Psychedelic Salon: Psychedelics and Disordered Eating

Eating disorders carry among the highest mortality rates of any psychiatric condition, yet treatment options have advanced slowly for decades. The emerging research on psilocybin-assisted therapy opens a different direction: evidence that psychedelics can disrupt the rigid, repetitive thought patterns that characterize conditions like anorexia and bulimia, easing cognitive inflexibility and fostering the kind of emotional reconnection that standard cognitive behavioral therapy often struggles to produce. This Psychedelic Salon evening brings together two practitioners at the intersection of this research and its clinical application.

Dr. Amanda Downey is a pediatrician and psychiatrist who serves as assistant medical director of the UCSF Eating Disorders Program and works within the UCSF Translational Psychedelic Research Program — one of the leading clinical centers examining how psychedelics can be rigorously tested and responsibly applied. April Pride is a Seattle-based harm reduction advocate and founder of SetSet, a clinician-approved platform supporting psychedelic integration, who brings the perspective of someone translating research into accessible frameworks for individuals considering these approaches.

The evening is part of Town Hall Seattle’s ongoing Psychedelic Salon series, which has established itself as one of the more serious public forums in the city for examining both the science and the ethics of psychedelic medicine. A pre-event game night using SetSet’s Psychedelic Integration Cards takes place in the Otto Bar beforehand.