Town Hall Seattle and April Pride present
Psychedelic Salon: End-of-Life Psychedelic Care
With Christine Caldwell and Laura Sullivan Cassidy
EVENT NOTES
Doors for this event will open at 6:30 PM. Town Hall events are approximately 75 minutes long.
A terminal diagnosis arrives with its own kind of suffering — not only physical, but psycho-spiritual and existential. Evidence now supports what many practitioners have long suspected: that psychedelics can meaningfully ease that suffering, helping people move through anticipatory grief, fear, and isolation toward something closer to peace.
We’re joined by two practitioners who sit with people at the threshold — one with medicine, one without. Christine Caldwell, founder of the nonprofit End of Life Psychedelic Care, works at the frontier of ketamine-assisted care for existential distress and anticipatory grief. Laura Sullivan Cassidy — death doula, grief coach, and community care leader at Recompose, Seattle’s pioneering green funeral home — walks alongside families from terminal diagnosis through the transitions that follow.
Together, they offer a rare window into what it looks like to be truly accompanied at the end of life, and what becomes possible when that accompaniment includes psychedelic medicine.
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About the Speakers
Laura Sullivan Cassidy built a second career serving communities in grief after two decades in journalism. Trained as a grief work facilitator, creative coach, and death doula, she works at Recompose with families navigating terminal diagnosis and end of life. She writes the Substack Griever’s Ball and leads creative expression workshops and death awareness programming throughout the Pacific Northwest.
Christine Caldwell came to end-of-life psychedelic care through the business of home health. As the owner of a 250-client agency, she witnessed how people age and die in America — lonely and fearful, even with compassionate care. Drawn to psilocybin research with cancer patients in 2020, she expanded her inquiry to include ketamine and MDMA, and eventually founded End of Life Psychedelic Care, a nonprofit dedicated to expanding access to evidence-informed psychedelic support for those facing life-threatening and terminal illness.
For more than a decade, April Pride has created brands and convened conversations at the intersection of women’s health, gray-zone medicine, and harm-reduction education. She launched the Psychedelic Salon in 2023, looking to move beyond the isolation of podcasting and connect in person with the psychedelic curious in Seattle, one of the first U.S. cities to decriminalize entheogens. Today, she hosts the Salon in partnership with Town Hall Seattle, where six times a year, a growing community of patients, practitioners, and curious newcomers gathers to hear local and national experts on the law, aging, grief, integration, and more. April’s work has been featured in New York Magazine, Forbes, Vice, and The Guardian.
Visit aprilpride.com for more information on April’s work, including her podcast, Substack, psychedelic events, and more.
Presented by Town Hall Seattle and April Pride.
Events are offered for informational, entertainment, and educational purposes only. Read Town Hall’s Program Content Policy.
Program Note
This event is offered for informational, entertainment, and educational purposes only and should not be construed as medical, legal, or other professional advice. Read more here.
This is part of the Psychedelic Salon Series
