Ozzy Osbourne - Trust Me, I’m Dr. Ozzy

Dear Dr. Ozzy:

I recently went to Brazil and saw the most unbelievably graphic health warnings on the back of cigarette packets—dead babies, gangrenous feet, amputees, etc. Do you think these kind of “scare tactics” work, or are they so over-the-top, they do the opposite?

The fact that anyone can puff and cough their way through a packet of smokes while staring at a picture of a foot-wide throat tumour just goes to show how addictive those fucking things are. I swear, if someone invented nicotine today, it would be in the same class as heroin—and I say that as someone’s whose smoked cigarettes AND taken heroin. I remember being so hooked on tobacco, I’d pick butts up off the floor and smoke them. Disgusting, man. The thing is, though, when they start printing those kind of horrific pictures on the cartons—like kids’ corpses and whatever—you’ve gotta ask yourself, why the hell are they selling that shit in the first place? At some point they’ve either gotta ban the things or let people get on with killing themselves.

Dear Dr. Ozzy,

My 46-year-old son inherited an addictive personality from his father (who was a big drinker), and has somehow ended up with a crack habit. Worse: when I went away on holiday recently, he burgled my house for drug money, leaving his DNA all over the place. I feel terrible. Why do you think he’s doing this? Is it a cry for help ?

You answered your own question at the very beginning—no, it’s not a cry for help, your son is an addict . He just wants his drug. It’s as simple as that. A lot of people might find it hard to believe, but addiction is an illness, similar to having any other kind of mental disorder, and no-one can really help you until you decide for yourself that it’s time to pack it in. That ain’t much comfort when the person who used to be your little angel takes up the crackpipe, though. The first thing I’d do is sit him down and tell him you know exactly what the deal is. Then give one last chance: “I can help you get over this, or I can let the police handle it, and you can go to prison.” If he wants your support, find a helpline or a drugs counselling service and take it from there. If he wants to be a crackhead, there ain’t much you can do. At this point, tough love is the only option.

♦ Back in the 1880s, an American doc called William Halsted realised that if you shot yourself up with cocaine, it worked like an anaesthetic. Unfortunately it also makes you a raging fucking coke-head—which is why you don’t get to snort a line before having your appendix out. The guy ended up trying to cure his own habit with morphine… which just made him a coke head and a smack-head.

♦ Sigmund Freud recommended cocaine as a treatment for depression, alcoholism, morphine addiction… and just about anything else he could think of. Mind you, coke was all the rage back then. You could even get bottles of “cocaine wine”—one of the greatest inventions in the history of Mankind. The drink was taken off the market in 1886, though, ’cos of prohibition. So they replaced it with a non-alcoholic version… called “Coca-Cola.” Six years later, the cocaine was taken out, too.

♦ During World War II, soldiers on all sides were speeding their balls off half the time—until generals realised that there’s no point being able to march 300 miles in five minutes if you spend the next week bugging the fuck out from paranoia. If you believe some reports, even Hitler was taking methamphetamine eight times a day.

♦ Speaking of meth, it’s gotta be one of the scariest fucking “uppers” of all time—even though in the 1940s, it was approved as a treatment for everything from hay fever to narcolepsy. One of the worst side-effects is “meth mouth,” which causes your teeth to turn black and fall out. To make the stuff, meanwhile, labs use everything from brake cleaner to laptop batteries, fertilizer, cat litter and road flares. It ain’t exactly “organic,” put it that way.

Dr. Dr. Ozzy:

Are energy drinks mixed with booze a safer (and legal) alternative to cocaine?

Good question, but I don’t know the answer, ’cos whenever I drank energy drinks with booze, I was on cocaine, too. As an addict, it’s all the fucking same. Y’know, if people like messing themselves up, fine—but it didn’t end well for me. One thing I will say is that when addicts give up the booze and drugs, caffeine is often the only thing left for them to take. I’ve heard of people mixing Diet Coke and Red Bull and topping up their glass throughout the day. You see those same guys at AA meetings, huddled around the coffee machine, twitching. It’s sad, man. But the most unnatural thing for any addict is to not be getting high. Anything will do. I suppose I’m lucky that I’ve got music to take my mind off things. And my family, and my 17 precious dogs… and my English tea.

Dear Dr. Ozzy:

How did you manage to quit smoking? I’ve tried everything: patches, gum, cold turkey, and pills, but it isn’t working for me. It’s driving me insane. Please tell me your secret—and remember, not all of us have the money for fancy doctors!

It’s simple: you’ve gotta make your mind up. I’d stop, I’d start, I’d stop again, I’d put the patch on, take the patch off, put it on again, smoke with the patch, stop again, try the gum, smoke with the patch and the gum… I even tried hypnosis at one point. I loved smoking. Cigarettes, pipes, cigars—anything. I smoked so much I set my house on fire on more than one occasion. For a while I used to roll my own: I’d make 25 in one go, put them in a box, and smoke ’em through the night. I couldn’t go for a walk without a cigarette, make a call without a cigarette, do anything without a cigarette. Then one day I had a conversation with myself: “Do you really want to stop, Ozzy, or do you want to keep going? You can’t do both, so make a fucking decision.” What swung it for me is the fact that I’m a singer: if I wanted to carry on entertaining people I had to quit. So one day I went home, threw my pack on the fire, and I’ve never smoked since. That was eight years ago. I don’t crave them any more, but every so often I’ll have a twinge. I just let it go, y’know? Because I ain’t under any illusions: if I have just one cigarette now, I’ll have smoked my way through an entire packet by the end of the day.

Dr. Dr. Ozzy:

When I drink too much, the next morning I get a super-sensitive boner. Have you ever heard of this?

No. With the amount I used to put away, I was lucky to even know I had a dick the next morning, never mind a boner. I also had a habit of waking up in jails and hospitals, which doesn’t exactly put you in the mood. The only thing that was super-sensitive was my head.

Dear Dr. Ozzy:

I’ve recently been prescribed some medication that says “avoid alcohol,” but both my consultant and my GP say it’s okay to drink “in moderation.” They don’t say what “moderation” is, though. What’s your opinion, as a man with a fair bit of experience?

Here’s my prescription for you, Henry: a new consultant, and a new GP. I mean, who are these people—witch doctors? If the manufacturer of the drug goes to all the bother of putting a big yellow label on the front which says “AVOID ALOCHOL,” then—here’s a crazy idea—how about avoiding alcohol? It ain’t complicated. Y’know, I can’t believe doctors sometimes. I think the problem is that docs like to knock a few back themselves. I had this one bloke in London, and every time I went into his surgery, the place stank of gin, his nose glowed bright red, and he chained-smoked while he scribbled down his dodgy prescriptions in a little pad. I stopped going to see him in the end. I felt worse coming out of there than I did when I went in.