How Zakk Wylde’s alcoholism saved his life: “Drinking is good for something”
The role of a rock and roll star has never been to be the healthiest of occupations for rock stars. Outside of living on next to no sleep while on tour and still having to rise and play like it’s the last show you’ll ever play for millions of fans is bound to wear on someone after a while. It’s no wonder why a lot of people turn to booze and end up becoming an alcoholic, but Zakk Wylde may have had some divine intervention on his side when he ended up drinking his days away as Ozzy Osbourne’s guitar player.
But, really, getting the job as the right-hand man for ‘The Prince of Darkness’ doesn’t exactly scream ‘clean living’. Osbourne was out of control throughout most of the 1980s, and regardless of the heavy scrutiny that his wife Sharon put on him, he was just as liable to get into the same amount of hijinx that Wylde would get into.
If Black Sabbath were known as one of the kings of excess, though, Wylde made every one of them look like choirboys by comparison. Wylde was the equivalent of a rock and roll pirate, and considering he’s still sporting the trademark beard all these years later, he has become the unintentional Viking of all things metal when tearing up songs like ‘Hellraiser’ and ‘Miracle Man’.
As time ticked on, though, life was bound to catch up with Wylde after years of drinking. Outside of being one of the biggest gods of metal music, he had a history of blood clots in his family, which led to him having a serious problem in his legs that left him completely out of commission halfway through his career with his side project, Black Label Society.
While boozing every single day might not have been the optimal way to handle blood clots, Wylde did manage to kick his habit after undergoing major operations. However, if he hadn’t been going into every pub that he could find on the road, he may have been dead long before he saw the new millennium.
According to Wylde, the doctor informed him that his functional alcoholism was the reason why he lived to see another day, telling Loudwire, “The doctor said, ‘I’m not really sure how to say this because as a doctor, I don’t think it’s right, but if you got this from your parents, then that means all your years of drinking and thinning your blood may have saved your life’. I then turned to my wife and said, ‘See, drinking is good for something.’”
And it’s not like Wylde was a wine-and-dine drinker, either. For the live album Boozed Broozed and Broken-Boned, the band and their fans were one of the first acts in the history of the bar to drink the entire place dry, with not a smidge of alcohol left in the room by the time they had finished playing.
While the surgery has led to Wylde being on the road to recovery ever since, he admits that his drinking days are officially over, with one drink now running the risk of killing him. Still, after years of seeing the heights of alcoholism that would make the Dos Equis guy blush, Wylde can claim to have Heineken on his side throughout his years hitting the bars.
