Hooked: Piscean Intoxication

Moon, Venus, Neptune, and North Node meet at 27° Pisces

I was walking by the river today, meditating on what to say about this week’s Piscean mashup, exact today, February 1. I felt creatively cramped, but when I glanced out at the water, I saw it suddenly come alive, a twinkling melody in the rushing currents that mirrored the rhythm of the song dripping through my headphones.

So I deferred to the water spirits.

“River, please give me a song to help me write today.”

I hit play, and the opening lines of “Now U Got Me Hooked” by Against All Logic poured into my ears.

But now you got me loving you
Now you've got me hooked
Now you got me wanting you
A little bit of your love was all it took

(It’s a bop. Give it a spin below if you’re keen.)

This song always reminds me of a sunny afternoon in summer 2020 spent wandering through the cramped aisles of a tiny record store in Portland, Oregon, with my long distance lover, who was visiting me for the first time. The store was just down the street from my old apartment, where I quarantined solo for the early months of lockdown. At the height of social distancing, they were only letting a handful of people roam the store at once. We patiently queued outside, then shuffled around the store nervously like newcomers at a school dance, trying to spot our favorites while staying two yardsticks from everyone.

When he spotted the record, 2012 - 2017, he thumbed it out of the stack, held it up excitedly, and said, “Jan! Against All Logic!” He was a huge Nicolas Jaar fan, and I’d added “Now U Got Me Hooked” to a playlist I made him that spring. I don’t remember if we took the record home. I don’t remember much else about that day. It bled into all the others, like most days did back then, in the dissociative fugue of 2020. But that moment stood out in the sea of surreality, like an anchor — a snapshot of connection that felt temporarily real and true.

It had already proven illusory, messy, and unstable, but we were both willing to ignore our better judgment just to indulge in the thrill of a kismet COVID romance. I’d picked him up from the PDX airport days earlier and when he approached me, he pressed his forehead against mine in an intense, penetrating greeting. We hadn’t touched in nearly eight years — one whole Venus cycle — and before we reconnected in 2020, we hadn’t spoken for almost as long.

I was touch-starved after months in my apartment alone, and the next two weeks were a whirlwind of hormones and denial. On night one I felt a notable ick that I chose to repress, one of many signals that I was headed down the wrong path. Months later I moved cross-country to be with him, denying my instincts and abandoning myself because I’d convinced myself he was the love of my life. The next two years were two of my most difficult, and it’s taken me two more years to detox from that relationship and settle back into myself.

Hearing that song ring out plugged me right into the memory of that day at the record store, when our connection still felt more magical and transcendent than toxic and depleting. And it dragged me right into my topic, as we build toward this very Piscean mash-up, exact on February 1: Piscean intoxication, and its way of drawing us out of one painful reality and plopping us into a prettier one that temporarily delights, but often comes at a steep price.

Neptune is a helluva drug

When I say “intoxication” I don’t just mean substances. I mean the experience of being intoxicated by something, someone, or someplace, to the point that it obscures your vision, derails your discernment, and sets you adrift — all possibilities under these skies, as the Moon, Venus, Neptune, and the North Node meet at 27° Pisces.

Don’t get me wrong, this transit can evoke the gorgeous, transcendent potential of Pisces too, like that brief moment of magic, when I received a much-needed message through the music of the river. But it can also illuminate the Piscean shadow in a big, big way, especially in our connections.

These celestial vibes remind me of all-consuming love — the kind that swallows you whole and spits you out changed. When I was younger, I considered this emotional rollercoaster to be The Only Real Kind of Love. This belief was first programmed by years of abuse and instability, and then reinforced by the drumbeat of alluring media depictions of hallucinogenic, spell-binding love. The rollercoaster of drama and uncertainty felt realer than stability. And that’s because my body was high on it, addicted to the rush of hormones it triggered — not because it was good for me.

