Janine GriffithsAfter decades of being addicted to drugs and alcohol, one man’s search for meaning has grown into a movement helping others trapped in the darkest corners of addiction.
Now Chris Sylvester, who founded the community-led organisation Getting Clean, is using his experience to support people taking their first steps toward recovery.
Getting Clean is rooted in the powerful stories of people rebuilding their lives and has grown from a small group of volunteers picking litter and making soap on weekends into a three year old lived experience recovery organisation with a community impact that keeps expanding.
Chris, a former addict, described starting heroin at 12, going to prison at 15 and spending more than two decades in addiction. He said: “I found it really difficult growing up, trying to find my place in the world and not seeing anything positive in myself.
“Drugs helped me avoid having any kind of relationship with myself. I numbed myself for years avoiding having that relationship.
“There was nothing more exciting than going out and committing crimes to get money for drugs overall. Drugs gave me my identity. Addiction is an illness, a mental health condition. You always convince yourself things will be different the next time [you do it]. But that’s the definition of insanity.”
The turning point came at 36, when he engaged in a 12-step recovery programme. In those meetings he found what he called his community. He said: “Professionals have tried helping me and supporting me, but weren’t ever really able to reach me, because my addiction always spoke louder than them.
“Whereas when I was sitting in a room with people that had lived experience, I identified with that and had the courage to talk about my feelings. It made such a difference. I identified with these people. I felt like it belonged, and that was probably the first time in my life that I found my tribe. In doing so, I’d started to develop a relationship with myself.”
His experiences inspired him to help people in his community, and so he gravitated towards support work. Working fifty hours a week in a homeless shelter, he grew frustrated with bureaucratic, ineffective support plans and started Getting Clean to offer a safe, supportive space for sustainable recovery.
It started with litter picks. As the group grew, the impact grew. They learned how to recycle properly, created wildflower spaces, repaired fences, decorated homes for disabled and elderly residents and supported one another while challenging stigma. “We’re showing people that we’re assets to our communities,” Chris said.
With the group expanding, he realised they needed income to keep going. The answer became the Soap With Hope programme, an initiative where people recovering from addiction help to make natural soaps, which are then sold to select stores. The profits are then reinvested back into the community.
Chris explained: “We break the shackles of addiction to show people you’ve got a purpose, you belong, you are part of a community. Whilst we’re doing all this work, I’m thinking, ‘we’re going to need an income stream now.’
“So I came up with the concept of making soap, getting clean soap from natural ingredients made by people in recovery.”
The organisation now employs six people in recovery. One of them is Dougie Hampshire, who was addicted to crack and alcohol. Eventually, he found purpose and stability through Getting Clean. “Chris has been a really big part of my journey,” he said.
He described feeling stuck in a previous volunteer role elsewhere with no progress. But when he reached out, Getting Clean opened its doors.
He said: “It’s nice to not only give back to the community, but to be able to come into a place where I feel like I’m at home. I feel like I’m loved, I’m cared for.”
Dougie now leads a weekly group session that blends conversation with wrapping soap. “The group feels like it’s kind of therapeutic,” he said. “Because when people are doing something with their hands, they’re able to talk freely.”
As for the future? Dougie said his hope is simple but powerful. “I want to go higher with it,” he said. “I’d like to see more people coming in and getting employed. That’s what we’re about.”
Alongside all this, Getting Clean is laying the foundations for the next stage of its work: a council-funded programme supporting people experiencing homelessness and a new social enterprise called Lero Leeds. Designed as a profit-for-purpose venture, Lero Leeds will create stable employment routes for people in recovery while producing goods ethically and sustainably.
The aim is to build an enterprise that reinvests back into the community, grows opportunities for those rebuilding their lives and demonstrates the economic value of lived experience. Chris added: “We’re currently in the process of forming Lero Leeds, which will allow us to be able to differentiate and separate the soap business, which will become a profit for purpose model, where we’ll donate 50% of our profits to tackling addiction nationally.”
To find out more about Getting Clean, visit gettingclean.co.uk.
You can also check out their social media pages at:
X: cleangetting
Instagram: gettingclean_
Facebook: gettingcleanest2021
Discord: gettingclean1
