Across his nightlife career, music festival impresario Mikey Tableman didn’t ever imagine adding mental health and wellness advocate to his list of roles he’d play in the industry.
After experiencing depression, panic attacks, and bouts of crippling anxiety, Mikey quickly discovered there were limited resources available to help him, and even fewer people around him comfortable enough to express what they too may be going through.
From his darkest moments, A Mind’s Pursuit was born, aimed at creating spaces and conversations for his community to get real about this mental health. Rave Jungle sat down with Tableman recently to learn more about the platform he’s developing and what’s next.
Check out the full interview below!
How did you come to be in this space? Is talking about mental health something you’ve always been interested in?
Thank you for having this conversation with me. Actually, no, I never set out to work in mental health. My original dream was to move to LA from the east coast and be a working actor. But after some major ups and downs, and pivoting my work focus, I experienced a personal breakdown, and was forced to confront the reality of how deeply anxiety and depression were paralyzing me.
That period of my life pushed me to seek help, and in the process, I discovered that sharing my story was healing not only for me, but for others who could relate. When the pandemic hit, so many people I knew were also experiencing these types of struggles for the very first time.
Because I had been open about my own, they started reaching out to me and that’s when I realized there was something bigger here; an opportunity to take my pain and turn it into purpose and build spaces where these conversations could exist openly.
That is how my organization A Mind’s Pursuit came about, growing today into the various creative verticals that we are working on. I took everything I have struggled with and everything I have heard from others to create a whole connected web of media, events, engagement, and art are focused on making a difference.
What’s your connection to the dance music industry? What role do you play in the nightlife community?
My connection to dance music runs deep. I’ve spent years working behind the scenes in nightlife and the festival world, specifically in hospitality and VIP operations.
I’ve had the privilege of working with some of the largest EDM festivals in the world, helping create unforgettable experiences for all. That world gave me a front-row seat to both the magic and the challenges of nightlife culture.
Over time, I realized my role wasn’t just about curating experiences in the moment, but also about supporting the people who make this industry possible. Nightlife and dance music thrive on energy, creativity, and community, but they also come with burnout, pressure, and mental health struggles that often go unspoken.
For me, it became about shifting the culture: not just delivering for the crowd, but truly caring for the people on my team making sure they felt seen, supported, and valued.
Through A Mind’s Pursuit, and through projects like our Chaos Controlled podcast and Alchemy events, I’ve been able to bridge those worlds by bringing mental health advocacy into a space that desperately needs it, while still honoring the culture I came up in.
Have you seen a change in recent years as more people are speaking about their mental health?
I have, and it’s been amazing to witness. In recent years, there’s been a real shift, with people across the entertainment and nightlife world speaking more openly about their struggles with anxiety, depression, and burnout.
What used to be a whisper behind closed doors is finally being said on bigger stages, and that vulnerability has given so many others permission to share their own truth. It’s creating a sense of community and reducing stigma in ways we desperately needed. But with that said, we can’t stop here. Awareness is the first step, and real change requires consistent support and action.
It’s one thing to talk about mental health, it’s another to build structures that actually protect people in high-pressure environments, whether that’s backstage at a festival, inside the nightlife industry, or in our day-to-day lives.
We need to move from conversations to culture shift: making sure people not only feel heard, but also cared for, resourced, and valued on all levels of a team’s infrastructure.
Your podcast called “Chaos Controlled” began during the COVID lockdowns to give nightlife friends a platform to share their stories, how has that been going?
When we first started Chaos Controlled, it honestly wasn’t some big master plan. The idea was to share half fun wild nightlife stories with friends and half real talk about the struggles we were all facing. We set up in my apartment—just me, my co-host Danny Gomez, and Nick Dewars with a couple of mics and some basic audio gear and started recording.
What surprised us was how consistent the theme of struggle became. In all 38 episodes of Season 1, every single guest had their own story about anxiety, depression, or navigating the pressure of life in entertainment.
We thought we were just creating a space to swap stories, but what we discovered was that nearly everyone was dealing with the same battles Danny and I were having ourselves. That’s when we realized there were more stories to tell.
We just launched Season 3, and it’s evolved into a full-blown production from top to bottom. We’ve moved from living-room recordings to in-studio with a real team working for us behind the scenes.
The quality has grown, the conversations have deepened, and the audience has expanded, but at the heart of it, it’s still about creating a safe space for raw, honest dialogue.
You also perform as a spoken word artist, do you think that form of expression helps you navigate your own mental health struggles?
The expression is what helps me heal and connect more than anything else. I love spoken word. It’s the one place where I feel completely alive. When I get on stage, I fall into a flow state where everything else disappears, the pressure of running festival operations, the responsibility of being a CEO, even the constant grind of hosting a podcast.
On stage, it’s just me, the words, and the moment. Spoken word has become my escape, but it’s also my deepest form of connection. It allows me to take everything I carry, my struggles, my anxiety, my joy and turn it into something that resonates with others.
That’s the magic of it. For those few minutes, I’m not just navigating my own healing, I’m creating a space where others feel seen in theirs. At the end of the day, I do a lot of things but spoken word is where I feel most myself. It’s where I find my balance, my love, and my freedom.
What’s next for you? How can the Rave Jungle learn more about your podcast and community you’re building?
What’s next is about scaling the movement we’ve started. With Chaos Controlled, Season 3 is already in full swing and continuing to grow, and on the creative side I’m preparing to launch two major projects in 2026.
The first is My Manic Maze, a spoken word EP that expands into a full multi-layered project of poetry, music, and storytelling designed to take people through the raw journey of mental health in a way that’s both personal and universal.
The second is Conversation with the Boys, a roundtable series on men’s mental health that will also officially launch in 2026. That project is especially close to my heart because it creates space for the unfiltered, necessary conversations men don’t usually get to have.
Alongside that, A Mind’s Pursuit will keep growing our Alchemy Events and programs like The Cost of Silence in the workplace. Everything is rooted in the same mission: breaking silence, building connections, and showing people they don’t have to navigate life’s chaos alone.
For the Rave Jungle community, you can find Chaos Controlled on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts, follow A Mind’s Pursuit on socials, and stay tuned—because 2026 is going to be a huge year for us.
