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This is one of the reasons why medical marijuana ain’t necessarily such a bad idea. I mean, anyone who reads “Ask Dr. Ozzy” on a regular basis knows that I always tell people to steer clear of weed ’cos you never know how strong it is, or how you’ll react (never mind that it’s illegal)—but over in Los Angeles, a lot of people with heavy-duty medical problems say that prescription pot helps them with everything from muscle pain to getting their appetites back. My advice is to talk to your doctor, keep drinking the beer, and try to find something else, anything, that gives you a break from the discomfort. It sounds like you’ve had some rotten luck, Charlie, and I wish you all the best.
Dear Dr. Ozzy:
I just swallowed a piece of chewing gum. Is it true this will take seven years to pass through my system?
That can’t be true, otherwise I’d be half-human, half-spearmint by now.
Dear Dr. Ozzy:
My wife wants to go on an expensive cruise ship holiday—but I’m afraid of getting food poisoning, falling overboard, or being seasick. Am I being too paranoid?
No, you ain’t. I took the QE2 to America once with Sharon, ’cos she was pregnant and couldn’t fly. I was so out of my fucking mind with boredom, it would have been a relief to fall overboard, quite frankly. In the end I begged the ship’s doc to give me something to knock me out. When I finally woke up in New York, Sharon was so angry, she tried to throw me through one of the portholes. I’ve never been on a cruise ship again.
Dear Dr. Ozzy:
I cry when I urinate. Tears literally stream from my eyes, like I’m peeling an onion. It is not painful nor anything, but I’m worried I have a rare disease. What’s your expert advice?
No offence, Pierre, but this is really fucking weird. Here’s my prescription: 1) Keep a box of tissues in the can, and 2) Get a second opinion, ideally from someone whose name ain’t Ozzy Osbourne.
D.
Dear Dr. Ozzy:
My fiancé of two years—a wealthy Arab man—has been told he has terminal cancer. After trying to ignore the subject, I asked about his will (I’m no longer working because of the economic crisis). He told me that because he hates his family, he’s giving everything to charity. When I asked about me, he said I would get nothing either. I told him I was hurt, but he said he was more hurt, because he’s dying, and I asked him for money (I did feel like a jerk for asking, but I need a place to live). Who’s in the right?
It sounds to me like your fiancé is angry about dying—it’s hard to blame him—and he’s lashing out. But you shouldn’t feel like a jerk, either. I mean, if the bloke’s giving all his money away to his cocker spaniel (or whatever his favourite charity is), who’s going to pay for his funeral? Is he happy to think he’ll be tossed into some government-run pit with a cardboard headstone? And if he cared about you enough to get engaged, why does he want you out on the street? Fair enough, he doesn’t have to give you every last pe
Dear Dr. Ozzy,
I’ve been getting a lot of severe headaches recently and have been told that they could be caused by teeth-grinding. Is it possible to grind your teeth without knowing it?
You and I have exactly the same problem. I started getting these really bad headaches a few weeks ago, and being a hypochondriac, I thought, “Right, that’s it, I’ve got a brain tumour.” I was one stage away from buying myself a casket when my GP told me that I needed to see a dentist, not an oncologist. So that’s what I did, and now I’ve got these little rubber things to put over my teeth at night, so I don’t grind them in my sleep—which, to answer your question, is supposedly very common. I don’t wear them half the time, though, ’cos it’s a major ball-ache putting them in. I’d rather take an aspirin.
Dear Dr. Ozzy:
If I rinse my mouth out with descaling solution (like the stuff you use to clean out a coffee machine), will it get rid of my plaque? I ask because my dental hygienist charges a fortune to do the same thing, and I’m trying to economize.
If you think a scrape and polish is a rip-off, just wait and see how much they charge the idiot who comes in with no teeth left ’cos he gargled with sodium tripolyphosphate. They’ll still be sending you bills when you’re six feet under. In fact, this reminds me of the time one of my good friends tried to cure a rash on his Honourable Gentleman with bleach, ’cos he didn’t want to have to admit to his family GP that he’d been unfaithful to his wife. Needless to say, his missus soon found out what was going on, ’cos he spent the next month in hospital, screaming in pain.
Dear Dr. Ozzy:
You and your lovely wife have great teeth… so white! What I’d like to know is: would you recommend using shop-bought whitening agents? As a smoker who drinks too much coffee, I’m badly in need of a non-celebrity solution.
I hate to break it to you, Freda, but my choppers ain’t real. All my teeth are screwed in: for cleaning, they just unscrew ’em and give ’em a good polishing. They ain’t falsies—they’re implants. I started out with caps, which means they file down your teeth to posts and cement fake crowns on top of them. But then the posts rotted away, so they gave me implants, which are attached to my jaws with titanium screws. If I had my real teeth, I’d look like Herman Munster’s ugly brother. I think growing up in Britain is partly to blame—I mean, we’re not exactly renowned for our teeth, are we? Even Harley Street dentists aren’t that good. I went to a bloke who does the royals’ teeth once, and I came out of the place looking like a racehorse. But the biggest problem for me was being a drug addict: it kills all your calcium, which is what keeps your mouth healthy. Getting back to your question, though: I ain’t got a clue about whitening agents, but it can’t do any harm to give them a go, can it? As for a “non-celebrity solution,” the good news is that you don’t have to be famous to see a dentist in Beverly Hills…
You just need a ton of dough.
Dear Dr. Ozzy:
Do you think people should be allowed to rate their doctors on the internet, like they can rate albums—or do you think the medical profession is too important to be subjected to the kind of abuse you got in 1970 for the first Black Sabbath LP?