Venus Neptune On The Prowl… Look Out!

The easy, automatic, natural way to solve your problems…

The Truth About Addiction And Recovery

Lola asks on the Freedom From Repetition Compulsion:

“This may sound like a strange question, but what happens when you recognize your pattern? For me, it was always angry, selfish men…”

What a great question, thank you.

Once you know you’re up to something, trace it back as far as you can. See if you can identify when and how it was set up… generally this happened in the childhood home and it is often obvious. For example, was your father an angry, selfish man? Point is, information is power so get all the information you can.

Armed with the information, I’ll tell my thought process: I don’t like being a cocaine rat. You know how they did those tests with rats? They would addict them to cocaine and watch them go back and back for the cocaine, starving themselves in the process.

Continuing to operate in these patterns once you are aware of them (provided you want to quit) makes you a cocaine rat. Are you a rat? I am not a rat. I am rebel, by God!

So based on this I start making different choices. And as I have told many people, many times when you do this you can expect resistance. For example, I used to date Scorpios with Leo risings. I dated like 9 of them in a row, each relationship disastrous. Gee, man. Maybe I ought to give this up.

So I decided to do exactly that and who do you think I met? More Scorpios with Leo risings. I met several of them and I had to make a choice, see? Do I go with the pattern, or cut a new path. I cut a new path. Three Scorpios with Leo Risings dodged and the universe sent me something new… success!

Anyone else want to share their process?

I was faced with this question over the weekend. I have an alcoholic friend who recently hit bottom and found her way to AA. This is the first time she has ever shown up at their door. She has been in denial about the severity of her problem but when she hit bottom, she did so with such a thud, she was in a meeting the next day and she has been going regularly ever since.

I am very proud of her and understand enough about addiction to know her sobriety is precarious and I feel very protective of her. Actually, I feel very protective of anyone who is trying to right their life so when I found out someone in this gal’s inner circle was blabbing on her… well, what to do?

The gossip was revealing highly personal details about this gal’s last night drinking and the person who told me about it was snickering. He was mocking her which told me a lot about how this information was shared. It was catty. So do I call her and let her know?

I thought about this long and hard. You don’t want to jeopardize a person’s sobriety and I wondered if this was a case of, “What you don’t know won’t hurt you.” But on the other hand she’s got a fox in the henhouse, you know?

In the end I called her and she was terribly hurt. She told me she had been warned about this girl before but had overrode her better judgment… we all know how that goes.

It’s a few days later and today we spoke again. She said she dipped down pretty low, having the information but had steeled herself and said she now felt stronger and more resolved to be sober. I was greatly relieved.

I really don’t know that I did the right thing. But I realize with Mars conjunct Mercury in the righteous, up front and blurting 9th house, I really don’t have the capacity to look at a friend and withhold information that is pertinent to them. What about you?

If you know someone is talking (nasty) behind someone’s back, do you tell them? Why or why not?

The soldier calling:

“I’m on the vegetable cookie dough diet,” I said.

‘Yeah?” He laughed.

“Uh huh. I eat some vegetables… lots of them all saut©ed, some parmesan cheese, olive oil all healthy and then I have some cookie dough, cookie dough, cookie dough! Cook-Kee Dough!”

“I’m with ya, P. I wish I was there with you. I’d be eating that cookie dough too. I love that stuff.”

“Yes, it’s grand. But I can’t stop you know. I finally baked the cookies to try to reduce the appeal. Because a cooked cookie is not as good as cold cookie dough.”

“Agree with you, P.”

“Yeah, so I eat a half a slab of dough… a half a pan of cookies and tell myself it’s my health shake.”

He laughed.

“Uh huh. You know how those muscle guys eat shakes with raw eggs in them? Like Charles Atlas? Well that’s what I am doing except I have my raw eggs with some cookie dough. How do you like that?”

“I like it. I want to have some of that cookie dough too.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m getting away with it so far. I’m looking okay. You know. I’m looking curvy and all but I do think I better stop this so I baked all the cookies and now my dough is ruined.”

Meet Jodie Perkins. She wants to go to jail to kick her cigarette addiction. How Neptune is that? She’s got to be a Pisces or a 12th house Sun.

