Brand Partner Content
Sarah Jo Vincent wears many different hats in her professional life. She’s a certified recovery mentor, drug and alcohol counselor, family performance mediator, and a qualified mental health associate—not to mention, founder of the growing non-profit, Soul Purpose.
Soul Purpose was founded upon the mission to “help educate, empower and elevate at-risk youth to realize that their past is not their potential.”
Through 29 years of experience, she has cultivated and applied an extensive skill set to help others battle addiction—all the while staying sober herself. This is not just a job for Sarah Jo, this is a part of her identity, continuing to motivate her in the fight to change the face of recovery.
From Pain to Purpose
With 32 years of sobriety under her belt, Vincent is living proof of the possibility of life after addiction. Sarah Jo’s own journey inspired her to help families navigate the void between active addiction and full recovery. Having gone through treatment herself, she knows what works—and, perhaps more importantly, what does not.
Early on in her recovery, Vincent was frustrated to find that many of her counselors only understood addiction and other self-destructive behaviors from an academic perspective. They had read all the books, but couldn’t truly relate to her experience and struggles. Realizing how alienating that can be, she focused on developing her role as a counselor. Beyond just knowing about the path from addiction to recovery, she has walked it.
Against the Current
Common knowledge about addiction is riddled with inaccuracies, making it especially vital to have informed, forward-thinking individuals working in the field. The current treatment system can be deeply flawed, leaving countless gaps for addicts to fall through.
Vincent has made it her mission to cast as wide a safety net as possible, which could mean anything from providing short-term intensive treatment, to a lifetime of support. For many, this sort of support is often unattainable through the standard treatment options available. And that’s precisely why Soul Purpose is doing such essential work.
In it for the Long-Haul
Overcoming addiction is not a simple matter of willpower. You may have heard this and other similar misconceptions—including one of the most popular: that you simply have to want to recover, and then you’ll magically do so.
Typical recovery programs might allow the parent of a person struggling with addiction to believe that 30 days of rehab will be all it takes for their child to get better. Often 30 days is all insurance will cover, which means the recovering addict could be set up for failure from the beginning.
Sarah Jo stresses the importance of ongoing family involvement in the recovery process, as nurturing healthy shifts in mindset, self-image, and habits is vital to success. Soul Purpose facilitates holistic recovery for the entire family, by providing tools to instill lifelong change.
Vincent insists that it takes more than 30 days to turn a life around, and the expectation that addicts can just “snap out of it” in that timeframe is a leading cause of recidivism. Long-term treatment is essential to creating lasting, sustainable change. It takes more than just “elbow grease”, as she says—it takes real, ongoing support and sustainable solutions.
The Need for New Approaches
In her counseling, Vincent combines several often-overlooked approaches to help clients build the foundation for living a healthy, purposeful life. Her cohesive approach incorporates everything from fitness to education, essentially teaching participants how to navigate recovery from substance abuse to fully living life by developing new habits. Addiction is often an escape from factors that feel outside of one’s control, making it harder and harder to break the cycle.
Sarah Jo focuses on addressing addiction by incorporating knowledge from related fields such as neuroscience or epigenetics. She is adamant about the importance of research when formulating new strategies of care.
“My overarching goal is to end generational poverty and addiction,” said Vincent, on the Fearless Happyness podcast. Her forward-thinking attitude and personal experiences give her a unique perspective, and the insight to change lives forever.
Sarah Jo continually works to guide others towards the same sense of well-being and purpose that she has been cultivating for over three decades. She has been actively involved in providing much-needed support to those in need and now, with Soul Purpose, she has an incredible opportunity to expand the scope of her impact even further. She aims to build leaders in the community, and empower others to find their purpose and joy.
About Sarah Jo Vincent
Sarah Jo Vincent is a CADC1, CRM, QMHA, transformational advocate, and the founder of The Alliance and Soul Purpose. She helps families struggling with children who are navigating addiction and self-destructive behaviors, in the process creating a new and better life for the entire family. With 32 years of sobriety, she helps families move from addiction to full recovery, by building bridges of communication and trust. To learn more about her transformational program, please visit https://lifesoulpurpose.org/
Advertising disclosure: We may receive compensation for some of the links in our stories. Thank you for supporting LA Weekly and our advertisers.