Somehow...“E pluribus unum” has come to mean “you’re on your own.”
Sometimes a chance comment on the radio can set a whole process
of exploration into motion: today’s NPR discussion regarding the GOP Senate
healthcare bill (discussed here in
greater length) was such a wake-up call, especially when the discussion veered
off into how the GOP bill would affect the so-called “Opioid epidemic.”
This
catastrophic development has ensnared millions of Americans these days, causing
escalating numbers of deaths by overdose (62,000 in
2016, with numbers growing) and decimating families.
The conversation pointed out two essential facts about this
tragic public crisis: a) that the only remedy for opioid addiction is medical care, not willpower (as Kelly Anne Conway tried to say that day in the
news), and b) that the epidemic is approximately 20-years old.
The first issue seems to be a no-brainer to everyone except
those who are ideologically-bound to believe that drug addiction is a sign of character defect—a sign of low morals,
laziness, inability to “just say no,” etc. Medical professionals tell a very
different story: that addiction (of any type) is a mental health issue, a brain phenomenon, an illness that can be contained, if not
entirely “cured” with judicious medical care. The New York Times chimed in on this idea, as
well, offering scientific backing:
“Why would anyone continue to use recreational drugs
despite the medical consequences and social condemnation? What makes someone
eat more and more in the face of poor health?
One answer is that modern humans have designed the
perfect environment to create both of these addictions.
No one will be shocked to learn that stress makes
people more likely to search for solace in drugs or food (it’s called “comfort
food” for a reason). Yet the myth has persisted that addiction is either a
moral failure or a hard-wired behavior — that addicts are either completely in
command or literally out of their minds. Now we have a body of research that
makes the connection between stress and addiction definitive. More surprising,
it shows that we can change the path to addiction by changing our environment.”
The scope of the epidemic is frankly scary: opioid addiction
is destroying thousands of families, with the children of addicted parents
often thrown into an already overtaxed foster
care system. Entire states are affected: Wikipedia.org reports that:
“…over 30 per 100,000 in New Hampshire and over 40 per 100,000 in West
Virginia.[8]
With the ongoing crisis, opinions about drug abuse have changed and the moral,
social, and cultural resistance to heroin and opioid use has weakened.[8]”
In March 2017, the governor of Maryland declared a State of Emergency to
combat the epidemic.[9]
CDC director Thomas
Frieden has said that ‘America is awash in opioids; urgent action is
critical.’”[10]
Clearly, this epidemic is a crisis with long tentacles and
no easy answers—a real outer
planetary phenomenon, akin to the 1980s AIDs epidemic, to last year’s
Zika epidemic in Brazil, to the recurring Ebola scare we have only narrowly
escaped and dare not lose sight of, and to the present tragic cholera epidemic
in Yemen. Can we at least agree that THIS IS NO TIME TO BE CUTTING BACK ON
PEOPLE’S HEALTH CARE?!
Bottom line, the pathway into
opioid addiction has often been the over-medicating practices of the medical
industry, and the medical industry also provides the pathway out of that addiction.
The puzzle
So, what’s the astrological story here? What was happening
roughly 20 years ago that set this monstrous rolling tragedy into motion, and
why does it seem to be a specifically American
problem? It’s an elusive puzzle that we can probably never entirely solve, but we can tease out
some critical dynamics that lend insight.
For starters, epidemics don’t typically spring forth fully
formed from one moment in time and space; in fact, they operate like the
proverbial “frog boil,” in which the hapless frogs are seduced into submission
by the warm bath of the cook pot—their “fight or flight” impulses and energies
depleted by the comforting warmth—until at some critical point the temperature
starts to feel uncomfortable and it
is then too late to escape.
All the last minute willpower the frogs can muster is to no
avail: the water boils and that’s that. It’s the environment they’re caught in (the slowly heating pot) that makes
the difference. In froggy terms, the inevitable happens in the time it takes to
bring the pot to a boil; in human epidemic terms, the time frame extends over
years, but the end results are equally devastating.
So, what set this tragic opioid crisis “pot” to simmering?
To discern this we need to consider the transiting cycles and ingresses that
likely contributed. In anything of this nature, there’s a cosmic layering effect: one major cycle
provides the broad social context and sets things in motion, while cycles
operating within that broader cycle’s embrace fill in the “details,” perpetuate
the broader problem and drive its development over time. Here we’ll consider
its likely origins and a couple additional dynamics that have powerfully
perpetuated the problem.
