The bizarre trip that put Ozzy Osbourne off LSD for life
Ozzy Osbourne, I think it’s fair to say, has had more drugs than you or I have had hot dinners. As the bat-munching, fang-toothed frontman of Black Sabbath, the Prince of Darkness spent a significant portion of his life under a mountain of cocaine, Vicodin pills (at one time he was one 25 a day), and bottles of Courvoisier. Yet, despite his fondness for self-annihilation, Mr. Osbourne is still alive and kicking – something of particular interest to scientists at the Human Genome Project, who were so convinced that the metal singer had something unique in his genetic make-up that they asked to sequence his DNA. In a recent interview with Classic Rock, Ozzy opened up about a particularly strange drug experience that put him off LSD for good.
Recalling Black Sabbath’s drug-fuelled heyday and the making of their 1972 album Vol.4, Osbourne said: “We lived together in a house in Los Angeles, rehearsed there, did loads of drugs and made an album: simple. Those were good times.” But as Ozzy discovered, the good times had a downside: “At that time in America, people were very fond of lacing your drinks with acid,” he began.
Adding: “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 ten 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 fuck off. That was it for me.”
Bassist Geezer Butler also opened up about one of his weirder LSD trips in a 2020 interview with Metal Hammer: I thought I was a skeleton,” he recalled. “I got in the van and they all went ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I said ‘Can’t you see? I’m a skeleton!’ We were driving along and there was a park on the side of us with all these flowers in it, and I thought the flowers were trying to get into the van. I went onstage and thought it was on a boat and the crowd were waves. It was horrendous. I was watching my hand playing the songs and I thought it wasn’t connected to my body. Scary.”
For Tony Iommi, LSD was the worst drug in existence. Speaking to Classic Rock in 2016, he explained: “I hate being out of control. With cocaine I felt I was in control, I knew what was going on. But acid… I was in America in the early ’70s and I had a terrible headache, and this girl said she had a couple of pills for it. And she gave me some acid. Bloody hell, I didn’t know what hit me! Thank God the rest of the band came and sat in my room and calmed me down. I was gonna jump out the window!”
