Hi Dr. Ozzy:
I suffer from a condition known as bipolar, which makes me impulsive and harm people when I don’t mean to. It started when my father began drinking a case of beer every night. He would get rowdy and mean and drive me to school when he was drunk. Now he’s divorcing my sweet mom. Could this be the cause of my problems?
Christina, Texas
I strongly suggest you find a good therapist. And by that I mean someone who has in-depth knowledge of bipolar—not your local GP, who’ll probably tell you to take an aspirin and sleep it off. I’m not bipolar myself, but I’ve been to the dark side more than a few occasions, and therapy has helped me a great deal over the years. It basically gives you a different view of the things you think might have caused your problems—like your old man’s drinking—’cos when you’re in the depths of a mental freak-out, you often don’t understand why, and you end up blaming it on the stuff and the people around you. In other words, you end up telling yourself that the way you see the world is the way it is… when in reality your problems could have been caused by one of many, many things. You might also need anti-depressants, or some other kind of drug, but—as strange as this might sound coming from an addict like me—I honestly believe that in your case, therapy is the best medication. Or at least it’s a good first step.
DR. OZZY’S INSANE-BUT-TRUE STORIES
History’s Biggest Nutters
Joan of Arc: Cross-dressing French teenager who led armies into battle and got burned at the stake—at an age when the worst thing most chicks have to deal with is Bieber Fever. Some think her “visions from God” were caused by bovine tuberculosis, from unpasteurized milk.
Pythagoras: Brainy Greek. Loved animals and triangles. Also fucking crazy. For example: the guy was totally freaked out by beans. Good job he never had to sit in a confined area with me after a burrito.
Charles the Mad: French king who thought he was made of glass (he had his pants reinformed with iron bars in case he fell over and shattered). The guy was so nuts, he couldn’t even remember his own name. I feel sorry for the poor fucker who had to keeping reminding him: “Your Royal Highness’s name is Charles the Mad, Sir.”
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Totally mental German composer. Suffered from attention deficit disorder, bipolar disorder, and Tourette’s syndrome. The real title of Piano Concerto No. 24 in C-Minor is actually Piano Concerto No. 24 in C-Fucking Minor, You Asshole.
Lord Byron: English poet. Mad as a bag of pissed-off ferrets. Had a pet bear at college—and a litterbox the size of Buckingham Palace. Later, when he got bored of writing soppy verses, he formed his own navy and declared war on the Turks. (This is true, honestly.) Then he caught a cold and died.
Dear Dr. Ozzy:
I can’t control my temper. I finally realised this when I recently spent the night in jail after punching someone in the face for “looking at me funny.” What can I do to calm myself down?
Graham, Yorkshire
Generally speaking, people don’t just wake up angry. There’s got to be an underlying cause—something in your past, or maybe even just anxiety. Anger is a symptom. Beer also fuels anger: once, a long time ago, I hit someone with a bottle in a pub when I was blasted out of my mind, and it still haunts me to this day. So if you drink, you’d better think about stopping immediately. If I were you, I’d also get some anger management therapy. If you think that sounds like a joke from an Adam Sandler movie, wait and see how funny it is when you hit someone again and get 20 years for grievous bodily harm.
Dear Dr. Ozzy:
A few months ago I was laid-off from the company I’d been with for ten years, and although I’ve found another job since—with better opportunities—I can’t stop dwelling on how I was let go, and it’s making me grumpy and depressed. Should I see a shrink?
Mark, Cleethorpes
I know exactly how you feel, Mark. I was fired by my old band, Black Sabbath, in 1979. I mean, granted, I was a horrendous alcoholic—but it wasn’t like they were all fucking choirboys, either. Just to make things worse, it was my best friend Bill Ward who broke the news to me. I can’t remember the specifics, ’cos I was shitfaced on beer and cognac on the day it happened, but I’ll never forget how bad it felt. After ten years, you’re practically married to what you do for a living. When you’re given the boot, it’s like going through a divorce—even if you know in your heart it’s the right thing. It might be that you’re just angry, in which case I would definitely recommend going to see a shrink. Otherwise, getting over it will just take time. Whatever you do, don’t try and vent your frustrations in other ways. In my case, I set fire to my back garden, shot all my chickens, and went to the pub, but it only made me feel worse.
I still feel bad for the poor chickens to this day.
Dear Dr. Ozzy:
I have a terrible, gnawing sense of dread about the state of the world—in particular the environment. (According to the news, this has been the wettestdriesthottestcoldest winter on record for just about any country you care to mention.) Is this anxiety normal? Is there anything any of us can really do about it?
Carel, Dubai
Number one: stop watching the TV or browsing the internet. Number two: replace the time you’ve been spending doing those thing with something healthier and more constructive. Me, I like to draw. Just doodles, really. But it’s a great release. Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t saying we should all just bury our heads in the sand. But the point of the news is to keep you watching the news—so they only focus on the most horrendous stuff. If you’re sensitive to it, you can literally make yourself sick. In fact, I once heard about a guy who had inoperable cancer, and he went to a Chinese doctor, who told him, “Here’s what I want you to do: get rid of your TV, get rid of your radio, switch off your computer. Just focus on the positive.” After three months, he was in remission. I ain’t saying he was cured by giving up News at Ten. But I bet it made him a lot happier.