February 2, 1993
At 12:46:43 p.m. on this day, Uranus exactly conjoined Neptune
at 19°35’Capricorn, launching a
new, roughly 172-year cycle, the second one this nation has experienced in
Capricorn (the first took off in March, 1821). Perhaps simply because of its timing, we need
to consider this 1993 cycle because it is now being powerfully reactivated by
Pluto’s transit to the cycle point, and in astrological terms, “we ain’t seen
nothin’ yet.” Jupiter and Saturn will both transit this point between now and
their new cycle launch at 0°+Aquarius
in December, 2020.
I’ve written extensively about these approaching times, here
and in other publications, but here we’re focusing a bit differently, on the
opioid crisis as a manifestation of these powerful Capricorn energies. Saturn
rules Capricorn and specializes in
manifestation, in consolidating nebulous energies, dynamics and resources into
some purposeful form, which means that Capricorn’s connection with American business and the corporate world (our
Sibly 2nd house cusp is Capricorn) is more than relevant here.
Epidemiologists
trace the origins of the epidemic back to the 1990s and a change of policy in
the American medical industry regarding addictive pain killers. From Wikipedia:
“Opioid addiction has mostly been an American problem.
Approximately 80 percent of the global opioid supply is consumed in the United
States.[11]
What the US Surgeon General calls "The Opioid Crisis" began with
over-prescription of powerful opioid pain relievers in the 1990s and led to
them becoming the most prescribed class of medications in the United States. As
of 2016 more than 289 million prescriptions were written per year.[12]:43
Between 1991 and 2011, prescriptions of painkillers in
the U.S. tripled from 76 million to 219 million per year. Among the opioid
pills prescribed are Percocet, Vicodin, Oxycodone or OxyContin.
Along with that increase in volume, the potency of the opioids also increased.
By 2002, one in six drug users were being prescribed drugs more powerful than morphine; by
2012 the ratio had doubled to one in three.[6]”
So, it looks like the opioid “frog pot” was lit up in the
early 1990s, telling us that the 1993 Uranus-Neptune cycle was definitely implicated.
In fact, considering the 1993 cycle was
merely a continuation of the 1821 Capricorn cycle, the seeds of this problem
were likely built into our business-centered approach to a health care system
from very early days.
In 1821, the cycle launched from our Sibly 1st,
opposite our Sibly Jupiter-Venus (Cancer) conjunction, with a late Pisces Pluto
disposed by Capricorn Neptune. This certainly secured the
lucrative nature of the American brand, and with Pluto exactly
semi-sextile our Sibly Moon (Aquarius), trine Sibly Mercury
(Cancer), it’s not surprising that health care would have been swallowed up by
the developing corporate economy and the national mindset (the “rugged
individual”) that has always enabled the abuses built into that economy.
Fast forward to 1993 and the biwheel with the U.S. Sibly
chart confirms that the American people were put at grave risk that year—let’s
consider a few highlights:
Biwheel #1: (inner wheel)
U.S. Sibly chart, July 4, 1776, 5:10 p.m. LMT, Philadelphia, PA;
(outer wheel) Uranus con Neptune in Capricorn, February 2, 1993,
12:46:43 p.m. ST, Washington, D.C.. Tropical Equal Houses, True Node.
Cycle
Uranus-Neptune (Capricorn) oppose Sibly Sun/Mercury (midpoint, Cancer), trine
Sibly Neptune (Virgo) and semi-sextile Cycle Saturn-MC-Mercury (Aquarius). It’s
worth remembering that one of the first programs Bill and Hillary Clinton
promoted when he took office in January, 1993 was healthcare, specifically an attempt to craft a universal healthcare
plan that, if it had had a snowball’s chance in hell with Congress that year,
might have been a solid foundation for an even better program today. As it happened,
the Clinton plan was shot down ignominiously, leaving corporate insurance and
Big Pharma to tighten their heavy foothold as the only, increasingly expensive
option for people.
I would guess that the cycle point’s opposition to Sibly Sun/Mercury
had a lot to do with the Clinton’s program being stillborn; a predictable smear
campaign was immediately launched to discredit the plan as “socialist,” and so
on. Actually, there may have been something to that, with Sibly Neptune
trine the Capricorn cycle point, but back then “socialized medicine”
were dirty words in this country. The collective dream of universal health care
has grown on us over the years, however—especially since we’re one of only a
hand full of banana republics that doesn’t
offer such security to its people.
Somehow our powerful corporate sector and its lobbyists have
decided that “E pluribus unum” means “you’re on your own.”
Bottom line, Bill Clinton decided that it was too big of
risk for his presidential ambitions to pursue the plan any further, so it was
stowed away for another day.
This Sibly Sun/Mercury midpoint also had a lot
to do with the corporate enmity that’s existed ever since against the Clintons.
