Image Credit: Kent Simmonds / CFJC Today

By Dylana Kneeshaw

OVERDOSE CRISIS ANNIVERSARY

Local man recovering from past addictions wants to build up peer support network

Apr 14, 2025 | 7:40 PM

KAMLOOPS — Since a public health emergency was declared in response to rising rates of opioid-related overdoses, more than 16,000 people have died in B.C. Efforts to combat the crisis haven’t slowed the climbing fatality rates.

Ahead of the nine-year anniversary of the overdose emergency being declared, CFJC spoke with a local man who has lost dozens of family members to overdose, fought to get himself off alcohol and drugs, and wants to build a better peer-support network for people struggling with addiction.

Derrick ‘DJ’ Zabotel spent most of his life struggling with alcohol and drug use. And he says losing a staggering number of friends and family members eventually formed his turning point.

“When my obituary stack started going from here (small) to here (large),” Zabotel explains with his hands. “In the past nine years, there’s been probably more than 70 to 80 family members I’ve lost due to opioids.”

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It took a great deal of personal work to get away from the substances that have contributed to what’s become a nine-year public health emergency of overdose fatalities.

“I’m not proud to be a part of it. But I’m proud to be able to help people to help themselves to get off of the substances and the alcoholism, whichever it is that they’re trying to stop,” he reiterates, “because it’s killing a lot of our people of all races.”

His mother attended the former Kamloops Indian Residential School and, as an intergenerational survivor, Zabotel is well aware of the connection between trauma and addiction. But he’s also found a way to stay grounded using spiritual practices.

“I wasn’t always addicted. I wasn’t always using or drinking,” he adds. “There were times in my life when I used spirituality and culture and traditional aspects to keep myself sober and clean.”

Zabotel is now a peer support worker with dreams of expanding the field.

“If there were peer support workers out there when I was in my heavy use and my heavy addictions, I may be a little bit further ahead in life right now,” says Zabotel.

On the anniversary of the opioid crisis declaration, Zabotel describes both a sense of grief and a desire to keep supporting those affected by substance abuse.

“If I can help one person, maybe that one person can help another. And another and another and maybe by the time I’m done here, I’ve helped 20 people and it’s grown to 100 people,” he adds.