Dear Dr. Ozzy:
My GP recently put me on anti-depressants. Are there any side-effects I should know about?
David, Surrey
Anti-depressants are fabulous things, David, but they’ll play havoc with your meat and two veg. I’ve been taking them for years and what I’ve found is, I can get a boner, but no fireworks. So I just end up pumping away on top of Sharon like a road drill all night. I tried Viagra once, but by the time it kicked in, the missus was fast asleep. So it was just me and this tent pole in front of me, with nothing to do but watch the History Channel.
DR. OZZY’S AMAZING MEDICAL MISCELLANY
Crazy, Even for Mental Disorders
Capgras Syndrome. When you’re convinced that everyone around you has been replaced with an identical imposter. If you happen to be a Third World dictator who’s hired a lot of body-doubles, this might be true. For everyone else, it’s a sign you need to catch the next bus to the funny farm.
Paris Syndrome. This one affects only Japanese people. It happens when they go to Paris expecting paradise, meet the French—especially rude waiters—and can’t handle it, to the point where they have a total meltdown. I ain’t taking the piss. The Japanese embassy now has a 24-hour helpline for tourists who come down with it. There are usually about twenty cases a year.*
Walking-Corpse Syndrome. Sufferers think they’re dead, and that life is a dream they’re having while in heaven (or hell). I thought I had this once, but luckily it turned out I wasn’t delusional—I was actually dead. It was only temporary while I was in a coma (after my quad bike crash).
Dear Dr. Ozzy:
I keep waking up in the night after hearing loud noises, but my wife (asleep beside me) hears nothing. Could this be the so-called “Exploding Head Syndrome” that I heard about on television, or do you think it’s just a common-or-garden nightmare?
Ted, Bath
Unless you’ve got a pet hamster who’s throwing bricks out of his cage in the middle of the night, it seems unlikely that there’d be enough loud noises to make you wake up
on such a regular basis. On the other hand, it’s plausible that your wife could be sleeping through whatever it is that’s disturbing you. My own wife sleeps like she’s been dead twenty-five years. A Boeing 747 full of atomic bombs could crash into our back garden, and she’d be none the wiser the next morning. By the sound of it, though, this is probably all in your own mind. As for “exploding head syndrome”… I’ve had a few hangovers that might fit that description, but in your case it’s more likely to be a bad case of anxiety dreams. Try some relaxation techniques before bed, and let me know how it goes.
Dear Dr. Ozzy,
After all the tragic shootings in America, I’m curious if you think it’s possible to tell in advance that a mentally ill person is going to “snap,” or if it’s out of anyone’s control?
Jake, Los Angeles
To me, it’s not a question of being able to tell when someone’s gonna snap, it’s the fact that it’s ridiculously easy for a crazy person to get hold of a gun in America. I mean, I should know: I’m a complete nutjob, and I own several guns. All I had to do was show the guy in the shop my ID and wait a few weeks. In England, on the other hand, a copper had to come over to my house and interview me before they’d let me keep a firearm. I’ve got nothing against guns in general, but if the government makes people take a test before they can drive a car, why not have the same kind of rule for when you buy a Glock? They say it ain’t guns that kill people, it’s people who kill people… but it seems to me like it would be a lot fucking harder for a lunatic to become a mass-murderer if he had to use an old frying pan instead of a semi-automatic.
Dear Dr. Ozzy:
My 19-year-old son has started to suffer from panic attacks, usually during exams, job interviews, that kind of thing. Next week he has his driving test (third attempt) and I’m wondering, is there’s anything safe I can give him to calm him down?
Janet, Surrey
If it makes you feel any better, it took me 19 attempts to pass my driving test—and I only finally became legal in October 2009. Not that it ever stopped me driving, mind you: if anyone ever asked me if I had a licence, I’d just say, “Oh yes”… which was sort of true: I had a TV licence. About the nerves, though: I know exactly how your son feels. I used to get so intimidated by the examiner, I’d have a few of pints before getting in the car. But then I’d forget basic things, like which side of road to drive on. Eventually I went to my GP and asked him for some pills to chill me out, so he wrote me a prescription for a sedative. The box said, “WARNING: DO NOT MIX WITH ALCOHOL”—so to be safe, I smoked half a brick of Afghan hash instead. The good news: when I got into the car, I didn’t feel intimidated at all. The bad news: when I stopped for a red light, I nodded off. So to answer your question: yes, there are (legal) drugs your son can take—ask your GP. But nerves are better than being too relaxed for your own good.
Dear Dr. Ozzy:
You often talk about “vibes” and “energy,” so it’s clear that you feel things that other people don’t… do you think people can develop intuition, or are they just born that way?
