Sarah-Lourdes Abrahamsen’s Drug Dreams uses photographs and text to visualize the artist’s fraught and ongoing journey from addiction to sobriety.

2020 exacted a profound psychological toll. Managing the tightly-wound anxieties fueled by a global health crisis, quarantine, and concerns for our families’ health and our own stretched our emotional fiber to its limit. For those grappling with addiction and substance abuse disorder, the challenges were all the more acute. A July 17th CNN report indicates that 93,000 Americans succumbed to drug overdoses in 2020, a 29.4% increase over 2019, the highest number ever reported.

Sarah-Lourdes Abrahamsen is one of millions of Americans who battled addiction last year, leaning into her photographic practice to make sense of the struggle and to honor sobriety’s hard-fought milestones. Named for the vivid dreams that may occur as addiction’s morbid grip loosens, the series Drug Dreams recounts her experience. Hastily composed text and images - some sharply focused and others blurry - uncannily mirror a mind free of, or marinating in intoxicants.

I met Abrahamesen in a recent portfolio review for Parsons School of Design. Over email and Zoom, our conversation delved further into the relationship between image and text, the human cost of the war on drugs, and how a creative practice supports sobriety.

Roula Seikay in conversation with Sarah-Lourdes Abrahamsen

Roula Seikaly: What are the primary themes of Drug Dreams?

Sarah-Lourdes Abrahamsen: Drug Dreams addresses a broad range of themes including self- presentation, home and safe spaces, fractured memory, humanization, and the loss of innocence. Although the loss of innocence is a concept that has been used throughout history in different forms of media, it presents itself here, in my work, as being expedited by addiction.

Seikaly: Could you say more about humanization?

Abrahamsen: Yes, of course. Humanization is one of the most important themes in this project. In my experience, addicts struggle to be seen as a whole person depending whether or not they are using or clean. I took inspiration from Jarrett Zigon’s book A War On People. He emphasizes the need for “worldbuilding” or in other words, “the political activity done within particular situations, the aim of which is altering the range of possibilities that limit a world and its existents''. Zigon describes the current world we live in as a fantasy world because it is one where “... drug users figure as the less-than-human Other that stands over and against the human order of things.” The idea of drug users being the Other in society is greatly reflected in popular drug porn imagery.

In my work, I aim to make images that start a conversation about this idea of worldbuilding. How can we humanize addicts, recovering and using?

It seems as though “only a fully clean being… can be a human being,” making one’s personhood valid only when they are clean in the eyes of those around them. In my efforts to push back on this common mindset, I have included images in Drug Dreams that depict the human beings behind the drugs. One of these images shows a reflection of a person's feet lying lifelessly off the foot of the bed. This visual prompts the viewer to think about what is left after the capacity for substances is full in one’s system: a human body, not so different from non-addicts. We also see this theme of humanization in the photo of a set of polaroids.

My thought here was to bring out the child in the addict and to explore the generational traumas that have impacted that child's future, despite the good intentions of those around them.

Seikaly: How are images and text related in Drug Dreams? Is there a one-to-one relationship between the notes that convey your dreams and the photographs?

Abrahamsen: I feel that before I answer, it is important to talk about what a drug dream, in my experience, is. A drug dream is a vivid dream of drug use or temptation that can occur when someone is detoxing from substances - a subconscious sign that the disease is getting weaker the longer one stays clean.

When I was around 30-60 days clean, these dreams were more frequent. It was such an uncomfortable and surreal experience, that I felt the need to jot them down moments after I woke up. These notes were the inspiration for the project because I thought that the most honest way to depict that monumental time in my life was to uncover my unconscious. I began to go back to places where the dreams had taken place and tie them into my reality. By overlaying the chicken scratch with these images, I felt like I was beginning to connect the dots.

Seikaly: How did Covid and subsequent quarantine affect your practice and, if you feel comfortable talking about it, your sobriety?

Abrahamsen: I really only had about 4 months clean when quarantine hit, and I was just beginning to learn about myself without the drugs. Living with my partner at the time who is also in recovery, made me feel closer to my program and stronger in my recovery. I can’t say for sure that I would have made it through the shutdown clean without them, because I know that a good amount of addicts didn’t get through it.

As quarantine went on, I felt my circle of friends and acquaintances grow smaller and smaller. It was beginning to feel like a chore to photograph because it seemed as though addiction and recovery were the only things in my life. I was taking photographs about it, writing about it, and living it too.

Seikaly: How do creativity and addiction inform each other in your life?

Abrahamsen: I had practiced photography in the past to cope with my addiction, even before I identified as an addict. I have used it as a tool to investigate my past and present. When I began to identify as an addict, photography served me differently. I was no longer trying to determine the source of my distress, but more so piecing together my past and reflecting on my circumstances and relationships in active addiction.

After quarantine, I had overloaded on artwork about addiction and recovery. For my own mental health, I am beginning to use photography as a tool of documentation without specific intention. I will be continuing the series, but at my own pace.

Seikaly: Have you started or returned to other photographic projects?

Abrahamsen: I have put any new or in-process projects on hold to focus on my recovery. There have been lots of changes happening in all aspects of my life including my recovery, relationships, living situation, and job. I feel as though I need to find a sort of balance in things before diving into any other projects, or continuing Drug Dreams.

Getting Clean During a Pandemic