KAT WAHAMAA
Joseph Taylor-Wahamaa “grew up in the bush” of Lake Errock, a tiny community on the Fraser River near Mission.
The bright young boy loved all things adrenalin: skateboarding, swimming, canoeing, skiing, and dirt biking, especially with his two older brothers.
“He was bubbly and curious and had a big smile, and a tremendous amount of energy,” said his mother, Kat Wahamaa, an artist in Maple Ridge who is doing a master’s of education and art at SFU.
His mother believes that physical abuse Joseph suffered at a very young age contributed to his serious drug use in his teenage years while living in Vancouver. He eventually overcame that habit, despite a lack of treatment options such as residential programs that would have taken him away from the drug supply on the street, Wahamaa said.
At age 18 Joseph went to BCIT and became a journeyman ironworker, getting jobs on big projects like the B.C. Place Stadium renovations and SkyTrain line construction.
He then took a job as a supervisor in Kitimat, where he moved with his wife and baby. Just 24, he found the management role stressful, so a co-worker offered him something to cope: oxycodone, a powerful opioid painkiller.
Soon, all of Joseph’s money was going toward the drug. He phoned his mother and said he needed help.
“I thought that was a death sentence, just oxycodone itself, but with this whole introduction of fentanyl, it was a death sentence,” Wahamaa said through tears.
The overdose death of a friend in 2016 scared Joseph clean, and he went on methadone and got a job in Alberta — but like many who have struggled with addiction, his recovery was fragile. This is particularly true for construction workers; as has been documented in B.C., they are increasingly at risk during this fentanyl crisis.
Within six weeks of returning to B.C., he collapsed from a fentanyl overdose in the Surrey home where he was staying with his former wife and their two little boys.
“This is the real tragedy. He was just 25. He was just on the verge of his full potential and where he would be. And he has two little boys who desperately miss their father.”
She said society needs a paradigm shift with how it looks at drugs, to treat that addiction with the same understanding we approach addictions to alcohol, smoking or gambling.