From Harvard’s article, Love and the Brain:

When we are falling in love, chemicals associated with the reward circuit flood our brain, producing a variety of physical and emotional responses—racing hearts, sweaty palms, flushed cheeks, feelings of passion and anxiety. Levels of the stress hormone cortisol increase during the initial phase of romantic love, marshaling our bodies to cope with the “crisis” at hand. As cortisol levels rise, levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin become depleted. Low levels of serotonin precipitate what Schwartz described as the “intrusive, maddeningly preoccupying thoughts, hopes, terrors of early love”—the obsessive-compulsive behaviors associated with infatuation.

Being love-struck also releases high levels of dopamine, a chemical that “gets the reward system going,” said Olds. Dopamine activates the reward circuit, helping to make love a pleasurable experience similar to the euphoria associated with use of cocaine or alcohol.

See the word “crisis” in there? Yeah. That’s real. The notion of love driving us to the brink is science-backed. And because the archetypal “crazy” love is drilled into us so consistently, many of us come to see gripping magnetism and heavy chemistry as a sign of deep love, often at our own peril.

Now, let me back up for a sec and clarify: I have no desire to pathologize intensity. l still crave and need real magnetism and depth in my connections. My Scorpio Descendant, Pisces Venus, Pluto aspects, and more demand a degree of depth that inherently triggers and transforms. It is authentic to me, in many ways, to experience phoenix-like transformation in my relationships. I know the deep power of a love that touches your soul and changes you. And I now know how easy it is to conflate abuse with intensity, and poison with pleasure.

Intoxicating love is truly delicious in the early stages, when it’s all thrills and intrigue and magic. But it tends to bite you in the ass if you attempt to build a relationship off sparks alone, or live off of dopamine hits. If you’ve ever been love-struck, you know what I mean. It’s addictive. And when that intensity fades, you might chase the high elsewhere, or subconsciously stir drama in your connections to replicate the feeling.

I know this rollercoaster well. I’ve lived it.

The shadow side of Venus in Pisces is an addictive, sacrificial, illusory love built on projection and pedestalization. It reminds me of the music video for “We Found Love,” which I was obsessed with circa 2011.

Of course, the video was inspired by Rihanna’s incredibly abusive relationship with Chris Brown. It depicts the sort of gravitational pull between two people that can be as destructive and painful as it is hot. It would take me several more years to understand why I found these undeniably disturbing scenes so enchanting at 21 — I’d learned, repetitively, that I had to want someone so badly it hurt (and vice versa) in order for it to be “real.”

Lessons from rollercoaster rides

After years of high-drama relationships, I eventually had my come-to-Jesus, common-denominator moment, where I acknowledged (with great hesitation) that it wasn’t random bad luck. A part of me wanted to take that ride, and I was attracting partners who did too. Each relationship was a unique distraction, peeling me away from the trauma lingering just beneath the surface. I’d get hooked in and feel incapable of letting go until I’d been properly dragged around and depleted, often to the point of exhaustion.

I had a whole lot of help in that, for sure — abusive and exploitative partners, people who preyed on my vulnerability, etc. But the call was ultimately coming from inside the house. I had to do the work to unhook from my pattern of martyrdom. Eventually, I had no choice. This push and pull repeated until I became ill with a complex, mysterious chronic illness in my late 20s, triggered in part by the stress of an abusive relationship. I left my then-partner and began to heal up. And then I repeated the pattern again with my next partner, until my symptoms returned and my body said “no more.”

I’ve been single since then, recovering from a lifetime of draining relationships, and it’s served me. Deeply. I’ve had time to reflect, get honest, and reinforce my boundaries. I’ve had time to cultivate deeper self-respect and self-confidence. And I’ve had time to build stronger friendships and community — sturdy connections that offer me the outer infrastructure I need to repel the inner urge to just jump. Sometimes I require hard reality checks from my people or myself. Neptune is still all up on my ass, after all. And these patterns don’t disappear overnight. But it gets easier day by day to identify when I’m slipping and reel myself back in.

I had a “relapse” last year, right when Neptune was applying to its first exact conjunction with my natal Venus. I fell into a brief obsessive spell with an unavailable lover. The relationship lasted just two months, but it was beautiful and real in its own right, albeit marked by my old pattern of self-abandonment (in the beginning & middle; I gathered myself by the end). It was the most obvious, in-my-face manifestation of the transit — an intoxicating romance that enchanted me and then gutted me. The kicker was: I knew what was coming. I knew my odds of getting bamboozled by the stars (and my own latent patterns) were high. I even jokingly predicted I’d get my heart broken.

