Ozzy Osbourne - I Am Ozzy

Booze does terrible things to you when you drink as much as I did. For example, I started to shit myself on a regular basis. At first I made a joke out of it, but then it just stopped being funny. One time, I was in a hotel somewhere in England, and I was walking down the corridor to my room, but suddenly I felt this turd rumbling down the pipe. I had to go. Right then. It was either do it on the carpet or do it in my pants, and I’d had enough of doing it in my pants. So I squatted down, dropped my trousers, and took a dump right there in the corridor.

At that exact moment, a bellboy came out of the elevator, looked at me, and shouted,

‘What the hell are you doing?’

I couldn’t even begin to think how to explain. So I just held up my room key and said, ‘It’s all right, I’m staying here.’

‘No you’re fucking not,’ he said.

A lot of alcoholics shit themselves. I mean, think about it: a gallon of Guinness makes enough tarmac to pave ten miles of the M6. And when you come round the following day, your body wants to get rid of everything: it just wants to expel all the toxic crap you forced into it the night before. I tried to stop it by switching from Guinness to Hennessy. But I was fruiting it up with orange juice or Coca-Cola the whole time, which made it just as bad. And I was drinking four bottles of Hennessy a day, plus the cocaine and the pills and the beer. At first, I would barely get hangovers, but as time went on they started to get worse and worse, until I couldn’t handle them any more.

So I went back to rehab. I was just so sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. If you drink a liquid that makes you feel better, then that’s one thing. But if you drink a liquid that makes you feel worse than you did originally, then what’s the point? And I felt like I was dying.

I couldn’t face Betty Ford again, so I went to the Hazelden Clinic in Center City, Minnesota. It was winter, freezing cold. I spent the whole time shivering, throwing up and feeling sorry for myself.

On the first day, the therapist got a bunch of us together and said, ‘When you go back to your rooms tonight, I want you to write down how much you think drink and drugs have cost you since you started doing them. Just add it all up and come back to me.’

So that night I got out a calculator and started to do some sums. I kind of wanted to get a big number, so I grossly exaggerated a lot of things, like how many pints I had each day—I put twenty-five—and how much each of them cost. In the end I came up with this obscene number. Just a huge, ridiculous number. Something like a million quid. Then I tried to get some sleep, but I couldn’t.

The next day, I showed my calculations to the bloke, and he said, ‘Oh, very interesting.’

I was surprised, ’cos I thought he was gonna say, ‘Oh, come off it, Ozzy, give me some real numbers.’

Then he said, ‘So is this just from drinking?’

‘And drugs,’ I said.

‘Hmm. And you’re sure this is everything?’ he asked me.

‘It’s a million quid!’ I said. ‘How much more could it be?’

‘Well, have you ever been fined because of drinking?’

‘A few times, yeah.’

‘Have you ever missed any gigs or been banned from any venues because of drinking?’

‘A few times, yeah.’

‘Had to pay lawyers to get you out of trouble because of your drinking?’

‘A few times, yeah.’

‘Medical fees?’

‘Big time.’

‘And d’you think you might have lost record sales because your work was affected by drinking?’

‘Probably.’

‘Probably?’

‘OK, definitely.’

‘Final question: have you ever lost property or other assets in a divorce caused by your drinking?’

‘Yeah, I lost everything.’

‘Well, Ozzy, I did some research and some calculations of my own last night, and d’you want to know what I think your addictions have cost you?’

‘Go on then.’

He told me. I almost threw up.

I woke up groaning.

Fuck me, I thought, as my eyes began to focus: must have been another good one last night. I was lying on a bare concrete floor in a square room. It had bars on the window, a bucket in the corner, and human shit up the walls. For a second I thought I was in a public toilet. But no: the bars on the window were the giveaway.

One of these days, I thought, I really need to stop waking up in jail cells.

I touched my face. Argh! Shit, that hurt.

For some reason, all I was wearing one of my smelly old T-shirts—the kind I used to sleep in—and a pair of shiny black tuxedo trousers. At least it’s better than waking up in one of Sharon’s frocks again, I thought.

I wondered what time it was. Seven in the morning? Nine? Ten? My watch was gone. So was my wallet. The coppers must have bagged my stuff when they booked me. The only thing left in my pockets was a scrunched-up receipt from my local Chinese restaurant, the Dynasty.

I pictured the inside of the place—red, like hell—and saw myself sitting in one of the leather booths, arguing with Sharon, and crushing powder and pills in one of those… what d’you call them? A pestle and mortar. What the fuck had I been doing last night? Coke? Sleeping pills?

Amphetamines? All that and more, knowing me.

I felt disgusting. My whole body ached—especially my face, and my teeth, and my nose.

I needed a bag of ice.

I needed a shower.

I needed a doctor.

‘HELLO?’ I shouted through the bars. ‘ANYBODY THERE?’

No reply.

I tried to think what my drunk, coked-up evil-twin brother could have done to put me behind bars. But my brain was empty. Blank. Just that image of me in the Dynasty, then static.

I’d probably been caught pissing in the street again, I thought. But if that was the case, why was I wearing my pyjama T-shirt? Had I been arrested at my house? Whatever I’d got up to, it had given me the mother of all headaches. I hoped I hadn’t already used up my telephone call, ’cos I needed to tell Sharon that I was in jail, so she could come and get me. Or maybe she’d gone to America. She was always fucking off to America to get out of my way, especially after a big argument. In which case I’d need to call Tony Dennis.

Good old Tony.

He’d sort me out.

It was September 3, 1989.

By then, we’d moved back to England full time. We’d bought a place called Beel House, in Little Chalfont, Bucking hamshire. The house dated back to the seventeenth century, or so Sharon told me. Dirk Bogarde once lived there. It was a real house, not the fake, movie-set bullshit you get out in California. But my favourite thing about it was our next-door neighbour, George, who lived in what used to be the gatehouse. George was a chemist, and he made his own wine. Every day I’d knock on his door and say, ‘Gimme a bottle of your super stuff, George.’ It was like rocket fuel, that wine of his. People would come over from America, take one swig, their eyes would widen, and they’d go, ‘What the fuck is this stuff?’ A few glasses of Chateau d’George was enough to put you under for good. The funny thing was George didn’t even drink. He was a teetotaller. He’d say, ‘Oh, Mr Osbourne, I saw that you set fire to the kitchen last night. That must have been a good one. Remind me, was it the elderberry or the tea leaf?’

But Sharon was on my back, big time, so I couldn’t drink George’s brews in front of her.

And I couldn’t hide the bottles in the oven any more, either. So I started to bury the stuff in the garden. Trouble was, I would always hide the booze when I was pissed, so the next night I could never remember where the fuck I’d put it. I’d be out there with a shovel until two o’clock in the morning, digging holes all over the place. Then Sharon would come down for breakfast and look out of the window, and there’d be all these trenches everywhere. ‘Fuck me, Sharon,’