Ozzy Says He Now Believes Pot Leads To Other Addictions

MTV ^ | 07.08.2003 | Robert Mancini, with reporting by Gideon Yago

[presidio9]

Ozzy Osbourne may have weathered the lowest lows that drug addiction has to offer, but the news that his son Jack was seeking treatment for substance abuse taught him a lesson that his own decades of addiction never did.

"I used to think they should legalize pot, but you know what? They should ban the lot," Osbourne told MTV News, addressing Jack's battle for the first time. "One thing leads to another. Coffee leads to Red Bull, Red Bull leads to crank.

"When I found out the full depth of him getting into OxyContin, which is like hillbilly heroin, I was shocked and stunned," Osbourne continued. "The thing that's amazing was how rapidly he went from smoking pot to doing hillbilly heroin."

Ozzy's son entered a California rehabilitation facility in April to battle what was later revealed to be an addiction to the prescription painkiller OxyContin (see "Jack Osbourne Reveals He Was Addicted To Painkiller OxyContin"). Jack also said that he was drinking and using a variety of substances — including Vicodin, Valium, Xanax, Dilaudid, Lorcet, Lortab, Percocet and marijuana — before his trip to rehab (see "Rehab Helps Jack Osbourne Get To Root Of Addiction Problems").

Jack's laundry list of controlled substances made his father painfully aware of just how readily available drugs are. "When I started doing drugs years ago, they were hard to get, but today it's everywhere," Osbourne said. "It's not just America. It's not just California. It's not just Beverly Hills. It's not just downtown New York. It's not just London. It's all over the world" (see "All About OxyContin, The Pills Known As 'Killers' ").

This relatively easy access to allegedly "controlled" substances is especially hard for Ozzy to swallow given his firsthand experience with the damage that drugs can do.

"I'm 55 years old, and I didn't get off scot-free," Osbourne explained. "I have to take medication for the rest of my life because I've done so much neurological damage to my body," Osbourne said.

We'll have much more from our interviews with Ozzy and Jack in an "MTV News Now" special report, premiering Tuesday at 11 p.m. ET/PT (Jack's complete interview will appear on MTVNews.com when the show premieres). The show will be followed the next day by a repeat of MTV News' "True Life: I'm Hooked on OxyContin" at 6:30 p.m.

[CWOJackson]

You're right, I missed that.

[DannyTN]

"Ozzy's continual abuse of substances doesn't qualify him as an expert in its societal dynamics any more than your continual abuse of logic and reason qualify you as an expert in their proper application in rhetoric. "

LOL, I trust Ozzy on this subject matter more than I trust you.

[The Coopster]

Yep, they both kill brain cells, however:

1. Your lungs can heal.

2. Your liver cannot.

[The Coopster]

If it gives you a buzz it's killing brain cells.

Even holding your breath.....

[zeugma]

Is it a rule that conservative pot smokers have to be Libertarian? Can't they vote for W?

Nope. No rule. You should alway vote for the person you feel is the best one for the job.

[dead]

4 oz.??? That is more than personal use.

How the hell did you determine that? What type of smoker are you talking about? What time frame? You don't think a heavy pot smoker could smoke four ounces in a month?

Stick to facts and stop making meaningless asinine statements.

[dead]

Well, since tobacco weighs more than any illegal drug i can think of, yes 4oz. is beyond personal use.

You are really an absurd person.

Tobacco weighs more than any illegal drug you know of?

What weighs more - 4 oz. of tobacco or 4 oz. of pot?

Are you talking more by volume? You really think tobacco weighs more per cubic foot than cocaine? More than hashish? More than heroin?

You just babble about things without even using your head.

[Sir Gawain]

If it gives you a buzz it's killing brain cells.

Sorry, you're incorrect.

[Tall_Texan]

You just babble about things without even using your head.

Which brings us full-circle back to Ozzy! What a pathetic waste of DNA. The crime wasn't that he was a rotten parent. The crime was that he was a parent at all.

[UnBlinkingEye]

The majority opinion here is that drugs destroy an individual's capacity to think, make decisions, exercise proper judgement, and reason.

So, after all the years of hard-core drug use, what makes you think he's right on this?

Ozzy is a geek, some drugs are good, some are bad.

Best Wishes to You and Yours.

[Dianna]

Would you allege that if it were not for marijuana, Jack would never have tried all the PRESCRIPTION drugs that were in his house due to Ozzy's broken foot?

I did wonder if the oxycontin was his mother's. Seems awfully risky, lifting meds she was taking regularly. What puzzles me is, what did they REALLY expect Jack to do? He wasn't in school, didn't seem to work, just hung out with his friends and spent money. Drug problems seem inevitable. Sad.

[radiohead]

Dilaudid is heavy duty, man

yes it is. i knew heroin addicts who took dilaudid when they couldn't get heroin. seemed to work for them.

[mvpel]

Err, make that front. Too much red bull I guess.

Guess we're going to have to throw you in jail for Red Bull possession. Don't worry, though, it's not PRISON.

[Ol' Sparky]

And, Ozzy, and anyone with a brain knows legalizing drugs will result in more users, more dysfunctional people and more innocent people dying...Drug use, dealing dealing and crime have soared in the Netherlands since pot was decriminalized and since drug laws were lessened.

[Ol' Sparky]

No, those that want to legalize pot and drugs -- liberaltarians that join Barney Frank, Joycelyn Elders and the left-wing nations of the Netherlands and Canada -- are real leftists.

Conservatives know that justice means protecting innocent people from druggies and that drug legalization dramatically reduces the quality of life in a society.

[Ol' Sparky]

No, it's the recent Supreme Court ruling on sodomy that's pretty scary and all the other things that liberaltarians want to legalize.

[Ol' Sparky]

No, liberaltarians sound like their fellow leftists at the ACLU when in comes to drug legalization:

The ACLU has opposed the outright criminalization of drugs since 1968, believing that the best way to deal with drugs is regulation, not incarceration.

[Ol' Sparky]

The number of monthly drug users has declined from 26 million in 1979 to just over 14 million, according to the National Household Survey of Drug Abuse since Ronald Reagan's war on drugs...Well, fancy that, tougher laws on drugs mean less users.

Tough drug laws reduce drug use and crime. The drop in the crime rate correlates with the implementation of tougher drug laws.

[KCmark]

I did wonder if the oxycontin was his mother's. Seems awfully risky, lifting meds she was taking regularly.

---

You can order oxycontin over the Internet. All over the place. In fact almost all narcotics are extremely easy to get. On top of the Internet, users know just what to say to the doctors, and the doctors pass them out like candy.

I have been around narcotic users though. They would sit around with the pills they had pilfered from here and there and look them up in a PDR. I was there one day when what they looked up was a heart medicine. I yelled at them for 15 minutes about stealing someones heart medicine until several people got up and left. It was a turning point for my friend though. I kept harping how it could have been his grandparent's medicine. Soon after he checked himself into the hospital and he has been sober every since. I don't bring that story up in public because he is very embarassed by it.

[WoofDog123]

"Jack also said that he was drinking and using a variety of substances — including Vicodin, Valium, Xanax, Dilaudid, Lorcet, Lortab, Percocet and marijuana..."

Marijuana is so low on the scale to almost not merit inclusion on this list.

You gotta wonder how he was using the narcs (IV?)

pot, alcohol, etc are little-league compared to his problem's scope.