And still, I got got. Even with astrological insight, greater self-awareness, and loads of trauma healing, the fantasy won out, because that’s what fantasies do, and that’s what Neptune does.

I wrote about that experience and the memories it evoked here:

On Longing

That saga brought the still-unexplored shadows of my natal Venus to light, and it offered me self-knowledge and discernment that I now feel crystallizing into wisdom as Neptune applies to its third and final pass over my Venus. This experience, though painful, triggered me productively. It changed me. And, of course, as I unearth and heal something major within me, I’m suddenly seeing it everywhere in the people around me — an unconscious, compulsive, driving desire to escape into something or someone.

As this conjunction perfects and our collective climate shifts deeper into turmoil, I want to share some of what I’ve learned first-hand, in the hopes it might spare someone else from the rougher edges of experience.

#1 - We’re always escaping something.

It sounds obvious — that there would be a cause to every unconscious escape plan. But when you’re neck-deep in an intoxicating relationship or experience, it’s hard to imagine that magnetism is a reaction to some deeper pain, and tempting to imagine it’s simply The Thing for you. It’s easy to overlook the source and hone in on the symptom, becoming fixated on the object of your desire, often at the expense of yourself.

Again, VERY HUMAN. Losing yourself is just a part of life. So is learning about love through face-planting into heartbreak. These experiences help us develop wisdom and discernment. So let’s not pathologize something so deeply natural and instructive, but instead get curious about it.

What is driving us to escape? And is there a kinder, more direct way to address that?

A good, long look at what we’re running from is sometimes the (bitter) medicine we really need, not whatever or whoever we’re leaning on to bypass that. It’s like the hole in the wall that we attempt to paint over again and again instead of just filling it — the paint conceals it for now, but the hole will eventually need to be filled. Leaving it unfilled can turn us into hungry ghosts, always hunting for something to conceal the pain, to distract us from the wound.

With this transit active, we’re likely to dip into the escape-and-conceal complex in one way or another, yearning for something/someone to complete us, heal us, or simply numb the bigger ache that’s begging for our attention. And that’s okay. Approaching these moments with compassion and curiosity is the most healing way through. This transit might just point us to the hole we need to see by first hypnotically drawing us away from it.

#2 - Escapism is not inherently bad.

Let’s take a sec to acknowledge that the world is scary as fuck. It’s a hard time to human. And when hard times peak, so do our coping mechanisms. This week alone, I’ve watched several people I know dip more than a toe into dissociative denial, opting for soft lies over hard truths, or indulging fantasy to the point of self-harm. This is completely understandable, human, and not a sign of weakness or naivety. It’s just one of many brilliant ways we unconsciously keep ourselves safe when we’re going through the most and unable to hold it all. And no one can hold it all.

There are plenty of valid reasons for people to whoopsie their way out of reality right now. Living through existentially scary, bewildering times can trigger our fight/flight/freeze mechanism, causing us to shut down (freeze) or avoid (flight) when we’re overwhelmed. This is especially likely if we lack fortifying, on-the-ground community to help hold us up and share the burden.

It’s deeply human to leave the room when the shit hits the fan instead of looking for the fan’s off switch. It’s natural to seek the soft escape of a comforting tale, an enchanting lover, a stiff drink, or an endless scroll. And it can even be healthy to detach from reality in small doses when the reality we’re facing is truly heinous.

Fantasy novels helped me survive my childhood. Dissociation shielded me from reliving traumatic events. Crushes kept me occupied during some of the tougher stretches of my teens. Hell, not watching the news for nearly a year during T’s first presidency, when I was very ill, was exactly what I needed in order to recover. I still get lost in music, art, movement, TV, scrolling, and more to distract myself when I’m struggling, and that’s okay.

My goal isn’t to uproot a coping strategy that can be hella helpful. It’s to increase my bandwidth for staying present with tough realities, so I can still show up for myself and my community when it counts — so I can bear witness and never forget. I will never shit on the healing, protective power of a good escape, especially when it’s intentional, and especially-especially when it’s balanced out by community care and revolutionary action.

