Rahu and Addictions  

By Vaughn Paul Manley, M.A.

Rahu influenced time periods can represent phases in our lives when we are willing to explore in entirely new and unusual directions. Rahu is extroverted, materialistic, and represents foreigners, foreign experiences and strong, compulsive desires. We often find ourselves wanting to do things that are very uncustomary, so much so that people around us can wonder what got into us that we could change so abruptly. Sometimes the change can be as innocuous as a new hairdo, but it can also represent getting addicted to drugs, and other self-destructive behaviors. Rahu's influence can be reckless, bold, indiscriminate, and impulsive in its pursuit of the new and exciting.

The following chart is of a woman who was in a Jupiter-Saturn- Rahu dasha while both Saturn and Rahu were transiting close to her ascendant degrees. It was during her 4 1/2 month Rahu sub sub period that she began hanging out with shady characters and became addicted to cocaine. Both Saturn and Rahu's influence in the ascendant can represent self-destructive tendencies during this time and drawing to herself negative influences.

This was a short-lived, aberrant phase of her life. When Rahu left Taurus by transit and she began the sub dasha of Mercury, which is both a natural benefic and temporal benefic as the ruler of the 5th house from the lagna and 9th house from the Moon, she gradually overcame her addiction and cleaned up her life.

Natal Chart

Transits May 25, 2002