New Pathway Counseling developed an innovative program integrating emotional regulation, physical fitness, and spiritual awareness.  The program is SOARFIT.

Our program was created in order to provide a positive, sober, goal-oriented environment, where individuals will develop social skills, coping strategies, independence, and mastery of self. SOAR encourages commitment and accountability. We offer practical applications and stress the unity of mind, body, and spirit. Individuals may use these tools to overcome such problems as self-esteem issues, poor communication skills, substance abuse, and educational difficulties.

This program will enable individuals to balance their lives and achieve positive self-perception, and self-acceptance. In order to achieve success we re-organize thinking patterns, resulting in a change of one’s behavior and attitude. These changes lead to positive action.

Remember….. It’s not the events of life that disturb us; it is our interpretation of such events and our reaction to them that is critical.

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 lifelong sobriety. Since addiction affects everyone in an addict’s 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.

Age Groups	Adolescents
Health Services	Behavioral / Mental Health Substance Use
Areas Served	Bergen County Hudson County Morris County

Last Updated: 08/15/23