me, because they’ll hand out pills like you’re in a shopping mall. Whenever I do a gig in the US, for example, I’ll always have a doctor check me out before the show, and in the bad old days, I’d score just about anything I wanted off those guys. At one point I basically just bought my own doctor and installed him in my house, salary and everything. It was magic until Sharon got wind of it. In England, I used to have to make up a backache, or hit myself over the head with a lump of wood, if I wanted to get a Vicodin. In America, all I had to do was say the word. It stopped only when the doctors realised that they had to answer to the Voice of God—ie, my wife.
“If you give him ONE more dodgy pill,
To be fair to the American doctors, they do come up with some mind-blowing technology. I just had my eyes fixed with Crystalens surgery, for example. I’d suffered from cataracts for years, and my vision was so bad it was starting to give me problems on stage. So what they did was, they took out my natural lens—which was all fogged up—and replaced it with this bionic one, which can focus by itself. Left eye first, then the other a week later. It’s amazing. Just unbelievable. No pain, for starters. And now I can read again. I see over there, over here, it’s just fucking incredible. I’ve no idea how much it cost—probably eight tours, or something—but it’s changed my life, totally.
I’m a new man now, in so many ways. I might be 62, but I haven’t felt so young since the 1960s. Aside from my eyes, the other big change in my life is that I’ve pretty much become a vegetarian. Seriously. It’s my new phase: brown rice and vegetables. I don’t even drink milk, apart from a splash in my tea. And no, it ain’t because of the
I ain’t into any of that organic bollocks, either. People think they’re buying another day on this earth when they pay for that stuff, so they get ripped off. If you want organic, grow your own, man. I used to when I was married to my first and we had a little cottage in Ranton, Staffordshire. A veggie patch also happens to be a great place to hide your stash of drugs. Having said that, I’d always get stoned and forget where I’d buried the stuff. One time, I spent a whole week down the garden, trying to find a lump of Afghan hash. The missus thought I was just really worried about my carrots.
I suppose when people hear stories like that, they might think I’m too much of a bad example to give advice. I wouldn’t argue—and I’d hate for anyone to think, “Oh, if Ozzy survived all that outrageous behaviour, then so can I.” But d’you know what? If people can learn from my stupid shit without having to repeat any of it; or if they can take some comfort from the crazy, fucked-up things my family has been through over the years; or if just hearing me talk about colonoscopies makes them less embarrassed about getting tested for colon cancer, that’s more than enough for me: Dr. Ozzy’s job will be done.
One last thing: being a hypochondriac, I would
How to Cure (Almost) Anything
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If there’s one thing I’ve learned as Dr. Ozzy, it’s that everyone wants to be cured immediately—or better yet, three days ago. Luckily for the people who come to me with their problems, I’m exactly the same way. I mean, why go to all the trouble of a low-carb diet, if you can get rid of your gut with a needle and a suction pump? Or why take it easy after an injury, when you can pop a few pain pills and carry on?
As far as I can tell, there’s only one drawback to quick fixes: THEY DON’T FUCKING WORK. Either that, or they sort out whatever’s bothering you, but create another ten problems along the way. Take sleeping pills. For years I had trouble getting any shut-eye, so I started using a popular brand of sleeping medication. Before I knew it, I’d forgotten everything since 1975. The trouble was, my body built up an immunity to the drugs so quickly, I ended up necking a whole jar of the stuff just to get five minutes of rest. That’s when my memory blackouts started, along with a bunch of other crazy side-effects, like wandering around the house stark naked at two in the morning.
What I should have done was find out
Dear Dr. Ozzy:
This is an easy one: have another pint. You’ll be feeling much better in no time. It took me 40 years of trying everything and anything to make the morning-after feel better—short of actually giving up booze—until I finally realised that the only thing that ever worked was just to get shitfaced again. Like a lot of things, it was obvious in hindsight.
Dear Dr. Ozzy:
Funnily enough, getting loaded is also a great cure for the common cold. For example, I used to have this magic recipe for a “Hot Ozzy” (as I used to call it). You take two pints of whiskey, boil it up on the stove, add a bit of lemon—it’s very important, the lemon—then drink it as quickly as you can. Trust me: by the time you’ve downed a Hot Ozzy, you won’t just have forgotten you’re ill, you’ll have forgotten your own name.
Dear Dr. Ozzy:
I don’t know. Back in the eighties, though, I used to deal with athlete’s foot by pouring cocaine on my toes. They cut the stuff with so much foot powder in those days, it was the best treatment you could find if you had an outbreak on the road, away from your local chemist’s. The only problem was the price: it worked out at about three grand a toe. If I’d known about the peeing thing, I might have saved myself some cash.
Dear Dr. Ozzy:
