All The Times Ozzy Osbourne Almost Died
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Ozzy Osbourne has been around a long time. He practically birthed the heavy metal genre while he brought the dark and doomy sounds of Black Sabbath to the masses in the '70s. He then went on to have an equally profitable and fame-amassing career as a solo artist. Throughout his career, Ozzy has taken home handsful of awards and platinum albums. He landed a stint on television with MTV's reality show The Osbournes, which is pretty much responsible for spinning off his wife Sharon's career, as well as the careers of Ozzy's children, Kelly and Jack Osbourne.
The Ozzman has been through trial and tribulations over the years, from being kicked out of Sabbath for his substance abuse issues to getting taken away in handcuffs, but The Godfather of Heavy Metal keeps on kicking. He's now 71 years old, and he still rocks the mic on tour. But despite enduring for more than 70 years, Ozzy has almost died on more than one occasion. He tells Rolling Stone, "I should have been dead f****** 10 times. I'm not saying that to be funny."
Drugs can be dangerous. Who knew?
Ozzy Osbourne's drug problems are nearly as famous as his music. He's been arrested multiple times for public intoxication, and almost killed his wife once while so out of his mind he can't even recall the situation. Those drugs have almost taken his life more than once. No one is quite sure how many times The Godfather of Metal has overdosed in his life, but from what Ozzy told The Sun in 2019, it's more than a few. "I overdosed on drugs many times so I am lucky to be here anyway. I've had so many brushes with death that I'm the Comeback Kid. If I was a cat I'd have 33 lives," he told the publication.
In his daughter's book, There Is No F****** Secret, Kelly Osbourne talks about one of her father's overdoses. Sharon, Ozzy's wife, was having seizures from her cancer treatment, and Kelly went to inform her father that it was time to head to the hospital. "Dad was there in his boxers, and I watched him scoop his hands into a bowl of pills, swallow a handful of something, and then wash it down with vodka," Kelly said in the book.
On their ride to the hospital, Ozzy passed out in the back of the ambulance meant for Sharon. After waking up confused, the musician was restrained. He ended up being treated for both a drug overdose and alcohol poisoning.
The quad incident of 2003
Osbourne might not seem like the sporting type, but when you have an estate as large as his, taking a ride on the quad is comparable to walking around a normal yard. There he was, presumably in all his metal glory, taking a leisurely ride on an ATV on December 8, 2003. The ride quickly went from relaxing to deadly when Ozzy wrecked and the ATV rolled on top of him.
According to Kelly's memoir, her father flatlined in front of her. The surgery was brutal, and Kelly remembers seeing Ozzy on a ventilator and being told that he "wasn't out of the woods." Ozzy, of course, survived, but only after some substantial damage. The Guardian catalogs a broken cervical vertebra, six broken ribs, a broken collar bone, blood flow problems in his right arm, and bleeding into his lungs. Ultimate Classic Rock theorizes that the accident stemmed from the load of prescription drugs Ozzy was put on to help him cope with his wife's cancer diagnosis.
ATV accidents kill hundreds of people every year, but not Ozzy. Ozzy doesn't die very easily. Well, at least not for good.
Almost taken out by a thumb infection
A 69-year-old Ozzy was busy touring the United States in 2018 when a health issue flipped the whole tour on end. Osbourne had just finished a show in Salt Lake City, Utah, when he tried to slip his thumb ring back on. It should've happened easily, but, for some reason, the musician couldn't get the metal loop over his digit. By the next morning, according to Rolling Stone, his thumb had swollen to 10 times its natural size.
"I wasn't feeling sick. But when we got [to the emergency room], my blood pressure went through the f****** roof for some reason," Osbourne told the publication. His thumb was "the size of a f*****' light bulb."
A hangnail, as the doctors would discover, had caused Ozzy to contract a staph infection. Usually, an infection of this type isn't a big deal. You take some antibiotics and life goes on as normal, but we're talking about Ozzy Osbourne. Everything has to be extra. Ozzy was busy cracking jokes when the doctors informed him that the infection could turn deadly if it wasn't treated. Surgeons ended up operating on Ozzy's thumb and middle finger to treat the infection. It wasn't just one infection, however. It turns out that he had contracted three separate staph infections. Ozzy was in agony in a hospital bed for a week, getting antibiotics pumped through his veins, and had to postpone the rest of his tour.
Pneumonia, an accident, and blood clots
It's commonly believed by superstitious folk that bad things come in threes. Osbourne would discover this alleged "cosmic rule" in 2019 after recovering from his 2003 ATV accident. Ozzy contracted a bout of pneumonia, which becomes increasingly more deadly the older a person gets, and he was 70 at the time.
The bout of pneumonia had made the musician pretty sick all by itself and led to Ozzy pulling another stint in the hospital. But this is Ozzy, and there was more to the story. The pneumonia caused the Ozzman to fall, which re-injured damage from the past that Ozzy thought he was over. The ATV accident had resulted in several screws and few rods being inserted into Ozzy's back, and when he fell, he threw them all out of whack, according to NME.
Osbourne underwent neck surgery that he says "f***** everything up." The musician claims that they cut through nerves, leaving him wobbly and with a right arm that's now "permanently cold." While in recovery from the surgery, doctors discovered that his body was producing blood clots that could result in deep vein thrombosis, stroke, or heart attack. In a refreshing change, Ozzy dodged those particular bullets, but he's now prescribed blood thinners to prevent them in the future. Had he not had the pneumonia that led to the fall that led to the surgery, and so on, the doctors may not have discovered the clotting in time. But hey. Ozzy.