Hillary Clinton simply wasn’t speaking their “language” with her healthcare
efforts, and many of them haven’t trusted her ever since: she wanted to leap
frog over the type of government/corporate compromise program Obamacare would
become, right into a “single-payer” style program.
Funny thing, we’re finally cycling back to this idea now
that millions are at risk of losing Obamacare—and now that the idea has a
popular champion in Bernie Sanders.
Interchart T-Square: Cycle Asc-Moon-So. Node (Gemini) conjoin
Sibly Dsc-Mars (Gemini) and oppose Cycle No. Node (Sagittarius); this axis
squares Sibly Neptune (Virgo). This configuration is
interesting because the Sibly Mars-Neptune square destabilizes
anything it touches, and the Cycle Moon-Asc here represents the
well-being of the People. The fact that this axis is flipped in relation to the
Sibly horizon (with the Cycle Asc on the Sibly Dsc)
suggests that the People’s issues are not top priority in the
super-corporatized world spawned by this 1993 cycle.
In fact, the People’s issues may even be “the enemy” in that
world, and it’s not hard to see how this has played out since 1993: in the
globalized economy that drained jobs away from our borders, in the ravaging of
local economies in favor of “big box” stores, and so on. People’s needs tend to
be literally “drowned out” when Neptune is given free rein, and with
the Cycle point trine Sibly Neptune and quincunx Cycle Moon, the checks on
Neptune
are fragile at best.
For instance, we’ve been suffering from decades of stagnant
wages, and with Neptune, flows of money “seek their level” across the entire
collective, so there’s been pressure on our wages to be “competitive” with
overseas wages—always under the corporate threat of relocation and offshoring. Neptune’s
superpower here is to undermine borders and erase limits on where companies and
resources can go: that’s fueled the globalization process of picking “winners
and losers,” or in classical biblical terms, two+ decades of sorting the
“wheat” from the “chaff.”
We look to Neptune for compassion, yet this
Capricorn cycle—disposed by judgmental Saturn—has been anything but.
A lot of people have gotten hurt and angry under these
conditions; needless to say, we’re suffering the backlash (very Neptunian,
if we envision how a tsunami operates) with today’s political realities. We can
see here how today’s opioid crisis was seeded in this Saturn-infused “tsunami”
that has overwhelmed and engulfed so many.
Clearly, an actual calamitous tsunami (we saw a horrific
example of one in 2004 in Indonesia) is the exact opposite of a “rising tide
that lifts all boats.” It’s no wonder
this phrase—so often used in Democratic party platforms—has lost all credence
with so many: the concern for people’s needs implied by that phrase simply
doesn’t seem real in today’s harsh environment. I can just hear the amen chorus
of “Fake News!”
Interchart Double Quincunx
(DQ): Cycle Saturn-MC-Mercury (Aquarius)
conjoin Sibly Moon (Aquarius); this focal point quincunxes Sibly Neptune
(Virgo) and Sibly Mercury (Cancer). This configuration only
confirms the difficult times looming in 1993: even though Bill Clinton’s two
terms were relatively prosperous times (we even had a federal budget surplus), the prosperity was a “house of
sand,” and had little staying power once George W. Bush decided to wage two
wars at once.
Healthcare issues were basically set aside during those
years because they were simply intractable (the DQ); to his credit, however,
Bush did oversee the development of the Medicare D prescription plan, which was
a whole lot better than what some conservatives intended for Medicare and
Social Security at that time.
Even so, pressure mounted for solutions to rising
healthcare costs and the scourge of pre-existing condition discrimination in
premiums and availability of plans. By 2007, documentarist Michael Moore
released his damning look at American healthcare, entitled Sicko, and this seemed to wake people up to the need for a new
healthcare system.
There wasn’t much widespread discussion about an opioid
crisis at that time yet, but the problem was building, as Neptunian epidemics do. Chronic pain is a situation that is very
similar to an intractable DQ: you’re damned if you do take the addictive
painkillers your doctor prescribes, and you’re damned if you don’t. When people
have to go to work and function as heads of families, they tend to opt for the
pain killer. By the time they realize the pills are simply creating bigger
problems for them (the frog boil), it’s often too late.
Nailing the “coffin,” if you will, is Pluto: as mentioned
earlier, the semi-sextile between Sibly Pluto and Sibly Moon
(forming part of the DQ focal point here) speaks to Big Pharma’s role in
promoting opioid consumption through prescribing physicians. Tapping into that
set-up, however, is a powerful Cycle Pluto (in home-sign Scorpio),
lurking over the Sibly 12th house of prisons, institutions (foster
care, hospitals, rehab centers) and slavery (addiction), square Sibly Pluto-Cycle
Saturn-MC-Mercury. Those vulnerable individuals with difficult
environments, mental health and/or chronic pain issues, were caught in a
classic Plutonian, Gordian knot.
