Today after I got home from work, I laid down on my bed for a few minutes of rest and fell into a very fitful sleep for about an hour. I had a very intense dream that I was with Henry, and that I could feel the same things he felt – just as he experienced them. And what he felt was desperation – absolute, sheer desperation to stop the pain he felt in the absence of drugs in his body.
In the dream, he and I were going from place to place all over our side of town in the 100 degree summer weather, trying to find drugs, and offering to do or be or provide just about anything to anyone who could tell us where to find some. Actually, he was doing this in the dream, and I was anxiously trailing along behind him wherever he went, pleading with him to slow down and listen to me, to let me help him. But he wouldn’t listen, he just kept pounding on doors and chasing down people who treated him horribly – laughing at him or kicking him to the ground. And still he would get back up, begging for drugs.
At some point, we ended up in a dirty house, and Henry was injecting some kind of opiate into his arm, and I felt him relax for the first time, and start to feel incredible relief. At that point, I had this flash of awareness – it only lasted just a moment – of what he was living with before he died.
And then I woke up, drenched in sweat and sick to my stomach. And I cried to think about how he suffered.
40 Responses to “Dreaming of addiction”
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Oh sweet Katie. And sweet Henry. I’m sending love.
It must have felt so real to you, and the pain so raw. I’ll be thinking of you tonight and praying you are able to fall into a more restful sleep.
how awful…for both of you
Katie,
as an ex-opiate addict, I would say the dream you just had, had a lot of the same panic and intensity that I rememeber still all these years later from addiction and being “sick”. Don’t you think that it’s possible you just had one of your “little birds” from Henry? Trying to help you see what he has been freed from, helping you to understand? How else would you be able to really “feel” what he had gone through?
I agree with Jenna up there. Henry is trying to help you understand.
My heart hurts so much for you.
Oh, Katie, I, too, think that your Henry is trying to help you understand and trying to help you heal. Wishing you restful sleep tonight.
My father died of lung cancer when I was 18 and I was utterly destroyed. A month or so later, I had a dream that he & I were walking along very well (we always walked everywhere together). He looked so fit & well, not like the last six months were he had grown thinner & weaker almost by the day. At one point as we were walking, he tripped and fell on one knee. I was worried and helped him up. He coughed, smiled a bit, and we kept walking – a little slower but still talking a mile a minute. Then he fell again, and this time it took him longer to get up. I strained to help him, pleading with him to get up. After a long time he did. But his breathing was very labored and his face was gray. We still walked on but every step was a struggle. Then he fell a third time, onto all fours with his head down. I knelt beside him, tears streaming down my face. He lifted his face up to look at me and I could tell he was saying he would get up for me because I wanted him too but he didn’t want to. And all I could say was “Don’t get up Pop. Just stay down”.
I had that dream 20 years ago and it still feels as real and clear as if I just woke up from it. But, while I still miss him dreadfully, because I love him I had to want what was right for him even if it brought me pain. And death was better than the slow torture his life had become. It helped me find peace.
I hope your dream does the same for you.
Oh, Katie. And Henry. If only love were enough to cut through all that pain….I’m sending love through the ether for you.
Katie, I too believe your son was trying to help you understand the desperation he felt, and I will take it further – he wants you to know that now his spirit has found peace. I do believe that. I also believe those we love, we never really lose. There is a very thin veil between this life and the next.
There are also many ways to lose a son. My son, brilliant, a musician, a poet, a composer of classical music, a gentle spirit, fried his brain with LSD when he was seventeen. A few months later he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, which the doctor said may or may not have been triggered by the drugs. At first I felt I had lost him, at least the son I knew, who was replaced by this incredibly suffering broken young man who has gone through the torments of the damned for twenty years now.
HOWEVER, this taught me a whole lot about unconditional love, about acceptance, about loving my son and holding fast to who I know him to be inside. I also had to learn to stay steady within myself, in order to better support him, and not go up and down with his many storms. We actually came to know each other in a realer, truer, far more meaningful way, in the course of this journey. [This situation doesnt apply to you, am just telling you a bit of my story. We moms suffer, no matter what.]
I also have had to keep in my mind the very real thought that at any point, his suffering may become too much for him to bear, and remind myself that one day I may have to tell myself what he wanted most was for his suffering to end, to be at peace.
It must feel like such an empty place, in your family, the place where your son belongs. But I would bet anything that he isnt too far from your right shoulder, that he whispers to you sometimes and that if he was able to tell you one thing it is that he wants you to be happy, to live your life. Within an eyeblink your family will be reunited. You now all have a guardian angel on the other side to keep an eye on you. You would far rather have him there at home where he belongs. But people I have lost in my life, I still feel with me. I have to look no farther than my heart.
