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. 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.
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”.
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.
