realize, like, uh-oh, I'm feeling afraid or I'm feeling something bad's gonna happen. Wait a minute. I can challenge that thought now because the second string is no longer gonna come back to me as the adult. And by the way, person left, person right is adult and child, and that's those strings communicating. You're you're dropping into a childlike resource center. You're visiting the child library, we'll call it, going to the old card catalog to then realize that it's giving you an old script. Now you get to like set that book down and say, I don't have to read this one anymore because I know that I'm resourced and I'm safe. That's what EMDR really is. It's really effective at. And it's just, it's incredible. So I'm I'm blessed that I get to be in it now. I'm blessed that I get to be a part of it. And then ketamine just allows you to drop into like the deepest part of your subconscious. It's brought up like repressed memories for me. Uh,

Ketamine Pushback And Why It Helps

SPEAKER_01 12:10

I in fact, I'm gonna say this because it actually made me a little sad. But I got a piece of feedback from the talk, the the keynote that I gave from a therapist saying that they don't they don't appreciate that I was advocating for ketamine because as a therapist that believes in like non-drug-based treatments, he or she did not believe that I should be advocating for ketamine. Here's what I'm gonna say to that. I'm only sharing my own experience and what it's done for me, and it's been absolutely incredible. If you have a problem with it because I imagine the problem is that it's a drug, then that's your own work to do. I've seen the effectiveness of it not only on me, but on other people as well. And so, yeah, I'm happy to deal with the pushback and the flack from professionals saying you should not talk about ketamine because it's a drug, and it's also prescribed by a psychiatrist and it's FDA approved. And so maybe you have your own work to do on that with more love.

SPEAKER_02 13:05

Oh, I I I love you. You know how much I love this stuff because for me, there's three things that I want to mention here, you know, because I I tell people number one, EMDR teaches you to not circle around the mountain but go through it, and then it's in the rear view mirror, it's still there, but it's in the rear view mirror, and you can use it as experience. Because if you burn yourself touching an oven, I would hope that that trauma you'd remember. Because if I learn you to not do it, you'll put on your hand on a hot oven every fucking time, and I don't want that. So you gotta learn from that. That's what EMDR does. You know, the other part too is you talked about what works and ketamine. I want to get in more in depth about that, and I'll tell you after this story. When I worked at parole, a guy who was on well, slightly 7D wise, I can't remember, he had a bunch of them, drank while he's on parole. So they like, Steve, we don't know what to do. We don't want to send him back. He's got 30 days left. What can you do? I'm like, I don't know what I'm gonna do, but okay, let me talk to him. So I talked to him and he sees my little wooden Buddha on my desk and he goes, Who's that? I said it's Buddha. Like he we started talking about Buddhism, which is something I practice. And he goes, Can I keep him? I said, Are you gonna stay sober? And he said, Yeah. I said, Okay, you can keep him. If you don't stay sober, you owe it back to me. It's like fair enough. He stayed sober for 30 days. I don't know what happened after that, I'm not gonna lie. But the point is that if you ever told me that when Buddha was the treatment plan, yeah, it was the treatment plan and it freaking worked. So I don't even care if you think it's effective or not, it worked. And so that's why when people talk about ketamine, uh a couple weeks ago, I had someone who did she was uh she worked with the Department of Justice and Department of Defense, and she was security, and she did ayahuasca after she was done with and ayahuasca changed her life and it helped her. To me, if the treatment works for you, who am I to judge what works for you? And I get really pissy with therapists who kind of tell take the moral high ground on everything, but you'll give a benzo to a person and say that's okay, but somehow that's not giving addiction to people. So it's the hypocrisy of the whole thing that bothers me. Off my high horse, let's talk about ketamine. Uh sorry about this, but you you again, I get you can tell I'm just an honest guy. I don't care what works for people. And I one of my clients did do a couple of times ketamine. He may or not be in law enforcement, I'll leave it as vague as I possibly can. And it really changed how he processed information now. In in addition to treatment, he didn't just like buy ketamine off the street and decide he did with treatment, and then part of me knowing that helped the treatment. What do you think ketamine uh did for you and how it was effective? And if someone said to you, well, I don't think ketamine works, or it's whatever that therapist said, I I blanked it out because it offended me. So, hey, a therapist offended me. Welcome to the club. But anyway, can you tell me more about it and how we can talk to people about these things? Because it it really is to me, uh if it works, who am I to judge? If someone takes THC and they're able to sleep at night with some indica and they're not driving, they're not causing any problems, just helps them sleep. Who am I to judge? I think that that's how I perceive the treatment. But how I mean, I don't know if you had prejudice around ketamine or not prior to it, and how it was for you. Just

