The troubled actress Demi Moore has been in the news lately after she was hospitalized for what appears to be a combination of prescription drugs, nitrous oxide and alcohol.  While her behavior has been more erratic since her separation from third husband Ashton Kutcher, Demi has a long history of emotional problems and drug addiction that nearly caused her firing from St. Elmo’s Fire, the film that brought her to national attention.

Demi’s astrological chart has some of the classic hallmarks of addictive behavior:  Pisces rising, Sun conjunct Neptune, Jupiter and Chiron in the 12th house.  (Source of birth data: Astrotheme)  Pisces, Neptune and the 12th house are all related and share the quality of an urge to transcend the material world.  This can occur through spiritual ascension, through romance, through art – or it can occur through addictions to love, alcohol and drugs.

Demi’s childhood was no picnic – after her father abandoned the family her mother became an alcoholic and married  an alcoholic who was unable to keep down a job.  The family moved 30-40 times while Demi was a child and the stepfather committed suicide when Demi was 15.  She was born in 1962 when Uranus and Pluto were nearing their exact conjunction, and everyone born between 1962 and 1968 carries this dramatic combination of radical change (Uranus) and total transformation (Pluto) in their charts.

Between 1962 and 1965, Saturn (challenge and self-doubt) and Chiron (emotional wounding) were opposite the Uranus/Pluto pair – a difficult planetary system that generally comes with an extremely sensitive psycho/emotional system that is can easily become imbalanced if not consciously attended to.  Often these individuals carry a great deal of psychic pain, but if they do the hard work of healing they can also become brilliant in their field and lead happily and fulfilling lives.

Demi Moore is noted for her obsession with her looks so it’s interesting that as a child she had to have several surgeries for crossed eyes.  The Sun rules the left eye in a woman, and the Moon rules the right eye and in Demi’s chart the Sun is opposed by the Moon.  The Sun represents the consciousness of Self and the Moon the instinctive emotional realm, and when these two are out of balance the right and left hemispheres of the brain do not easily connect.

The charts of actors often carry a strong Pisces/Neptune signature, since this urge to transcend the limits of our own personality can make it very easy to slip out of our own Self and literally become someone else.  But while this quality makes for a successful acting career, it’s not always the best thing for self-understanding and awareness.

Demi has a stellium in Scorpio which includes a very tight Sun/Venus conjunction which also embraces Neptune and Mercury.  Scorpio is very aware of the flow of power and the use of sexuality to achieve it, and this is especially true when Venus, the planet of attraction, is in Scorpio.  Yet the presence of Neptune in this mix, especially conjoining the Sun where it blurs (Neptune) her sense of Self (Sun), confuses her motivation and causes her to lose direction.  And this tendency is exacerbated by the Pisces ascendant (IF the birth information is correct) which shares the Neptunian qualities of distortion and illusion.

In addition, Demi has Mars, the planet of drive and motivation, in the self-oriented sign of Leo which craves attention and significance.  Mars forms a challenging square to the Scorpio planets and it’s also opposed by Saturn, the planet of limitation and self-doubt which often sets up a situation in which the individual feels that they will never have (Saturn) what they most want from life (Mars).

I suspect that under the drug use (Neptune/Pisces) and obsession with beauty (Sun/Venus) and sexual attraction (Scorpio) is a tremendous rage (Mars) that fuels her need to obliterate her consciousness with drugs and alcohol.  Demi’s daughter said in a recent interview that her mother has jumped from religion to religion throughout her life, but it takes more than religion (in this case Kabbalah) to facilitate the kind of healing that this kind of personality requires – it takes genuine courage and the desire to strip ourselves of the veneer that cements our false identity into place and prevents us from knowing who we really are.

You might also be interested in this profile of Demi’s ex Ashton Kutcher.