Black Sabbath rocker Ozzy Ozbourne has revealed he gave up acid after a horse told him to ‘f**k off’, admitting: “That was it for me.”
Osbourne, 73, has previously spoken out about his past experimentation with drugs while at the forefront of the 70s heavy metal scene – a habit that eventually proved so problematic that it got him kicked out of the band.
Speaking to Classic Rock about making Black Sabbath’s fourth album Vol. 4 during those chaotic days, Osbourne recalled: “We lived together in a house in Los Angeles, rehearsed there, did loads of drugs and made an album: simple. Those were good times.”
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He continued: “At that time in America, people were very fond of lacing your drinks with acid. I didn’t care. I used to swallow handfuls of tabs at a time. The end of it came when we got back to England.
“I took 10 tabs of acid then went for a walk in a field. I ended up standing there talking to this horse for about an hour. In the end the horse turned round and told me to f**k off. That was it for me.”
Osbourne has been through several periods of sobriety, revealing in 2013 that he had been smoking, drinking and taking drugs for the last year and a half after falling into a ‘very dark place’, before becoming sober again in March that year.
He told the Orange County Register in 2018 that he was ‘doing good, explaining: “I don’t drink alcohol anymore… I don’t smoke tobacco. I don’t use drugs... I’m doing good right now.
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“I now think, ‘how did I think going into a bar and getting smashed and doing all that cocaine was fun?”
He went on: “I have come to think that if right now you had a gun, a bag of cocaine and a gallon of booze and you said ‘Take your pick,’ I’d pick up the gun. It’s not worth it.”
In February 2021, he also sat down with Variety with wife Sharon and son Jack to speak about how substance abuse had affected the family.
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Jack, 36, who had marked ‘17 years of continuous sobriety’ at the time of the interview, said: “I was suffering from a lot of depression in my early teens, and I was drinking a lot. And then we did The Osbournes and it gave me a rather large piggy bank, so my parents had less control, and then my mom got sick [Sharon is a colon cancer survivor].
“But in these times, I would dip in and be like, ‘Things aren’t great.’ And then I’d pull back — ‘Oh, things are OK.’ So it was this dance. Eventually, my mom received a phone call from a friend who was like, 'This is bad'.”
Osbourne’s wife of 40 years said it feels ‘very calm in the house’ now that her husband is sober, adding: “It’s great for our whole family. It really is.”
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Jess Hardiman