A Friend's Disturbing Dream

My best friend called me dark and early Sunday morning to tell me of a troubling dream she had just experienced. She always enjoys listening to my many dreams and the way I try to work through their meanings. One of the odd things about my lady friend is that she tells me she rarely dreams (more likely, of course, is that she usually doesn't remember her dreams when she awakes). But this one was vivid. So upsetting was it that she called me right away to tell me about it.

 

Her dream took place in the home she used to have across the street from me. She hasn't lived there in a couple of years now. Her youngest son (who is in his early twenties) was being abducted by a group of about ten ruffians. She called her oldest son to come help. And she thought she needed to get a gun for protection. She thought that in her dream, I mean.

 

I lay no claim to being a gifted dream analyst or anything, but I do know this lady quite well and have had many intimate conversations with her concerning her personal life and family. I know her son has been waging a constant battle with substance abuse. I know he is losing that battle. I know it is tearing my friend apart, that she feels helpless and at times even hopeless.  

 

It seems to me the abduction of her son is a fitting symbol of the way she feels her son has been taken from her by the drugs. As in her dream, she feels overwhelmed and unable to fairly battle the problem.

 

She woke up with her dream unresolved, with her son still in trouble. The gun she wished she owned was probably a symbol of the "magic bullet" she has been searching for that would return her son to her. Sad. 

 

How many lives I have witnessed being destroyed by substance addiction - as if life itself doesn't present us with more than a share of challenges, dangers, and potential disasters. Watching it from up close is the most agonizing thing of all.  I fear, with my friend, that disaster is just ahead for this young man.