Castor oil is definitely not drying. I have a massive bottle of it here at home and use it for many things. My grandmother used it for hot packs for injuries and other things, and I use it in skin care and hair care products. Edgar Cayce, if you know who he is, also used it for a vast amount of different things. Very, very healing. It is also spectacular in lip products like lip sticks and lip balms, very moisturizing. Check your lip product ingredients. MANY common brands use castor oil. It is usually what makes one product better than another as far as texture and keeping the lips soft. It is also amazing in natural, hand-made soaps. I used to make a lot of soap and always used castor oil as one of my base ingredients. I always got comments from customers as to how soft it made their skin. It is very healing, but if you're using it for sun damage, I wouldn't use it alone for a couple of reasons. The biggest one being that it is VERY sticky/tacky when used alone, making everything stick to your skin like glue. Not the nicest of textures when using it straight-up, but one of the most useful oils available. I always mix it with something else when wanting to use it for things like sun-damage and skin care, which I figured out makes it non-sticky, but am not saying here because it is part of one of the products I sell and am not gonna give that info away, sorry. You can contact me by PM if you want more info on that.