Sponsor Break Deemed Fit

SPEAKER_02 16:29

a quick break, guys. I'm gonna talk about a new product that I really like. I actually bought one of their hoodies, it was amazing, and I really enjoyed wearing it. Uh, it this episode is gonna be supported by Deemed Fit. Deemed Fit is a first responder-owned activewear and a leisure brand. And one thing that I genuinely like about them is that they support different causes. I actually gave a few people I know who work with first responders or nonprofits their name to uh DEMFit, and I know they're talking to them. They do a lot of initiatives and collections that are based on mental health for first responders. And if you go there right now and you buy anything, including the mental health support stuff, uh use the code R D A15. That's right, R D A 15 to get 15% off on any products that you get. Again, it's called RDA 15. Go to deanfit.com, D-E-E, M-E-D-F-I-T.com, and enjoy 15% off at checkout to save. Now, right back to the episode.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

So I don't

At Home Ketamine Protocol And Integration

SPEAKER_01 17:30

know that I have prejudice. I had a little fear because right before I left that apartment in 2020, all of our paramedics got it, and we were able to use it as an optional use of force. So if we knew we were gonna fight somebody, we'd call the paramedics out. And once they were there on the scene, we would basically do the blue octopus, jump on this person, they'd come up and stab them, and we would see them like just go into a stupor and knock out. And so in my mind, I was like, I don't know about this, man. Like, because I would see people like go from raged, right? So I didn't have the best first exposure to it, but through my own podcast, right? Because we have a podcast as well. And I had I had one of the people from Mind Bloom on there, and then I had the owner of Anywhere. And when I talked to the owner of Anywhere, who is a psychiatrist, who is very well educated, who is very well versed, who worked with police departments in the U.S., who now owns this business. He's in, I don't know, 36 states in the U.S. and pointed to the research. And like this is the thing that fascinates me about, you know, therapists that are against any of this. It's like, well, what you're really saying is that you don't trust the research, which seems a little convenient and odd to me when there is research out there. And there's a lot of research out there. And so, you know, I I was I was talking to him about it and I was like, Yeah, I'm interested because my therapist, my previous therapist, she retired last year. I was with her like six years. And she was like, Hey, I really think you're ready for either psychedelics or some next level thing, because we've done this for a long time. So I was like, all right, I'm interested. And this is when I first learned about Ibogain, but Ibogain's is obviously still illegal, which by the way, if you've not watched In Waves and War on Netflix, 10 out of 10 recommend. Incredible. They were the one, they actually were just at the White House and Trump signed an executive order increasing the research and funding about Ibogaine because it's done a lot to save them. Now it's not legal here. My own soapbox on that is you know, America doesn't benefit on people being healthy. There's a lot of money to be made on people being sick, and so things that we know are effective take a long time to actually get past off soapbox. When when Dr. Zand told me about this and was like, look, start small, like all a smaller dose of like he goes, like, do 50 to 100 milligrams, and it's gonna feel like a weighted blanket during a meditation. And I was like, that's weird. That sounds a little woo-woo.

