Former Black Sabbath singer Ozzy Osbourne, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2019, opened up about the physical and mental challenges of the degenerative condition in a recent interview.
“You think you’re lifting your feet, but your foot doesn’t move,” Osbourne told The Observer in an interview published Sunday. “I feel like I’m walking around in lead boots.”
“I reached a plateau that was lower than I wanted to be,” the rock legend added. “Nothing really felt great. Nothing. So I went on these antidepressants, and they work OK.”
Osbourne’s 2019 diagnosis was preceded by a bathroom fall requiring the 73-year-old to get metal plates drilled into his spine, only for the screws to come loose in 2020. He said the pain “got so bad that at one point I thought: ‘Oh God, please don’t let me wake up tomorrow morning.’”
“You learn to live in the moment, because you don’t know [what’s going to happen],” Osbourne told the newspaper. “You don’t know when you’re gonna wake up and you ain’t gonna be able to get out of bed. But you just don’t think about it.”
Osbourne described the pain as “fucking agony” but had a successful operation in June 2022. He ultimately credited his wife Sharon for standing by his side during the ordeal, which followed two staph infections, a COVID-19 diagnosis and blood clots.
“Without my Sharon, I’d be fucking gone,” he told The Observer. “We have a little row now and then, but otherwise we just get on with it.”
The English couple were married in 1982 and recently announced their intention to leave the United States amid rampant gun violence to move back to their 350-acre Buckinghamshire estate. The house is currently being fitted with air-conditioning, a swimming pool and a recording studio.
“I’m fed up with people getting killed every day,” Osbourne told The Observer. “God knows how many people have been shot in school shootings. And there was that mass shooting in Vegas at that concert. … It’s fucking crazy.
