Eddie's Lil Helper
Ancient Mariner
Ozzy Osbourne sat down with MTV.com Thursday (october 16) to discuss the "shakes" that have plagued him for decades, causing him to stammer, stutter and shuffle around with a walk that grew increasingly hunched over and motor functions that only seemed to be getting worse.
"I swear on my wife and my children's lives that I do not have Parkinson's [and] I am not covering anything up," Ozzy explained.
"It's just a thing that's been with me throughout my life. And as I've gotten older, it's degenerated. There is treatment for it," he added. "This [doctor] is my guardian angel. When this guy [neurological specialist in Boston] put this medication in my vein, it was like someone had turned this machine off in me. It was like instant, man!"
"It turns out that it's a hereditary thing that I have from my mother's side of the family," Ozzy said. "This guy in Boston fixed me great. He's taken me off all the medication that I was on. I'm taking one medication now for this tremor.
"And [now]," he said smiling, holding up his now mostly non-shaking hands for emphasis, "I haven't got the tremor."
It turns out that several of the women in Ozzy's family, including his mother, also suffered from the tremor, but that the Osbourne clan was simply too old-fashioned and dignified to ever mention it.
"I phoned my sister up and I said, 'I've got this hereditary tremor,' and she goes, 'Not you as well?' And I go, 'What do you mean? Don't you think it would have been a good thing when I was around 15 to say, 'See Auntie Edna? She's got the tremor!' Nobody ever told me anything!"
Ozzy said he first noticed the tremor in his early 20s and that he's always stammered a bit when he gets excited. But lately, it had worsened and none of the medication doctors had prescribed for him had made any difference.
"I felt like a rattle at the end of the day because there were so many pills in me," he said. "I would go to doctors around [Los Angeles] and they would go, 'Try this.' And I would go, 'I'll tell you what: This is what I'm taking now. I'll do a swap. You take one of my bottles and I'll take one of yours.' Because the box was getting bigger and I wasn't getting any better."
"I swear on my wife and my children's lives that I do not have Parkinson's [and] I am not covering anything up," Ozzy explained.
"It's just a thing that's been with me throughout my life. And as I've gotten older, it's degenerated. There is treatment for it," he added. "This [doctor] is my guardian angel. When this guy [neurological specialist in Boston] put this medication in my vein, it was like someone had turned this machine off in me. It was like instant, man!"
"It turns out that it's a hereditary thing that I have from my mother's side of the family," Ozzy said. "This guy in Boston fixed me great. He's taken me off all the medication that I was on. I'm taking one medication now for this tremor.
"And [now]," he said smiling, holding up his now mostly non-shaking hands for emphasis, "I haven't got the tremor."
It turns out that several of the women in Ozzy's family, including his mother, also suffered from the tremor, but that the Osbourne clan was simply too old-fashioned and dignified to ever mention it.
"I phoned my sister up and I said, 'I've got this hereditary tremor,' and she goes, 'Not you as well?' And I go, 'What do you mean? Don't you think it would have been a good thing when I was around 15 to say, 'See Auntie Edna? She's got the tremor!' Nobody ever told me anything!"
Ozzy said he first noticed the tremor in his early 20s and that he's always stammered a bit when he gets excited. But lately, it had worsened and none of the medication doctors had prescribed for him had made any difference.
"I felt like a rattle at the end of the day because there were so many pills in me," he said. "I would go to doctors around [Los Angeles] and they would go, 'Try this.' And I would go, 'I'll tell you what: This is what I'm taking now. I'll do a swap. You take one of my bottles and I'll take one of yours.' Because the box was getting bigger and I wasn't getting any better."