Ozzy Osbourne: Drugs Did NOT Make Him That Way

I was never a huge Black Sabbath fan--they were before my time if I'm honest.  I'm more familiar with the reality show The Osbournes, which I also didn't watch at the time as I thought it was lame (though I'm revising that opinion after watching it the other night).  In any case, an opinion I keep seeing bandied about as fact is that Ozzy's speech and movement problems--indeed his behavioral problems & eventual degeneration & death--were a result of a lifetime of drug abuse.  Even Ozzy himself says so in one of the episodes of the reality show.  I saw one of the science pages I follow recently spout this same tired trope recently & had to correct them.  

Ozzy suffered from a variant of Parkinson's disease known as "Parkin 2".  Named after the gene that causes it, Parkin 2 is an early-onset form of Parkinson's that affects both movement and behavior.  It can even cause autism.  The median age of onset is 31 years, which means Ozzy likely had this the entire time he was in the spotlight.  Rather than being caused by his drug abuse, it probably contributed to it as well as to his strange & often violent behavior (biting the head off a bat, choking out his wife Sharon, etc).  It's slowly progressing but as stated, can cause a wider variety of issues than just movement problems, and it's 100% genetic.  That means things like head trauma or drug abuse can't cause it.  

The unavoidable question is whether his 6 children will inherit this faulty gene and, if so, how it will manifest.  Son Jack already has multiple sclerosis though he seems to be doing well managing it.  I find it tragic that Ozzy blamed himself for his health issues as late as the early 2000s and cite this as another example of pseudoscientific anti-drug propaganda causing real-world harm.  While the abuse of certain drugs like methamphetamine has been linked to an increased risk of Parksinson's disease, there's absolutely zero evidence that drugs caused Ozzy Osbourne's purely genetic form of the disease.  (Or any of the odd behavioral or speech anomalies that go along with the Parkin 2 variant he suffered from).  That means everyone who mocked the way he spoke or claimed that he was "brain damaged" due to drugs over the years owes the family a huge apology.  Like this wench who had the gall to sue Sharon Osbourne for assault after calling her husband a "brain dead rockstar" and "a vegetable".  🤬