When a parent is worried about their teen’s behavior, the first question they tend to ask isn’t what rehab they should send that child to but what they can do to avoid letting circumstances get to that point. What, in short, can they do to prevent a kid who seems to be acting out, being evasive about serious issues, struggling with mental health issues or just not behaving like him or herself before that child potentially becomes addicted to drugs and alcohol?

I guess some would say that there’s nothing that can be done—that addiction is a genetic disease and if your kid’s got it, then rehab or a lifetime of sitting in church basements drinking coffee out of Styrofoam cups is what he’ll have if he doesn’t want to be enslaved by a desire to shoot up or snort or pound bottles of whatever he can find. But others disagree—and I’m one of them. I believe that addiction is a genetic predisposition that can be exacerbated or diminished by surrounding circumstances. And I believe that there are many things that can be done in an attempt to diminish that predisposition.

Sure, in a perfect world, a parent could sit that kid down and find out about every potentially thorny issue after which parent and child could navigate the rocky road of adolescence hand in hand, with or without the help of a local therapist. But that’s often not the path. Now—thankfully—there are real world options beyond military school and traditional wilderness programs.

Wilderness programs were big when I was growing up; friends and their cousins were often being sent off to Outdoor Bound and other, much harsher places. (I was always relieved it wasn’t me.) But the truth about many of those programs is that though they are more effective than strict military schools, their philosophies still aren’t healthy for brains that aren’t going to be fully developed until the age of 25.

“With traditional wilderness therapy, the idea is to put students in a harsh environment with unrealistic expectations and expect them to survive with a good attitude,” says Naalehu, Hawaii-based Pacific Quest Executive Director and Co-Founder Mike McKinney, who cut his wilderness teeth working at the Trails program at Oakley School and Coral Reef Academy. Pacific Quest is the first of its kind to combine traditional wilderness camp programs with a treatment protocol that’s actually healthy for teens.

As McKinney explains it, the focus at standard wilderness programs is on “success—making you climb a steep incline of a mountain.” Sometimes that can mean “admitting” you’ve done something wrong, even when you haven’t done anything wrong. At traditional wilderness programs, the pressure to overcome impossible obstacles has even proven fatal.

At Pacific Quest, such risks don’t exist and students are meant to witness and honor their own struggles—to face their feelings, no matter how uncomfortable. This is so, as McKinney says, “they can help get themselves out.” Pacific Quest’s goal, McKinney adds, is to “evolve” the traditional wilderness therapy model.

PQ offers two tracks—an adolescent program for kids between the ages of 13 and 18 and a young adult program for the 18-24 year-olds. Based around what they call “whole person wellness,” Pacific Quest has a treatment team headed up by a Naturopathic Medical Director and the first order of business when clients check in is to get their sleep, diet, hygiene, exercise and nutrition sorted out before individual treatment plans are created.

This means that instead of the mountain-climbing or wilderness-wandering that are part of the curriculum at more traditional wilderness programs, clients are doing things like planting seeds and caring for fruit trees that they may not be able to literally enjoy the fruits of but know that future clients will. The reason for the focus on Horticultural Therapy is twofold: first because it helps develop a mind-body connection and secondly because the reason many clients find themselves at PQ is that traditional verbal therapies didn’t work.

Students also organize nurseries, design garden beds and create planting schedules, in turn having visceral experiences that can be used as metaphors for facing the issues they battle in their own lives when they return home. The other bonus of Horticultural Therapy is that it provides plenty of “contemplative time,” says McKinney. “They can meditate on the notion of saving themselves along with the society they’re living in.”

Clients are sent to Pacific Quest for a variety of reasons—anxiety disorders, PTSD, trauma or addiction, among others. ADHD is a common diagnosis students come in with and they’re often surprised when the first line of defense isn’t medication but cutting carbs, sugar and caffeine and adding supplements like fish oil, B complex and magnesium. Getting sleep schedules sorted out also helps regulate a great many formerly debilitating issues; students get at least nine hours of sleep a night and if the daily activities aren’t enough to wipe them out, PQ’s naturopath Dr. Britta Zimmer notes that lavender oil can be as beneficial as prescription medications when it comes to sleep.

But those aren’t the only aspects of life that are bound to be new to the average incoming client; purified water and herbal tea are the only liquids that are served and all students are taught to cook and prepare food made out of the fresh, locally grown ingredients. The food is roughly half organic ingredients and almost entirely gluten-free (vegan, dairy-free and other requests are also accommodated). Meals are heavy on whole grains, vegetables and fruits and don’t include sugars or processed foods. But adolescents can’t restore positive functioning on food alone; they’re also given acupuncture treatments and must engage in regular exercise, including stretching, yoga and cardio as well as hiking, walking, swimming and working in the gardens and camps.

Just because overall health is a focus doesn’t mean that traditional education isn’t a part of the program; students who stay for eight weeks can also study language and science, among other subjects, and these credits can be transferred to schools they may be on leave from.

Though the Pacific Quest success stories from alumni are manifold—from alumni as well as their parents—there are of course no guarantees. But isn’t a place like this, which may well sort out more severe issues before they develop, better than the potential alternative?

This post originally appeared on AfterPartyChat