Town Hall Seattle and April Pride present
Psychedelic Salon: Modern Men
Psychedelics, Vulnerability, and the Masculine Self
EVENT NOTES
Doors for this event will open at 6:30 PM. Town Hall events are approximately 75 minutes long.
American men are in crisis. They account for nearly 80% of all suicide deaths. Over 6 million men experience depression — but it’s frequently underdiagnosed, because men tend to present with irritability, anger, and fatigue rather than sadness, and of those who do receive a diagnosis, fewer than half seek treatment. A quarter of men report having no close friends.
These aren’t character flaws. They’re the predictable outcomes of a psychological script that has never given men permission to be complex — one that narrows emotional range early and reinforces that narrowing constantly. What gets called toxic masculinity is often something more specific: a loss of psychological flexibility so complete that men can’t see the pattern from inside it.
Psychedelics have a documented ability to disrupt exactly that. They loosen rigid thinking, open emotional access, and offer what some describe as a glimpse of the self beneath the armor — a self that turns out to have more range, more depth, and more capacity for connection than the script allowed.
This Salon is not a takedown of masculinity. It’s an inquiry into what becomes possible when that script gets rewritten. What does the research show about psychedelics and male psychological flexibility? What are men experiencing — in ceremony, in therapy, in community — that they couldn’t reach before? And what does a more psychologically free version of modern masculinity look like when it starts to take shape?
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About the Speakers
Colby Burns sits at an unusual intersection: practicing pharmacist, U.S. veteran, and President of the Psychedelic Pharmacist Association — the largest nonprofit representing pharmacists advocating for psychedelic education and clinically guided policy reform. He consults with guides on drug interactions, advises on supplement stacks and pharmacology, and works to integrate psychedelic therapy into clinical practice. He is also working to bridge the Eastern and Western Washington psychedelic communities — bringing the same integrative instinct to geography that he brings to medicine.
Additional clinician to be announced.
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
