Posted by Liz and John Attaway, 9/12/24

GLOW-like Charity Benefit Embraces Cosplay for a Cause

(Atlanta, Georgia) With glitz and glam, SLAW – Southern Ladies Arm Wrestling will hold their Halloween Brawl on October 19th at Wild Heaven West End Brewery & Gardens.

Essentially, the show is like GLOW, but with arm wrestling. 8 ladies compete in full wrestling persona costumes for charity, with one contestant winning the MVP award for raising the most money for the cause, and one contestant winning a championship belt for being the top arm wrestler. The audience trades in their ticketed donation at entry for “SLAW Bucks”, a Monopoly-like currency that they use to bid on which wrestler they think will win. SLAW raised $5,000 in gross proceeds at our first event for Project Safe, an anti-domestic violence charity, and plan on future events for 2024/2025 to be larger scale. With contestants of all walks of life, SLAW embraces a spirit of fun, collaboration, and levity.

Having recently performed at Dragoncon, SLAW’s hype band Vision Video will be playing 80’s-00’s pop song covers as the wrestlers’ introduction music. Led by Dusty Gannon (aka Goth Dad), the goth rock band is high-energy and pays homage to horror. SLAW spotlights Georgia businesses with sponsorships from Topo Chico, Wild Heaven Beer, M3 Yoga, Odyssey Jiu-Jitsu, Good Word Brewing, and others. 

Each event benefits a different women-initiated and women’s causes charity. The October 19th beneficiary is the Southeast Coalition of Psychedelic Practitioners, a female-founded non-profit that serves 4 million veterans with PTSD in the South across six states (please see below for statistics regarding the services they provide).

SLAW is based on an event in the founder’s hometown of Charlottesville, VA that has been running for over 15 years and raised over $100,000 for charity. “It meant the absolute world to me, especially in 2016/2017, to see the city come out in droves and be able to cheer on women at an event that was lighthearted and fun on its face, but directly supported local charities for causes that were suddenly in danger of being upended in our society at large. You could feel an electricity, it gave a lot of people an outlet and way to feel impactful,” Gentry said. “We want this to be a really fun cause that is about just empowering women and making them feel strong and seen, and just to have a great time. It’s supposed to be a friendly environment that’s really approachable. We want people to be proud of the hand they had in helping a local charity.”

Veteran PTSD Assistance Statistics:

13 million people in the US have PTSD, and tend to be co-diagnosed with depressive and/or anxiety disorders. PTSD radiates laterally in families, and forward in generations (most veterans come from military families that have served, affecting multigenerational trauma), and veteran suicides were reported in 2023 to have risen by 25%. 

MDMA-AT (Assisted Therapy) has been submitted to the FDA for approval with research showing an 86% efficacy in PTSD treatment. There are minimal side effects and are effective when antidepressants haven’t worked for many clients. 89% of participants in Ketamine assisted therapy sessions reported improvement in their depression and anxiety symptoms after 4 sessions, and 62% no longer reported suicidal ideation. It will likely be approved for medicinal purposes at the federal level by the end of 2024.

Insurance will not cover these treatments, and the cost is exorbitant. The South is among the lowest areas of economic status in the country, and those with PTSD often have difficulty with job security, relationships, community support, and stability. The Southeast Coalition of Psychedelic Practitioners helps raise and distribute funds for those seeking clinical therapy, with 80% of the pooled funds funneled to the financial cost of individual psychedelic-assisted therapy, and 20% to be provided to therapists seeking assistance with training that facilitates psychedelic-assisted therapy. Types of training include but are not limited to: Internal Family Systems, EMDR, Somatic-Informed Therapy models, and Trauma-Informed Therapy models.