SOAR 1: Student Outreach Athletic Recovery

All forms of substance abuse, whether the addiction is to alcohol, drugs, or both, take a significant toll on all aspects of a teen addict’s life. At New Pathway, our SOAR addiction treatment specialists work with teens and their families to heal their minds, bodies, and spirits.

At New Pathway Counseling, our Student Outreach Athletic Recovery Program (SOAR) is a family centered intensive outpatient substance abuse treatment program for adolescents. Guided by the principle that a healthy lifestyle, focused on psychological, physical, and spiritual well-being, is essential for recovery from addiction, our SOAR program combines physical exercise with therapeutic interventions designed to give teens for lifelong sobriety. Since addiction affects everyone in an addicts’ family, the SOAR program includes a family component to support and guides the addicts’ loved ones as they travel along their own pathway to recovery.

Setting the Stage for an Adolescent’s Recovery from Addiction

Both clinical research and the extensive experience of the SOAR program addiction treatment specialists indicate that adolescents embrace recovery when teens

• Develop self-confidence
• Become comfortable with themselves
• Let go of destructive defense mechanisms
• Increase their level of trust in themselves and others

The SOAR program uses exercise to bring therapeutic concepts to life. In essence, physical fitness is an action tool for remaining sober as teens learn through experience what they once considered impossible is possible.

The SOAR Process

As adolescents progress through SOAR, they acquire new physical and emotional skills and abilities that they once considered unfeasible. By transforming their self-defeating thought patterns and behaviors into healthy ones, they discover new passions. As the teens come to associate recovery with positive experiences, their resistance to sobriety and recovery decreases significantly.

SOAR Program Goal and Objectives

The goal of the SOAR Program is to promote sobriety, increase self-awareness, and develop new ways of thinking to facilitate addiction recovery and prevent relapse into active substance abuse.

The objectives of SOAR include:

• Achieving and maintaining sobriety
• Educating teen addicts and their families about the value of exercise in achieving and sustaining emotional balance.
• Developing and practicing all elements of a healthy lifestyle
• Learning and practicing effective stress management strategies
• Creating and implementing a personalized relapse prevention program

The Structure of the SOAR Program

Prior to starting the SOAR program, adolescents, and, in some cases their families, participate in a comprehensive biopsychosocial assessment with an addiction treatment specialist to identify the teens’ strengths, challenges, and needs. This assessment also assists adolescents, their families, and the SOAR staff to decide whether the program is the right fit for the teen. The findings from this evaluation also form the basis for the adolescents’ Individualized SOAR Program Plan, which establishes specific, realistic, and feasible goals and objectives that leverage the adolescent’s strengths to overcome the challenges and obstacles to their recovery, as well as to meet their other needs indicated during the assessment process.

General Schedule and Format

The SOAR program lasts for 12 or more weeks, depending on the participant’s needs and progress during the program. Each week, the teen attends three sessions ranging in length from one to three hours.

• Weeks One through Eight: Based upon the adolescent’s Individualized Program Plan, he or she participates in a mix of individual, group, and family counseling, as well as exercise in the form of activity based therapy.
• Weeks Five through Twelve: Approximately halfway through the program, SOAR program staff works with the patient and family to assess the teen’s progress. Based upon this evaluation, the adolescent’s Individualized Program Plan may be modified.

To learn more about the SOAR program at New Pathways Counseling addictions treatment centers in Bayonne, Paramus, Jersey City, and Pine Brook, NJ, call (201) 436-1022 to speak to a member of our staff today.