I wish you peace; in its own time it will come. You are on a healing journey and you wont be the same person at the end of it, you will be a wiser, deeper person with a heart as big as the sky. It is a terrible price to pay for being on this journey, a mother’s worst nightmare. I am so glad you can write about it and thus share your son and his light and his specialness with the world. Who knows what other mothers out there might be helped, or might help their own sons because of what you write?
You have such beautiful children. I hope all of them are doing all right , given the depth of your and their loss of their big brother.
Love and light……just keep taking one step after the other, do one day at a time……….honor all that is beautiful in your son and remember him for the wonderful being he was.
Sherry, another mother who has walked and slept and sat and eaten and breathed with pain.
Love your heart,love your heart. Don’t know what to do except lift your needs in prayer. I know that only another mother who has experienced similar losses could even maybe begin to comprehend your pain. I am just so sorry. And Sherry, I think your words are so wise (and I’m so sorry that your insight has come at such a painful cost) and your advice is right on target — right on target. I am thinking of you as well — my heart hurts for all. I do know that heartache can happy to any family, anywhere.
I am so so very sorry for your loss and the pain you are in.
Oh, Katie–crying for you both. What a powerful and terrible force he was dealing with.
You poor, poor thing.
I’m so sorry for you. I can’t say how sorry I am.
blessings&peace
Jenna, how beautiful. And I am with you, hoping, praying, believing this was the meaning of the dream. I wish I could put my arms around you, Katie, but I believe through all this support through the internet, Henry is, somehow.
Love to you.
Dear Katie,
You and your family continue to be in my thoughts and prayers. I too believe Jenna is absolutely right.
As for AndersonAllie, I sent that company a scathing email over the senders unconscionable display of heartless ignorance. I only wish I had the ability to delete that comment before you read it.
~Juli
My heart goes out to you.
I truly hope you are seeking out a grief counselor. You can talk to a grief therapist through phone sessions, so the counselor can be anywhere in the country.
His last weeks was with his adoring loving family actively caring for him. It was not a time of desperation for him but of being embraced by your devotion.
I disagree with other posters that H needed to be set “free” from his life or addiction. He was not a hopeless addict, but a struggling adolescent abusing drugs, that is all he was at the time of his death.
He did not need to be “free”, he needed more time, it was a senseless death because of some horrible circumstances.
dewi is one of the few seeing things as they are! Not saying that many of the head in the clouds posters aren’t well intentioned, but one has to wonder what type drugs some of them are under the influence of. Katie, you experienced a dream (and it’s likely many more will come) illustrating what has happened. Through confrontation comes acceptance and acceptance brings peace. It will be a never-ending journey, but one that WILL lighten with time. I know….as you will..
My heart is so sad for you, my friend. I am thinking loving thoughts and sending you my best.
Katie, in your last Babble post you said that you previously hadn’t believed that Henry could really be an addict. I think your subconscious is now trying to come to terms with what he went through. It seems like a healthy part of your grieving process, though terribly painful.
@S – I think you are exactly right. It’s a painful process, though
My poor, sweet baby boy. – Katie
What S said about the grieving process… yes. I think it’s much like labour. That dream is a part of it, of love for Henry and love for yourself as his mother. It’s what needs to be walked through, heart and mind. xo
hey katie, i’m so sorry for all the heartbreak you’ve had to experience. my best friend’s sister is having twin boys, and she’s named one of them henry elliot, she doesn’t know anything about you, or your story, but it convinced me that henry’s energy is out there, and he’s reborn into some other form, and he’s at peace.
This is a sign. Pay attention.
He is free. That sweet relief that you experienced in the dream is just a small taste of the freedom that he has now.
Dreams nourish the heart and confound the head, until the heart allows the head to heal. Heat brings out a lot in the night, especially when one is ready to have another child. I bought an air conditioner at sixteen and half years of age, our family first unit, due to my mom having a summer pregnancy. It was worth 400 dollars of paperboy, dishwasher, and handyboy money to cool down the house. My sister is now 36 and we all lived through mama’s summer of challenge. Cool thoughts, sweeter dreams.
Henry came to visit you in your dream to give you some understanding and let you know he is at peace from that pain now. That is what I truly believe, he came to show you and then try to let you know he is no longer hurting. I am so sorry Katie, so sorry.
I got chills reading this. I’m so sorry for your pain, but I agree with @S. Amazing to have a dream of that clarity, though.
