Trust Me, I'm Dr Ozzy (19 page)

U.

Urination (Nervous Pisser Syndrome)

Dear Dr. Ozzy:

If I’m standing next to another man at a public urinal, I can’t pee. Even if I’m desperate to go—not a drop. I once queued up for 20 minutes at a rock concert to use the loo, and then had to walk away, because I was wedged between two big blokes. I’ve never known any of my friends to have the same problem. What’s wrong with me?

Terry, Essex

Let me ask you a question, Terry: when this happens, are you
absolutely sure
you need to pee? I mean, when I need to relieve myself, there ain’t no choice about it. I don’t care if the Coldstream Guards are standing next to me, whatever’s inside is coming out. So my advice is to wait until you’re more desperate to go. Or see a shrink: it might be anxiety.

DR. OZZY’S SURGERY NOTICEBOARD

“Performance” Anxiety

Important news from Ray in Suffolk: “According to a study of public urinal usage in America, ‘flow start’ was delayed by an average of 20 seconds when two blokes were standing right next to each other—as opposed to a solo effort.” So poor old Terry in Essex obviously ain’t suffering alone.

V.

Vaginas (Fishy)

Dear Dr. Ozzy:

I’ve been told that the best way to prevent unpleasant odour in your private areas is to avoid using soap, only water. This sounds a bit counterintuitive to me. Could it be true?

Tyler (no address given)

It would help to know if you were a guy or a girl. Assuming you own a pair of testicles, whoever gave you this advice obviously wasn’t planning on sitting next to you in a hot car any time soon. In general, avoiding soap is never gonna prevent unpleasant odours. The only thing it’s gonna prevent is you making any friends—unless you’re using a power hose (which I obviously don’t recommend). If you’re a member of the more complicated sex, on the other hand, my wife tells me that you do actually need to be very careful when it comes to soap and your sensitive areas, especially if you like lathering yourself up with the heavily scented grandma-type stuff. Bear in mind, though: the Prince of Darkness ain’t exactly a world-authority on female anatomy. If you’re really concerned about it, get yourself an appointment with a gynaecologist.

Vertigo

Dear Dr. Ozzy:

I suffer from vertigo. What can I do to cure it?

Nilay, Istanbul, Turkey

I thought I had vertigo for 40 years. I went to the doctor and he said, “Mr. Osbourne, the problem—as far as I can tell—is that you’re drunk. Very drunk.” So my prescription for you is to go to bed for 24 hours, drink
nothing—
apart from water—then get up and walk around in circles for a bit. If you’re still feeling dizzy, you might have a problem.

W.

Wax (Big Lumps Of)

Dear Dr. Ozzy,

I used a cotton wool bud to clean out my ears the other day and dislodged some wax—now I’m half-deaf. Is there an easy way to get rid of the wax without going to the doctor’s?

Lucy, Carlisle

Short answer: no. Don’t mess with your ears, man. Go to a real doctor. I remember getting a smack around the head once from Sharon, and her hand clipped the wrong spot and burst my eardrum. I had to get a plug in my ear for ages while it healed. It was like walking around with a cardboard box on my head. Sharon felt terrible. Not as bad as I felt, though. So don’t mess around with your ears: they’re too important, and too easy to break.

Weird S
^***

Dear Dr. Ozzy:

If I open my mouth in a certain way, I can fire saliva like it’s a water pistol. What should I do?

Christopher, Bristol

Try not opening your mouth. That should fix it.

X.

X-Rays (Dangers Of)

Dear Dr. Ozzy,

Thanks to airport scanners, the new 3-D imaging equipment in my dentist’s office, and cosmic radiation from long-haul flights, I’m worried that I’m turning into a one-man Chernobyl. Should I try to cut down on all this radiation exposure?

Brad, Somerset

You’re talking to someone who’s been flying on a weekly basis since the late 1960s. I probably give off more cosmic radiation than Halley’s fucking Comet—and that’s before adding in all the airport scans I’ve had, or the thousands of visits to my dentist. Having said that, by far the longest exposure I ever had to an X-ray was for the cover of one my albums,
Down to Earth
. The bloke in charge of the artwork had to shout directions to me through a four-foot brick wall, ’cos he was so scared of getting cancer. At that point in my life, though, getting zapped with death-rays was probably the safest thing I’d done all year. These days, radiation is just a fact of life, so there’s no point in letting it drive you nuts. I mean, yeah, it’s a pain in the arse going through airport security, but your chances of getting sick have gotta be close to zero. And what’s the alternative? Getting blasted out of the sky at 37,000 feet? I’ll take the X-ray, thanks.

Y.

Yawning (Side-Effects)

Dear Dr. Ozzy:

Whenever I yawn, my eyes water—to the point where it looks like I’m about to cry. How can I stop this?

Lex, Surrey

Easy: stop doing things that make you yawn. Have you tried skydiving?

Z.

Zoning Out (Driving)

Dear Dr. Ozzy:

When driving long distances, what’s the best way to stay awake at the wheel? I’ve tried keeping the window open, but I still find my eyes glassing over and having to take a break.