SPEAKER_02 19:50

I've never heard that description. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

It's unbelievable. And and he was so spot on. Now, they also send you an eye mask, a blindfold. They also send you playlists. I've got a playlist on love, grow, heal, and transcend. So there's four playlists. Very specifically, the the I don't know, the the music, the hurts, the way like like the love playlist has more like violin, for example. The transcend has like deeper chords. So there's there's like music that goes with this based on what you're working on. So I do breath work before I do my session. I do meditation, and then set and setting is important because they just ship it to my house, which by the way is legal. I don't go to a sterile clinic where I'm like on a doctor's bed in someone else's space. Like, no, I get to be in the comfort of my home. I have a trip sitter who is my wife. She just has to be in the house. She's not there watching me do because nothing weird is happening. It's very safe. And there's no like, there's no fallout, there's no side effects after. But to wrap this up, because I could talk about it forever, and I've gone all the way up to 600 milligrams, which to me was the hardest one because it got really heavy. That was one time, and I've done it probably, I don't know, 25 times at this point. 100% of them minus that one, which I think I still need to do because there's some dark stuff down in there I have to go get. But every other one of them has been pure bliss. It's been absolute euphoric, utopian. I'm talking all my ex-wives were in one room. We were all hanging out with the kids. We had our own village somewhere. All the in-laws were together, and the only rules were there's no drugs, there's no alcohol, and there's no sex allowed. And somehow we then just like united and operated, and it was unbelievable. I was able to access repressed memories from childhood that I've forgotten, things that I like have not I've not thought about in decades, and they were front and center. And then what happens is per the science, is that your your neural pathways are still malleable for 72 hours after the ketamine. So you got to do set and setting. The point you made, Steve, you're not buying this off the street and doing it under a tree at the park. You're getting It prescribed, you're doing an integration session to really make sure you're setting. What do you want to work on? Do breath work to really ground yourself. What is the thing you want to think through in this session? And then after, so it's it's like 60 minutes blindfold on, you're on the journey, and then it's absolutely gone. You're a little bit like woozy for another hour where the the most dangerous part of doing ketamine is falls because people get up trying to walk and they're they fall over. That that is the most dangerous part of doing ketamine is falling over. So then after my hour is up, I sit up and I just kind of reflect on what happened. I will journal or write some stuff out, or I'll do a thought dump and my wife will record them. And then I make my way carefully out to the recliner. And for the next hour, I'm just kind of coming to. And then three hours later, I'm fully operational driving. I can go play golf. I can do whatever I want. I'm not caffeinating myself. I'm not drinking alcohol, but I'm just in this very nice, euphoric, the world is an incredible state. And then within like 48 to 72 hours, I take advantage of that by doing an integration session with a coach, a therapist, or this last week I just did my session at night at 7 a.m. And then at noon, I was at my therapist office somewhere doing EMDR. Unbelievable. So yeah, it's 10 out of 10 recommend for me. And again, it doesn't mean it's going to work for everybody. If you try it and you're like, I hate that, then it didn't work for you. There's no shame in that. It's about trying things to get better if you know you need to get better and wanting to get better, doing whatever's required of you.

SPEAKER_02 23:35

You know, the talk about that too. I explained that all treatments are not for everyone. There's not one diabetes medication, there's not one heart or blood pressure or whatever. There's several. Why? Because they don't work for everyone. Yeah. That's the same thing with ketamine. We recommend it. That doesn't mean we're saying, oh my God, everyone go do that. And again, we're not looking to trip balls. That's what the other part, too, is 100%. Don't understand that. And I wanted to joke around. I'm like, oh, they didn't listen to Jimi Hendrix and Janice Joplin. Ha ha ha ha. For those of you who are too young, go look them up. They're good artists. But oh, I think that what you just said is so important because again, it's a complimentalization. I know we talked about in the last episode. Oh, ketamine is bad. Well, how do you know that? And it's not the ketamine of unfortunately the people who get addicted to it and have a problem, it's a different type of ketamine. I you can have benzodiazepines to help you calm down every six weeks or when you go on a flight. That doesn't mean you're addicted to benzodiazepines. I I think that you know, I had surgery, I had like four or five grade of addiction, so I had four or five opioids just to help me sleep. And that doesn't, but do I want 60? Absolutely not. Not that I don't trust myself, but I don't trust myself. 100%, you know, it's okay for me to say that. And I think that what is so important, and I you know, I applaud, you know, say what you will about our president. He's the one who approved telehealth to be paid by insurance companies, he's the one who's doing the ketamine stuff, he's increasing the access to some of the VAs. I said, some, I get it. I said, but it's the truth. And I think that that's where I'm telling a lot of people like you know, sometimes people can do good even if maybe you don't like them. And there's a lot of stuff that he talks about treatment a lot more than people give him credit for. So I want to throw that out. But enough about our politics and everything else because I I will I'll I'll get I'll get some message just like you, you know, you're you're pushing ketamine on kids. I I'm gonna get right you're promoting Trump. That's not what I'm doing, but okay, whatever. I don't care. Let's talk about your book a little bit and anything else you want to talk

