
Somewhere between a bat’s head and a roach clip, the Madman from Birmingham has finally punched his celestial timecard. Yes, the dark prince of rock ‘n’ roll, Ozzy Osbourne, has officially exited stage left, probably flipping a double bird to the Reaper while coughing out his final hit. The world is now a little less fried, a little less loud, and a hell of a lot less stoned.
Now before you light a joint and crank up War Pigs, let’s just admit it: Ozzy didn’t just live rock ‘n’ roll—he smoked it, snorted it, probably tried injecting it once by accident, and then smoked it again just to make sure it stuck. But somewhere in the volcanic chaos of touring, TV cameras, and tongue-tied bat decapitations, there was always a tender, green thread weaving through it all: marijuana.
Ozzy loved weed like Keith Richards loves still being alive. He once called weed “a bit of sanity in a mad world,” which, coming from the guy who snorted ants and could barely pronounce Sharon’s name after the third tequila, is as close to spiritual enlightenment as we’ll ever get from a man in eyeliner and leather pants.
Let’s rewind: back in the day, the Sabbath sound was a deep, sludgy doom that sounded like it was soaked in bong water—and that wasn’t by accident. Those riffs? Born in fog. Literal fog. Fog made from resin and rebellion. Weed wasn’t just a drug for Ozzy—it was a muse, a medicine, a middle finger to the status quo. The man breathed THC like it was holy incense. Without it, Master of Reality might have just been “Mildly Discontent with Reality.”
And yet, Ozzy never played the poster child for weed reform. He wasn’t up there with the NORML crowd holding banners or testifying before Congress. Hell, half the time he didn’t know what city he was in. But in that mumbling, beautifully chaotic haze of his, he represented something purer: the freedom to lose your mind a little without apologizing. The right to get weird, to giggle like a child, to melt into the couch while rewatching alien documentaries and asking no one in particular, “Did I just see that?”
Weed didn’t tame Ozzy. Nothing ever did. But it kept him company. In the dim tour buses, in the green rooms with the brown M&Ms removed, in the moments when reality became a bit too loud and sharp for the man who danced with darkness for decades, Mary Jane was there. Not as a crutch, but as a friend. A green, leafy comrade in arms.
So now, as the bells toll and the echoes of “Paranoid” drift off into the ether, maybe the best way to honor Ozzy isn’t some formal memorial or tribute concert with auto-tuned sob stories. Maybe we just roll one up, crank the amp to eleven, and whisper something deeply inappropriate to the sky.
Because Ozzy didn’t just pass away. He blazed away. He lived like a riff from “Children of the Grave”—relentless, distorted, and loud as hell.
And somewhere out there, in whatever celestial dive bar the rock gods call home, a bat’s still flying, a joint is still burning, and Ozzy’s laughing that unmistakable, half-goblin laugh of his.
Rest in reefer, you beautiful maniac.
Keep it weird,
~-JohnsJoints