Astrophile writer

Amanda Moreno

captured the existentialism and karmic complexes of Venus & Neptune in Pisces beautifully in this video. If you’d like to hear a poetic, immersive take on this duo, I’d highly recommend watching. She just asked that I very clearly state this is OLD — five years old! :)

#3 - Deep hope is rooted. Shallow hope is unrooted.

I’m far from alone in recognizing that we all need a bit more space from the constant inundation of shit news. A lot of people are advocating that we tune out the barrage of DDOS-style daily updates, which are specifically designed to drown us in terror so we freeze and do nothing.

Others are recommending we feel our feelings, and move toward revolutionary love and resistance, keeping our focus sharp and our hearts warm — cultivating hope when it counts.

I love the spirit of these calls. I love the messages of radical hope. I love the refusal to bend the knee or obey in advance. I love the focus on small daily actions. I love it I love it I love it. I’m here for it.

This is the spirit that keeps us from falling into the pit of denial and or sticking our heads in the sand when we’re overwhelmed. This is the spirit that helps us stay with painful realities and then move forward with determination. It’s the kind of hope we desperately need at a collective level right now — the audacity to dream of a better world and then act on it instead of rationalizing injustice and oppression. And it’s the kind of hope we need at a personal level too, when we feel trapped in a situation that dishonors us — the audacity to dream of a better love, a better life.

These are examples of what I call deep hope, not to be confused with shallow hope. Shallow hope is the kind that keeps us stuck in place, perpetually waiting on something to change, treading water in a pool of misery. Deep hope is the kind that inspires aligned action.

I wrote about it more here, before I peaced out of Threads in November:

Shallow hope is rootless, like a tender flower planted in winter or a tenuous romance driven by sparks with little but luck and chance to sustain it.

Deep hope is rooted, like a tree that trusts spring will come again, a hardy crop sown strategically, or a connection built on respect, trust, and adoration.

It’s easy to fall into shallow hope when:

1. we’re in fear

2. we feel powerless or weak

3. we’re attached to a particular outcome

4. our vision is obscured by a Neptune transit!!!!!!

It’s easy to cultivate deep hope when:

1. we’re supported

2. we feel empowered and strong

3. we’re unattached to any particular outcome

4. we’re grounding (and unaffected by a Neptune transit!!!!!!!)

I’m sharing these distinctions because, right now, in this very moment, you might feel a strong draw to choose a convenient but false tale at the expense of your better senses. And sometimes the most effective way to pull ourselves out of a fugue state is with a good old checklist of grounding questions.

#4 - Denial checkpoints are critical.

When you’re unsure if your hope is deep or shallow, as yourself:

1. Do I feel steady or unsteady in my body when I connect to this hope?

2. Is this hope drawing me toward greater possibility or more of the same?

3. Is this hope grounded in realistic possibility or excessive fantasy?

4. Is this hope naturally followed by action or complacency?

5. Does this hope feed into a vision I truly desire or one I’ve simply resigned to?

The first options are the deep answers. The second options are the shallow answers. If you need help answering honestly, enlist a down-to-earth pal to mirror back what they’re seeing and help you get real with yourself. I frequently turn to Amanda Moreno for this. :) Thanks, Amanda!

Checkpoints are key when we’re faced with personal or collective illusion. And a go-to list of grounding practices (breathing, walking, moving, etc) can help us re-root in our bodies and the earth when we’re floating in outer space. Committing to a spiritual practice that keeps you tuned in and connected can do a world of good too. So can spending intentional time reflecting on your desires and impulses, and asking yourself if you’re seeking escape or connection when you inevitably look for the divine in the form of a person, as we’re want to do in these Piscean waters.

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Houston, we have a problem

Speaking of outer space… back to the astrology.