Bottom line, those who get too deep into the weeds with Neptune
often have to deal with Pluto as well. Neptune’s pain-killing euphoria has cost hundreds of thousands
a deadly price. Those lucky enough to secure the help they needed on time have
without doubt experienced a fundamental Plutonian transformation.
Perpetuating the threat
Once the 1993 Uranus-Neptune
cycle set the Saturn-infused, harshly chaotic and uncontrollable dynamics
known as globalization in motion, other astrological dynamics began to chime
in, perpetuating the “fantastic beast” that had been spawned. Many analysts
celebrated the phenomenon, and in many ways, it felt inevitable and even positive
(lots of arguments exist on this for another day), but it’s hard to make those
points with millions of people who found themselves rudely displaced by the
developments.
Here, we’re focused on the opioid epidemic, another way in which this cycle has arguably
transformed global economies and named “winners” and “losers” for generations
to come. This Capricorn cycle will be with us until the year 2165, too (when Uranus
and Neptune
start a new “air” cycle in Aquarius), so we seriously need to adapt as a
collective to the new realities they have inspired. Hopefully the chaos will
settle as that happens and we’ll start to see the more positive potentials of
this cycle.
In fact, we might wonder how much of the opioid epidemic has
been about escaping the uniquely
post-1990s pain so many have
experienced. Mental stress and
security anxiety can both feel and be very
physical, so the connection with the
drug epidemic is real. This is especially true in the wake of the 2007-8 Wall
Street crash and the ensuing housing crisis—all 1993 cycle related, with a
little help from various planetary players.
One major planetary
player from the get-go has been Saturn, which as we saw in Biwheel
1, was heading into the final decan of Aquarius—a sign it co-rules with
Uranus
(which was then in Saturn-ruled Capricorn). Globalization
required a total reorganization of our economic system and our post-WWII
priorities, so when the elder President Bush coined the term “new world order”
to describe what’s emerged since then, he knew what he was talking about.
Clearly, Saturn has enabled Uranus
and Neptune
in their project, and this was reinforced when Saturn entered Neptune-ruled
Pisces in May, 1993, still conjunct Sibly Moon. In the course of its
tour through this watery domain, Saturn trined Sibly Jupiter-Venus
(Cancer), squared Sibly Uranus and Mars (Gemini), trined
Sibly Sun and Mercury (Cancer), quincunxed Sibly Saturn
(Libra) and opposed Sibly Neptune (Virgo). Not surprisingly, it
took until almost the end of Obama’s presidency for government-funded programs (Saturn,
Jupiter
and Uranus) to be created to address the opioid crisis, and the
future of these efforts is now an unknown.
Overall, I would say that Saturn’s time in Pisces
initiated a deeply destabilizing period—a period that foreshadowed the shifting
landscapes of the Uranus-Neptune (Pisces-Aquarius) mutual reception that launched
in March, 2003—just in time for the Iraq invasion. Shifting landscapes and
insecure footing in the world do not help with addiction problems.
I haven’t seen the statistics, but we have to wonder how
many opioid-addicted individuals are veterans of the Afghan and Iraq wars. Or,
victims of the so-called “culture wars.” Or victims of the rising tide of
discrimination and hate crimes. Or victims of domestic abuse. Or of dreams
deferred. Pain is pain, whatever the cause.
Should people be able to “man up” and “walk it off?” Ideally,
but Neptune
also erodes the limits of what people can bear. Perhaps this is why Neptune
is also associated with compassion? It
would be great if those of us lucky enough to escape the addiction trap could empathize with afflicted neighbors and
loved ones.
Jupiter, Chiron and Neptune
Finally, one amazing moment in time probably can be credited with at least perpetuating
the pain for our Sibly Moon since 1993: the amazing May 23,
2009 Jupiter-Neptune-Chiron
conjunction at the Sibly Moon (Biwheel 2, below). This happened
during the 7-year-long Uranus-Neptune mutual reception in
Pisces-Aquarius, so the epidemic-prone impact of Neptune was doubled. While that period was also marked by the euphoria (apt for this combination) many were feeling about Obama's new presidency, there was also the darker side--the birth of the so-called "birther" movement which carried Trump into his presidential run, and the immediate "hate" campaign that flourished against our first black president. We can only speculate whether the mounting hatred and media-spawned distrust in the new government had anything to do with supporting the opioid epidemic, but we do know that many people who benefited from the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare in the following year were caught up in that epidemic.
