When you have lived your life in the fast lane like Ozzy Osbourne, death and the macabre come with the territory. Years of heavy drug usage and partying, combined with a debilitating disease, might impact the length of one’s life. The rocker opened up about all this in a recent interview with Rolling Stone UK.
Ozzy believes he has about 10 years left of life in him. Some recent surgeries did not go as planned. In one of them, a tumor was discovered. He also has Parkinson’s disease. Despite all this, his outlook is positive.
The subject came up when his wife was reprimanding him for smoking pot. “Look, I said to Sharon that I’d smoked a joint recently and she said, ‘What are you doing that for! It’ll [expletive] kill you,'” Ozzy, who is 74 years old, explained. “I said, ‘How long do you want me to [expletive] live for?!’ At best, I’ve got 10 years left and when you’re older, time picks up speed. Me and Sharon had our 41st wedding anniversary recently, and that’s just unbelievable to me!”
“I don’t fear dying, but I don’t want to have a long, painful and miserable existence,” he went on to say. “I like the idea that if you have a terminal illness, you can go to a place in Switzerland and get it done quickly. I saw my father die of cancer.” Ozzy and his wife Sharon have a pact that if either of them is diagnosed with a disease that would impact their cognitive function, they would end their lives through doctor assisted means.
Ozzy’s health has not been great these last couple of years. In 2020, he revealed he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2003. In 2019, he had a significant fall that damaged his spin. The surgeries meant to fix the issues only made things worse.
“It’s really knocked me about,” he explained. “The second surgery went drastically wrong and virtually left me crippled. I thought I’d be up and running after the second and third, but with the last one they put a [expletive] rod in my spine. They found a tumor in one of the vertebrae, so they had to dig all that out too. It’s pretty rough, man, and my balance is all [expletive] up.”
Ozzy often wonders why he is still around especially given his history of drug and alcohol abuse. So many of his friends have died because of it. “Why am I the last man standing? I don’t understand any of it. Sometimes I look in the mirror and go, ‘Why the [expletive] did you make it?!'” he stated. “I’m not boasting about any of it because I should have been dead a thousand times. I’ve had my stomach pumped God knows how many times.”
It has not been easy for Sharon to watch her husband struggle with his health. “It’s been nearly five years of heartache, and at times I’ve just felt so helpless and so bad for Ozzy, to see him going through the pain,” Sharon stated. “He’s gone through all these operations and the whole thing has felt like a nightmare.”
The biggest sacrifice Ozzy has made is giving up performing and touring. “He hasn’t lost his sense of humor, but I look at my husband, and he’s here while everyone else is out on the road,” Sharon explained. “This is the longest time he hasn’t ever worked for. Being at home for so long has been so foreign to him.”
Ozzy hopes to return to performing, if only for a couple of gigs. He wants to properly say thank you and goodbye to his loyal fans whom he considers part of his extended family.
“If I can’t continue doing shows on a regular basis, I just want to be well enough to do one show where I can say, ‘Hi guys, thanks so much for my life,'” Ozzy mused. “That’s what I’m working towards, and if I drop down dead at the end of it, I’ll die a happy man.”
