Finding help with addiction, substance use at Salvation Army in Seattle

Christian Rivas always thought of himself as a night owl.

His day would start in the late afternoon when he would get ready to go out and sell drugs, returning home around 2 a.m.

But now life couldn’t be more different. Most nights, Rivas is busy at the Salvation Army’s community kitchen in Renton, cooking food for dozens of hungry people, before going home and getting to sleep by 9 p.m.

The switch happened about two years ago when the 45-year-old stumbled into the Salvation Army’s adult rehabilitation program. Before then Rivas had been living on the street in Greenwood, on the tail end of 25 years of addiction to alcohol, marijuana, crack cocaine and PCP, he said.

He credits the program for breaking the destructive grip of addiction, bringing him out of isolation and teaching him the skills to develop a routine and stick to it.

These days Rivas said he wakes up as early as 3 a.m. or as late as 6 a.m., if it’s the weekend. In the early hours, when most are still asleep, Rivas does crunches and situps, meditates and reads the Bible before heading out to his job working at the Salvation Army’s Renton food bank and community kitchen.

On a Tuesday evening, Rivas scooped out shepherd’s pie, chicken and rice to over two dozen people, greeting regulars. Four nights a week, the Salvation Army in Renton serves community dinner to people of all ages, some of whom bring their bikes and pets inside, looking to escape the cold.

Dinner is called at 4 p.m. and a half-hour later, Rivas and his volunteers start giving out seconds and leftover cookies and bags of apples for people to take home. After the diners leave, Rivas will be cleaning up the kitchen, taking out the trash and tidying up the building, which also has a chapel and showers.

Tomorrow, Rivas will be back again, putting a meal together in the industrial kitchen.

An effective solution for some

Salvation Army’s adult rehabilitation program in Seattle helps men ages 18 to 65 struggling with addiction and substance use.

The program operates out of a three-floor apartment building in Greenwood and supports up to 32 men for six-month stays where they receive free housing, meals and counseling for mental health and substance use. The program also includes anger management classes, optional spiritual counseling and help with job hunting.

The men have the option to stay for two more months while they look for employment and housing. After that, participants may stay in a transitional sober living facility also run by the Salvation Army for 18 more months.

Two times a week, the participants also have volunteer training assignments with nonprofits like a food bank or the animal shelter, which is meant to help the men get used to the routine of going to work, said Capt. Kyna Kelley, one of the directors of the program.

The only requirement for someone entering the program is that they pass a drug test and have a desire to change their life, said Capt. John Kelley, Kyna’s husband and another director of the program. The program is “100% abstinence based,” he said, meaning participants cannot be on any substance including suboxone and methadone.

Participants are expected to engage with the 12-step recovery program and may attend alcoholics or narcotics anonymous meetings and find a sponsor.

“We know that that’s not the only successful track for drugs and alcohol, but we have found that it is very successful for our program,” John Kelley said.

While some people enter the program by reaching out directly, the program also takes referrals from nearby behavioral health hospitals and detox centers, said Amos Bransford, an intake coordinator with the Seattle Salvation Army’s adult rehabilitation program. These days, people with addiction to fentanyl and meth make up around 90% of the participants and beds only stay open for four to five days, he said.

“What I can offer to you is that there is hope if you make the choices that are going to be right for you,” said Bransford, who graduated from the program in 2022.

The program costs just over $1 million a year to operate and $20,000 supports a participant for six months.

The program has a 38% success rate, defined as long-term recovery and sobriety, and 86% of people who go through the program and stay connected with the Salvation Army stay sober, said Kyna Kelley.

One of the things that makes the Salvation Army unique is that nearly everyone who works for the organizations has some experience with recovery itself, said John Kelley, who has also been in recovery for 19 years.

The path to recovery for one

Rivas had a “happy childhood” but grew up in a “rough” part of Brooklyn during the mid ‘80s and ‘90s.

“I just grew up in the era where there were plenty of drugs, a lot of people hustling, selling drugs, and coming up in that environment, it was pretty normal,” he said.

At first it started as a way to have fun, he said, but slowly after he dropped out of school in the ninth grade, Rivas said, he became more addicted and fearful that he was losing control. In his mid-30s, he started roaming across the East Coast, mainly taking the bus between places and staying for short stints at motels or on the streets.

Rivas took a bus to Seattle in 2022, hoping to try something different, but still ended up living on the street. Rivas said he was like a “zombie.”

“I knew that something was wrong because I would rather buy alcohol and drugs than food,” he said. “I knew my addiction was really severe.”

Staff members with the Salvation Army said they met Rivas when he knocked on their door at the Greenwood facility and was admitted to the program the next day. Rivas said he doesn’t remember that, but that was likely due to the constant substance use.

Rivas said he was largely in a state of confusion and fear the first several months of the program. He wasn’t used to living with other people with responsibilities or even talking to people. The substance use classes taught him that addiction was a disease and that his body had been craving drugs as if it was medication.

During the program, Rivas had job training through the nonprofit FareStart, which taught him how to use a computer, send emails and work in an industrial kitchen. After a brief stint at a factory making garbage bags and other items, a job at the Renton Salvation Army opened.

Most mornings, Rivas works as a driver, picking up donations for the Salvation Army’s food bank, and in the evenings he transitions to running the facility’s public shower program and making community dinner. On the weekends, he does laundry and buys groceries. If there’s time, he might go for a walk, go see a movie or hit the gym.

“My goal is to just keep moving forward and just be happy and just go over obstacles,” he said. “Things I’ve never done before, I try now.”