Raj, Birmingham

I knew some roadies in the 1970s who could drive from Land’s End to John O’Groats and back ten times thanks to the rocket powder they were putting up their noses on a daily basis. But the truth is, driving when you’re high is as stupid as driving when you’re exhausted. Either way, you could end up killing yourself—or worse, someone else. If you want to cover a lot of miles without stopping, get a co-driver. Or better yet, take the train.

Dr. Ozzy’s Trivia Quiz: Doctor! Doctor!

Find the answers—and tote up your score—
here

1. Which drug was the Harold “Dr. Death” Shipman addicted to?

a) Pethidine (known as Demerol in the U.S.)

b) Codeine

c) Vicodin (hydrocodone/paracetamol)

2. A woman in England recently sued her doctor for giving her
what
?

a) Two “leg-buckling” orgasms within 90 seconds of each other

b) Oral herpes

c) A slap in the face to wake her up

3. A dentist in North Carolina, USA, was accused of using a syringe to inject this into his patients’ mouths:

a) LSD

b) His own semen

c) A home-made numbing gel made from dog’s liver

4. To advertise a new technique he’d invented, a British GP performed what surgery on himself?

a) Tendon repair

b) Kneecap replacement

c) Vasectomy

5. A survey of GPs in America found that 73 per cent of them had…

a) Been turned on by a patient

b) Made sure that a rude patient spent longer in the waiting room

c) Done things to patients that weren’t necessary, just to look better in court if they were sued

Genetics Explained… Sort Of

7

Before Reading, Apply Ice-Pack to Brain

W
hen I got a call one morning from an editor at
The Sunday Times
in London telling me that some scientists wanted to “sequence my genome,” I didn’t know what to say. Not ’cos I was surprised—
nothing
could surprise me any more when it comes to the crazy shit that happens in my life—I just didn’t understand what the fuck he was talking about. The only “genome” I’d ever heard of was the kind you find down the bottom of the garden with a white beard and a pointy red hat.

“You
what
?” I said. “A gnome?”

“No, a
gee-nome
,” laughed the guy on the phone. “Basically all your genes and the bits in between, mapped out on a computer. The company that arranges it—and hires the scientists to analyse the results—is called Knome, Inc. It was founded by a top Harvard professor.”

To be honest with you, I didn’t like the sound of it. I’m a rock star, not Brain of Britain. And even if they did the test, how would I know what it said? The only Gene I know anything about is the one in Kiss. Still, it’s not every day someone wants to unravel your DNA—so I asked if anyone else had done the same thing. “Only about 200 people, because the technology is so expensive,” said the editor (my assistant Tony was taking notes). “The first human genome they ever sequenced was in 1990, but they didn’t get the final results until more than a decade later in 2003. It cost $3 billion.”

“Well that rules it out then,” I said. “I ain’t got $3 billion.”

“Prices have come down,” he replied. “Besides, in your case, Knome say they can raise the cash from other people. They’ll provide you with your entire genome on a USB drive the size of a Zippo lighter. Then they’ll go through the results with you in person, line by line.”

I still didn’t get it. Why spend the money on
me
when they could do someone like Stephen Hawking? “Look,” said the editor, “you’ve said it yourself: you’re a
medical miracle
. You went on a drink and drugs bender for 40 years. You broke your neck on a quad bike. You died twice in a chemically induced coma. You walked away from your tour bus without a scratch after it was hit by a plane. Your immune system was so compromised by your lifestyle, you got a positive HIV test for 24 hours, until they proved it was wrong. And yet here you are, alive and well and living in Buckinghamshire.”

“So the test can
really
tell me why I’m still here?” I asked.

“It won’t tell you everything—scientists still have a lot more work to do before they understand how genes work. But it might help make sense of a lot of things. It will also be able to tell if anything in your genes is linked to, say, Alzheimer’s disease. But you’re in your sixties, so anything
really
scary in your DNA would have probably killed you a long time ago, along with that line of ants you once snorted with Mötley Crüe.”

“What if they find a kind of new gene? Will I get a disease named after me?”

“Possibly.”

That was enough for me. “Okay then,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

A few weeks later, a medic came to my house in Chalfont St. Peter to take my blood. I was having a day off from my world tour at the time—and to be honest with you, I was so knackered, I began to wonder what the fuck I was doing. I mean, it’s not a great feeling, being a human petri-dish. Then again, I was curious. Given the swimming pools of booze I’ve guzzled over the years—not to mention all the cocaine, morphine, sleeping pills, cough syrup, LSD, Rohypnol… you name it—there’s really no plausible medical reason why I should still be alive. Maybe my DNA could say why.

As soon as the guy in the white coat was done taking his sample, he put the test tube in an envelope and told me he was going to send it off to a lab in New Jersey. “First they’ll extract the DNA, then they’ll process it at a place called Cofactor Genomics in St. Louis, Missouri,” he said (again, Tony was scribbling away, ’cos I knew I’d never remember any of this later).