Books Resources And Closing Reminders

SPEAKER_02 25:39

about. But I would love to hear more about your book and how people can get it and stuff like that, because this is all fascinating stuff, and we only had like an hour total, so I'm sure there's a lot more to be said.

SPEAKER_01 25:49

Yeah, the easiest way is through Amazon, my website. So josmarrow.com is a personal website. My company website is solutionpointplus.com, all spelled out. And then if you go on Amazon and just put Joe Smarrow in the search bar, both books will pop up. And then same thing on YouTube. If you go to YouTube and put Joe Smarrow, a ton of interviews pop up, podcasts pop up, my TEDx is on there, and then Ernie and Joe Crisis Cops is the Emmy Award-winning documentary, and that came out in 2019, but it's it just got renewed on HBO Max until 2030. And so if you subscribe to HBO, you can find it on there. But yeah, I'm honestly like I've done enough stuff now in the space where if you just Google my name, all the stuff pops up from videos to podcasts to books, and then my podcast is called Truly Mental, and you can find that everywhere you find your podcast. But yeah, I I did the podcast really to meet interesting people doing cool things, but also to strategically build out a national Rolodex. And that's how I found my Academy prescriber, and that's how I found a lot of people that I refer first responders to is because my podcast has introduced me to some very interesting people around the country. So yeah, not easy to not easy to not find. Uh, it's a rather simpler way to say that is I'm very easy to find. So just Google Joe Smorrow and it all pops up. But Amazon, YouTube, it's all there.

SPEAKER_02 27:14

And my audience knows how I work. Go see a stead X talk. You will it it's short compared to reading a book for some people who don't want to read a book. Yeah, you will probably want to get the book anyway afterwards. That is the truth. That's really how I feel, and people know that. And I hope I put all those show those stuff in the show notes for both episodes so people can address it. And if you ever need a guess, I don't think I'm that interesting, but nonetheless, I can come on to your podcast. But you know, Joe, having met you and now met you again, I hope you come back at some point, number one, but more importantly, I hope we stay in touch. I do this podcast selfishly to meet interesting people too, so we got that in common. But more importantly, if ever I get a call from someone who goes, Hey, do you know anyone in San Antonio that can help out? I don't know anyone, but I know someone who's gonna help me find someone. And that's my other motivation. And if someone in San Antonio needs help, that's great. But I also know that listening to Idaho about Joe, they'll know that Joe talked about stuff and they may be looking it up because there's a lot of stuff that you talked about is national. So thank you for your time. I'm right there with you. I think that there's a lot of similarities in what we believe in, and I really appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

Thank you, brother. I appreciate you. It's been fun and big love to all your listeners. And I look forward to connecting with and hearing from anybody. The unarmed book is on audio, 12 Laws is not, but it is me reading it. So if you'd like to listen to your books, you can find that on Amazon as well. But Steve, thank you so much for your for your time today and for letting me be a guest on your incredible podcast. I'm grateful. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 28:46

And I'm very humbled to have you. And for my my audience, I thank you for your time and come back for the next episode.

SPEAKER_00 28:54

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