Dear Center for Optimal Living Community,
After nearly 12 years of operating The Center for Optimal Living, I made the very difficult decision to close the center on June 1, 2023.
Over the last few years, there has been a sea change within our helping professions and society, more generally, with a growing recognition that a harm reduction frame can significantly improve effective treatment across the entire continuum of care for people who struggle with substances and other risky and addictive behaviors.
I’ve increasingly wanted to focus on making Integrative Harm Reduction Psychotherapy (IHRP) more widely available through training and consulting while also continuing my clinical work with individuals, couples, and families. It became clear to me that to pursue this mission most effectively; I had to free up the enormous amount of time and energy required to run the Center successfully.
And the Center for Optimal Living has been successful. We grew significantly every year since we opened. Our success proved that comprehensive substance use treatment informed by IHRP is effective in helping people who struggle with drugs along the entire spectrum of severity. We also proved that the community wants and will support radical harm reduction treatment! I have loved every moment of growing the Center and will be sad to see it end, but I am excited for what the future will bring. The success of the Center is a model that can inform the creation of new centers and the integration of IHRP into existing substance use and mental health treatment centers.
By closing the Center, I will be able to focus my time and attention on building a comprehensive harm reduction therapy training institute and consulting to and training organizations and individual providers to integrate a harm reduction perspective into their practices.
I am proud of what we built and accomplished over the last 12 years. We have been one of the few organizations in the country that has offered comprehensive, radical harm reduction treatment to people struggling with substances and their families; we developed a number of different harm reduction group therapy formats; we created a psychedelic education and therapy program that offered education and training to professionals and the public and comprehensive therapy services to people around all of the issues related to psychedelic use; we trained over 700 trainees in IHRP; and we established the only harm reduction psychotherapy certificate program. All of these activities will continue to be available in new forms. Stay tuned!
Feel free to reach out to me with any questions or concerns at 212-633-8157 or atatarsky@cfol.org or visit my personal website to see what I am up to www.andrewtatarsky.com.
Andrew Tatarsky