Longtime fans of legendary rocker Ozzy Osbourne know that he has a long history with drug and alcohol abuse, dating back to his days as the frontman of Black Sabbath in the 1970s.
Ozzy’s rock-and-roll lifestyle took a major toll and put his life at risk, but thankfully in recent years he’s managed to kick most of his old habits, staying sober and focusing on his health in his senior years.
But he recently revealed that he is “not completely sober,” and reveals the one thing keeping him from turning back to “harder drugs.”
Ozzy has always been open about his decades-long battle with substance abuse, including alcohol, cocaine and prescription drugs, but he has been sober for the past decade.
But on a recent episode of his podcast The Madhouse Chronicles, Osbourne, 75, admitted that he was “happier” these days but “not completely sober,” revealing there is still one drug he likes to indulge in.
“I use a bit of marijuana from time to time,” Ozzy says.
Considering Osbourne’s history with much harder substances, him smoking weed now and then barely counts as breaking sobriety. Quitting every vice except marijuana has become a common practice, often called being “California sober.”
But Ozzy says there have been times where he is tempted to relapse to his old habits. He said that he recently tried microdosing ketamine, a practice that has been promoted by celebrities (including Ozzy’s wife, Sharon) as a treatment for PTSD, depression and drug addiction.
However, Ozzy says that the treatment only reignited a desire for hard drugs.
“I went to a doctor recently ’cause somebody I know very well started doing this ketamine,” Osbourne said on the podcast. “He put a tiny bit in me, but that was enough to spark me. That feeling, that thing came back, that weight in my brain, waiting for somebody to go, ‘Bing.’”
“They don’t make smack-lite,” he added, saying that he was “tempted to return to stronger drugs.”
But Ozzy says that his wife Sharon is the one keeping him from falling off the wagon. “I’m lucky my wife kicked my butt, obviously. She would f***ing make life so difficult,” he said. “Like with marijuana, she’ll f***in’ find it and get rid of it.”
The rocker has long credited his wife with helping him attain sobriety after decades of hard drinking and drug abuse: “If it weren’t for her, without a shadow of a doubt, I would be dead,” he told the Daily Telegraph in 2009.
In 2013, Osbourne wrote on Facebook that he had relapsed for a year and a half, admitting that he was “in a very dark place and was an a**hole” to his family, but he was once again sober and “trying to be a better person.”
These days, Osbourne is taking it easy and prioritizing his health. In 2020, he announced that he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. In 2023, he canceled his remaining tour dates, citing complications from a 2019 accident that damaged his spine, effectively retiring from touring after decades.
It can be very difficult to get and stay sober after decades of addiction, but we’re glad Ozzy Osbourne is doing well these days and staying on the wagon with the help of his wife Sharon!