Sharon, Massachusetts
Most of the time it’s just common sense. I remember when Princess Diana was still alive, for example. I woke up one morning and said to Tony, my personal assistant, “You know what, something bad’s gonna happen to her.” And sure enough, a few days or weeks later, she was dead. It was terribly sad. Tony said me to later, “Whatever you do, Ozzy, don’t have any premonitions about me.” But the fact is, if someone’s living their life at 300mph, you don’t have to be a clairvoyant to see what’s coming. I think some people have better intuition than others, but there ain’t anything magical about it.
Dear Dr. Ozzy:
I recently had to speak in public, and I became so nervous my vision became blurred. Is this “hysterical blindness”?
Nicola, Cheshire
Panic attacks can do all kinds of weird things to you—I know, ’cos I’ve suffered from stage fright all my life. I went to see my GP about it once and he told me, “Trying getting a brown paper bag and blowing into it.” I said to him, “Apart from filling a bag with air, what the fuck is that gonna do?” He didn’t take too kindly to that. I see a therapist now to treat my anxiety—it’s been doing me a lot of good—although anything to do with your sight is so important, it might also be worth seeing an eye doctor. The problem is that your symptoms probably only appear when you’re nervous. So you might have to invite an audience and recite some Shakespeare while he checks you out.
Dear Dr. Ozzy,
Every time I leave the house, I have to go back two or three times to re-check that the door is locked, or that the oven isn’t on, or that the burglar alarm is set. What’s wrong with me?
Karen, Surrey
A lot of people would tell you that you’re “a bit OCD”—in other words, that you’ve got obsessive compulsive disorder. To be honest with you, though, I think that might be over-egging it. Everyone seems to have OCD these days. But worrying about leaving the door open is normal, especially if you have bad short-term memory, like I do. I mean, no-one wants to come home and find a homeless bloke with his trousers down, taking a shit on the coffee table. But the reality is, even if you did leave the door open, nothing bad would probably happen. You’re over-thinking things. It happened to me the other night: I was home alone, and I spent the entire time crapping myself over every little rustle and creak. Then when Sharon came back early without any warning, I just about dived under the bed for my sniper rifle. It’s a good job I was too groggy to go any faster—shooting the missus would have earned me a right old bollocking.
DR. OZZY’S AMAZING MEDICAL MISCELLANY
Old-Fashioned Treatments… to Avoid
Insulin-Coma. Back in the day, some bright spark thought that if they shot you up with enough insulin to put you into a coma, you’d wake up cured from drug addiction and/or schizophrenia. It worked brilliantly—apart from one small problem: the “waking up” bit. A lot of people didn’t.
Trepanation. If you complained about “personal demons” in the Middle Ages, they’d strap you to a table while some fat, dribbling peasant wearing a potato sack went at your skull with a hammer and chisel. The idea was to make a big enough hole to “let the demons out.” Unfortunately, more often than not, half your brains came out with ’em.
Hydrotherapy. It wasn’t a good idea to suffer from hyperactivity disorder, or any kind of disorder, in Victorian times. You’d end up locked up in the loony bin, chained to a wall, and blasted in the face with a fireman’s hose—until you “calmed down.” A lot of times you calmed down so much you didn’t have a pulse any more.
Dear Dr. Ozzy,
I’ve just found out that a friend of mind is undergoing a course of electro-shock treatment for depression. It sounds terrible to me, and I want her to stop. What do you think?
Mary, Dorset
When you hear the phrase “electro-shock treatment” you immediately think of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. But a very close friend of mine had this done, and apparently it’s nothing like it was in 1930s, when they used to basically plug you into the mains and see what happened. For a start, it’s called “electroconvulsive therapy” now. The only thing I would suggest is asking your friend if she’s absolutely sure that she’s tried everything else, because from what I understand, it’s one of those if-all-else-fails things. My friend swears that it cured her, but I’ve gotta say, I’m not sure I’d ever be miserable enough to hook myself up to one of those machines.
Dear Dr. Ozzy:
Having a strict routine makes me happy—I have an OCD-type personality and anxiety—but I worry that it’s also turning me into the world’s most boring person. What should I do?
Amelia, Boston, U.S.A.
Sometimes you’ve gotta make yourself unhappy to be happy. I mean, if you think about it, there’s an up and down to almost everything worth doing—and the down usually comes first. For example: I get horrendously anxious before gigs, but I love th
e adrenaline rush I get on stage. Maybe you need to test yourself a bit; do things that you make you feel nervous, and see if you like the sense of achievement you get later on. If you don’t, and you’re happier in bed at 9 p.m. every night with a cup of tea and a crossword, then stick to your routine. Better happy and boring than interesting and miserable.
Dear Dr. Ozzy:
A close friend of mine has become very angry with God, blaming Him for all his recent career, health, and romantic disappointments (of which there have been many). Now I’ve read on the Internet that this is a actually a kind of mental disorder. Should I be worried?
Fredo, London
Most of us are taught from birth to believe in a God with a beard who lives on a fluffy white cloud or whatever, so if someone’s having a terrible run of luck, it’s ain’t exactly surprising that they might end up blaming Him. Instead of worrying about your friend going mad—it certainly doesn’t sound like a “mental disorder” to me—why not talk to him; give him a shoulder to cry on. He needs your support, not your internet research.
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