Among many things, Neptune is known to distort our perception of “reality.” When it’s interacting with a deeply relational inner planet (Venus) and the lunar nodes, the greatest distortions tend to occur in our relationships, and whatever houses or placements are directly impacted by the transit, by aspect, rulership, and more. At the most basic level: If you have any late-degree mutable placements (~24-30° Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, or Pisces) or early-degree cardinal placements, (~0-2° Aries, Cancer, Libra, or Capricorn) you’re likely to feel this transit the most.

But we’re all wading through these waters, and we’re all likely to feel the tug to descend into the deep end. The North Node’s magnetic pull combined with Neptune’s dissociative deluge, Venus’ yearning for pleasure and connection, and the Moon’s emotional draw? Yeah, there’s a high chance we’ll overdo it, whether “it” is indulgence, escapism, denial, or infatuation.

Venus in Pisces has this potential even without the added influence (I’ve touched on my experiences, but I could write a whole book on that TBH). And under Neptune’s spell and the North Node’s pull, she’s coaxed down a hall of mirrors, her desires reflected back at her in the form of ✨glittery✨ projections and magnetic temptations.

If you’ve ever taken molly and fallen in love with everyone around you in the span of a night, you get the gist. This Pisces conjunction can have us feeling love-struck, whether or not it’s with a person. And while that can be beautiful, enchanting, and transcendent, once you’re immersed in the fog, it’s hard to find your way out. So tread carefully, enjoy the beauty while it lasts, and try not to grip too tightly to any of it. One of the greatest Piscean lessons is in letting go.

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A little intention goes a long way

Looking for a way to combat unconscious escape a bit more… proactively? Try consciously escaping!!! In my New Moon in Aquarius audio reading, I invited my patrons to set a clear intention for how they’d like to escape this week — and then prioritize it. Intentionality is powerful, especially in the days after a New Moon. Tuning into a transit from a place of agency can help mitigate its less desirable expressions. When you know there’s a high chance you might get swept away, you have a bit more say in when and how that happens.

On the flip side of this transit’s daunting possibility is an array of gorgeous potential: heightened spiritual awareness; deep compassion and gratitude; artistry and creativity; transcendent love and connection; non-attachment and peace; emotional catharsis; release and surrender; renewal and possibility.

I should state, since this might not be clear, I FUCKING LOVE PISCES. I LOVE MY VENUS. And I’m in a near-constant state of gratitude for the magic, hope, compassion, and possibility my Pisces placements offer me. I’ve learned to ride the waves. And the older and wiser I become, the more grounded I feel in their inherently ungrounded energy. The looser my fearful attachment becomes, the more I open to the possibility of unforced, organic, and truly authentic love that keeps no prisoners and demands no ransom.

This self-actualized, grown variation of Pisces love reminds me of a song a friend sent me recently, “MANGO” by KAMAUU & Adi Oasis.

IMO, the lyrics capture Venus in Pisces in her most gorgeous form:

If you found some other dude
What do I do?
If he loves you truly
How could I not love him too?
If he improves you
More than I used to, hey
I don't want nothing but you
Getting what you need
Even if it ain't from me

'Cause I love you
And what love is
Never selfish
And of service
'Cause I love you
And what love is
Never selfish
And on purpose

And on purpose.

What would it feel like to love on purpose?
What would it feel like to be loved on purpose?

These are possibilities worth prioritizing, now and always. I think the ultimate call of this transit is to release our tight grip on what we think we want and to instead make space for the pleasure and beauty that’s already here. It’s an invitation to see our lovers, friends, and selves through compassionate, awestruck eyes — to appreciate our singular beauty, and to gently release the projections that obscure our sight. And it’s an opportunity to understand how, why, and what we escape, so we can eventually follow the breadcrumbs back to the hole in the wall when we’re ready — and we can fill it, alone or together, but always in solidarity.

Take care of you and yours. And as always, feel free to share your reflections below.

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Jana Barrett is an astrologer, diviner, and poet. You can follow them on Substack for more writing, visit feelingloudly.com to explore their offerings, and find all of their links here. Sign up for their bi-monthly newsletter, The Moonletter, for New Moon + Full Moon forecasts and tarot readings. And follow them on social @feelingloudly. If you’re interested in going deeper, become a patron for exclusive content, live group readings, discounts on 1:1 services, and more.

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