Funny thing, I did the same thing. Hearing of a 30 day inpatient program for smokers (back when I smoked) I called my insurance and begged them to pay to lock me up for 30 days…

Jail Me So I Can Quit Smoking, Says Iowa Woman
‘I Would Do Anything in the World to Quit,’ She Tells ABC News

CHRIS FRANCESCANI writes:

“An Iowa woman who smokes two packs of cigarettes a day became so frustrated with her addiction that she called the sheriff’s department last week and asked officers to jail her for several days - just to help her kick the nasty habit…

Unfortunately, the jail won’t take her. Read the rest here: abc news

Whenever there is an opposition in the sky or in a chart, you can see it play in relationships. Someone is on one end acting one energy and the other person acts the other end. With the current Saturn Neptune opposition this has been wildly apparent not only in my life but in the lives of everyone around me and it looks like this:

The Neptune person disappears or becomes incapacitated in some way. Could be mental illness, could be addiction… could be any number of things but for whatever reason this one person leaves the scene and becomes inaccessible.

This leaves the Saturn person confused and feeling rejected. They may try to control the Neptune person which causes the Neptune person to become even more evasive which causes the Saturn person to feel depressed and accept (un)reality… that is, that they suck and the Neptune person hates them.

But then the tide turns!

Now the Neptune person is back, typically oblivious to the Saturn person’s duress but so bewitching the Saturn person shrugs and says “Oh what the hell…” They let the Neptune person back in. And is this a mistake?

Hard to say. We aren’t going to know until this opposition breaks apart this summer. Until then, if you’re feeling sorry for the Saturn person, don’t. They are learning from Neptune. They are learning their boundaries are penetrable! They may swear this person off and try to block them out but their feelings melt their walls. Turns out they are human, capable of compassion after all.

On the flip, Neptune is learning from Saturn. Because Saturn keeps going. Drunk and beaten bloody, left in a heap on the side of the road, Saturn is still going to work and don’t think Neptune doesn’t notice. “Jeez, man. Maybe I ought to get myself out of bed and do the right thing like Saturn over there…”

Gerald G. May writes in "Addiction and Grace: Love and Spirituality in the Healing of Addictions":

“Addiction exists wherever persons are internally compelled to give energy to things that are not their true desires.”

Sobering, huh?

Do you give energy to your true desires?

People continue to show up and weigh in on porn addiction.

Astrologer, Kathryn Cassidy of Collaboratingwithfate (great name for an astrology blog) offers insight into horoscope writer Patric Walker’s method

And reader ginnydare sounds off, calling the guy who sides with his family over his wife, “Casper Milktoast“…

Dear Sinking,

The issues here are yours and I don’t say that to attack you. It is you writing me for advice, so it is you I am going to try to assist and empower, first with the addiction question.

I am sorry to tell you, but I agree with your partner. He is an addicted person and you are an addicted person. You are addicted to cigarettes but I would venture to guess you are addicted to him as well. Just think about it, okay? Don’t you crave him? I think you do.

And my point is this: You are a mess. He is a mess. I am a mess and so is everyone else on this planet! And if you’re going to love someone you are going to have to deal with them as they are. With their messes, this is. And it seems you are willing and wanting to do this. You are not saying “get rid of the porn!” If would be fine with me if you did, but you are asking for ways to cope, and grow and transcend, so I am going to try to help you with that.

First, around getting upset over his masturbation, you can change your perspective. Because the fact is, it is his dick. And what he does with his dick is his business.

If this confuses you, just consider your lungs. Whose lungs are they? They’re your lungs. Do you need me telling you what to do with your lungs? Of course not. And he does not need your advice about his dick, either. So just see if you can detach from this. You like to smoke and he likes to beat off. Do you still love him? I bet you do. So just go with that. You love a guy who likes to beat off. He loves a guy who smokes… and none of this makes the sky fall.

Next question: How to change the way you feel about porn…

Well, judging from your chart, with Pluto and Uranus square your Moon and Mercury, I think you may be secretly very interested in all this taboo but repressing it. And this is probably one of the reasons you are so enamored with this man. He experiments! He goes where he is not supposed to go!! And I am suggesting in trying to control him you are actually trying to control yourself.

Try to think along these lines… if you can. And you can. But you’ve got to be willing to innovate here. And to grow. Because it sounds to me like someone tried to control your dick at one time and you are now inflicting this same trauma on your partner.

Is there a way you love each other and both be free? I’d say yes.

Good luck.

~~
Have a question? Need advice? Ask here!