A couple highlights from this chart tell the story.
A couple highlights from this chart tell the story.
Biwheel #2: (inner wheel) US
Sibly Chart, July 4, 1776, 5:10 p.m. LMT, Philadelphia, PA; (outer wheel) Jupiter-Chiron-Neptune
conjunction, May 23, 2009, 9:33:31 a.m. DST, Washington, D.C. Tropical Equal Houses, True Node.
Jupiter-Chiron-Neptune
conjoin Sibly Moon, trine Sibly Mars (Gemini) and inconjoin Sibly Neptune
(Virgo). Addiction has a troubling Mars-Neptune flavor, so
the way the three transiting points tie into this delusion-prone, mutable Sibly
square is significant. Idealism (Neptune) and get-up-and-go (Mars) are
wonderful qualities until they are twisted to a toxic purpose, and that appears
to be what happened when Big Pharma was allowed to unleash a massive whirlwind of
addictive pills (Jupiter-Neptune) into the marketplace. Chiron here attests to
the outrageous pain involved in all of it—both as the initial reason for
over-prescribing, and as the inevitable outcome to addiction.
As mentioned earlier, it took until the end of Obama’s presidency (which had just got going when this
triple conjunction happened) to pass legislation that aspires to rein in the
opioid crisis, assist afflicted individuals and limit Big Pharma, and all of
that is now in legislative limbo.
As also noted, the Uranus-Neptune mutual reception factored
into this assault on the Sibly Moon, being semi-sextile that point,
from the Sibly 4th. Any governor of a heavily-impacted state—like Ohio’s
John Kasich—will attest to how devastating the epidemic has been on the “homeland”
and families (4th). Foster care systems are straining as families with
addicted parents fall apart, either through death by overdose, incarceration,
or inability to function.
Hollywood has offered an entire genre of disaster films that
have pictured all kinds of insidious attacks on the American people, but they
pale in comparison to the actual damage we’ve done to ourselves since this 2009
event. Importantly, we can look to this 2009 time period as powerfully enabling
the threats we’ve experienced to our voting systems, our public confidence in
the facts as opposed to media spin, and to the toxic rise of
xenophobia, hate crimes, etc. It’s no accident that it all coincides with the
immigration crisis in Europe, and unrest in the Middle East and Africa.
Bottom line, an enemy wanting to undermine (Neptune)
the American people by sapping away its core strength could not have
done more damage.
Forward in time
So, following the bread crumbs forward in time, we see that Pisces
Saturn
(May 1993-April 1996) and then Saturn’s conjunction with Sibly
Neptune (Virgo) in late 2009 destabilized our
collective psyche and laid the ever-shifting groundwork for the mutable 2015-17
Saturn-Neptune
square (Sagittarius-Pisces) that we’ve only recently shaken off.
For its part, this square has further undermined our public institutions, perpetuating the process started by the 1993 cycle: as we
hear every day in the news, even our voting
system has been compromised and remains vulnerable going forward.
And, not
to be ignored, it was soon after this May, 2009 convergence that Uranus
entered cardinal Aries to begin its monumental 7-hit square with Capricorn
Pluto. This has rocked the world ever since and literally turned up the
heat on the opioid epidemic.
Final thoughts
Remember the “frog boil?” It may seem inconceivable that our sacred institutions—like the 1st
Amendment-backed free press, our presidency, our civility, our Constitutional checks and balances, and the very strength of our families—could
erode beyond repair, leaving a toxic void for some malignant power to fill, but
here we are. I hope we still have a chance to flee that seductive “bath” before
it gets too hot.
IMHO, the opioid crisis is a symptom of a deep erosion in
everything we hold dear as Americans (fill in the blanks), and the bad news is
that healing it in the near term will be difficult at best. The good news is,
however, that many legislators seem to have woken up recently to how critical a
sound healthcare program is going
forward. We’re messing around with people’s lives here, and that should not be
acceptable.
If we come out of this
treacherous time with a workable healthcare plan and solid resources from Congress for addressing the epidemic (and
for preventing another generation’s slide into it), then we’ll have reason to
celebrate. Let's make it a great 4th of July!!
Raye
Robertson is a practicing astrologer, writer and former educator. A graduate of
the Faculty of Astrological Studies (U.K.), Raye focuses on mundane,
collective-oriented astrology, with a particular interest in current affairs,
culture and media, the astrology of generations, and public concerns such as
education and health. Several of her articles on these topics have been
featured in The Mountain Astrologer and other publications over the years.
© Raye Robertson 2017. All
rights reserved.
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