Peace to you.
I just can’t imagine what that felt like. I have no words. ((((HUGS))))
I read your words and struggle with feelings from mother-heart that wish to erase a pain I have no business trying to erase. xoox
Katie,
scientifically speaking, dreams are believed to be our brain’s way of repairing itself from the emotional trauma. spiritually speaking, dreams are believed to be our deceased loved ones’ way to communicate. either way, you are progressing toward a stronger place. my thoughts are with you.
That all sounds so very real and I can see how you were affected by it.
Hugs to you.
Dearest Katie, I’ve just read your blog and my heart aches for you and your family. I wish you all the love and peace life can bring. It is so beautiful to see the concern and love people display towards you in these comments(minus dewi’s second comment, followed by the horribly insensitive, though likely blissfully unaware, brenton, who’s second sentence reference just had me cringing in utter disbelief. How disgustingly inappropriate). Please overlook that which cannot lift you up. I wish you and your family all the best and I know when Baby G arrives she will bring with her a light of joy, hope and peace.
Katie,
That’s horrible.
I am so sorry that you are going through this. I am having similar dreams at present about my mom.
My mother suffered from a major stroke May 27 that left her speechless, unable to use her favored side, and unable to understand most speech without gestures. We thought she was going to do well and recover, as she was determined. She died a week later, very unexpectedly, on June 3 from a pulmonary embolism. She was only 54. I discovered your blog during the time she was in hospital through a parenting forum I follow. I’ve read all your posts about your precious Henry.
Forgive me for sharing my own story when you are going through your own terrible grief. But there are some strange parallels. I have gone through a lot of what you have gone through: doubts, wondering what if, and questioning whether anything I could have done would have made a difference. There were some underlying health issues that she had that we were discovering, and she had always resisted medical help and doctors and now I wish I had pushed harder. If I had maybe she would have had 20 more years and gotten to hold my children. She wanted grandchildren like anything, but I’m an only child and don’t have any of my own. As the doctor and I were discussing possible blood thinning treatment, she had a pulmonary embolism right there. We were hours? days? too late. It was the most horrible and dark thing I have ever witnessed. I am coming to terms with the idea that it’s not right to wish her back if she couldn’t have recovered significantly. She wouldn’t have wanted to live that way (I’m reminded of your post on Henry’s freedom). But oh how I wish her back anyway. I miss her so much. I grieve for all the time and memories that will never be.
I have nothing to say to try to comfort you because I know that no words will comfort you during this hell. Does time heal? I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think that all that time can do may be to help us to accept what happened and come to terms and peace with our choices. Is that even possible? It’s going to take one hell of a long time, if ever.
I understand so many of the emotions, feelings, and thoughts that you are experiencing and writing about, if at a lesser level because it was not my child. How can the world keep turning when this happened?
Quite selfishly, I hope you have the strength to keep writing about them so that I can know there are other people out there who know. I don’t even know you, but you are one amazing lady.
Katie,
I am a case manager @ UTMCK, Henry was my patient. Denise Rivers is my friend. Call me anytime. 524-4326
It seems like you are beginning to work thru the grief process and you are getting some of the answers you’re needing…albeit in an unconventional way. All we want to do is love our children better when something terrible has happened. I’m also glad that Henry didn’t leave so suddenly and that you got a chance to spend some borrowed moments with him – a month – in the end – You and your family.
I don’t think he is far away.
I don’t see that most people are trying to say that Henry needed to be set free from his addiction via death. Of course his death remains a tragedy. I think the point is that since he has died, and there is nothing any of us can do about that, at least Katie can take some comfort in the fact that he IS free, and is no longer suffering from either addiction or brain damage.
Very well said, Leslie. Of course one would wish Henry had had time, and had come out the other side of drug use. Sadly, since he didnt, we are all grappling with a wish to support, you, Katie, and words just cant do it justice. A hug would be better. We are all sending you many of them as you walk through the fire. You are strong and also very brave to be journaling your way through this. There is a community of souls out here who wish you strength. And one brand new little soul about to enter your world. We cant wait to meet her.
I had a dream like this when someone I love was going through rehab. The dream actually helped me understand the addict more and judge less. I don’t think anyone would choose to be an addict or continue being an addict. The problem is a physical problem – whether the vice be alcohol, pain pills or meth. I have seen loved ones battle cancer and honestly, I believe if I had to choose between the two, I would choose to have cancer. Addiction is that hard.
My loved one, btw, still has a chance. The addiction has not won yet.