Trust Me, I’m Dr. Ozzy

Q.

R.

Dear Dear Ozzy:

How can I tell if I’ve got rabies? The reason I ask is because I was bitten by a stray dog while on holiday in Turkey, and now I’m worried it might have given me a terrible disease.

I thought I’d caught rabies after eating that bat in Des Moines, Iowa. The injections they gave me were horrendous: one in each arm, one in each arse cheek, one in each thigh. Then you’ve got to rub the stuff like crazy to make sure it spreads over the muscle. It’s like an oil, very dense—you can feel it trickling around inside you. It’s the safest thing to do, and I’m sure the treatments have improved since 1982, but it ain’t very nice. Personally, I gave up halfway through. I said to Sharon, “If I start barking, we can start up again.”

♦ According to Bernard in London, anyone who gets bitten by a stray animal in a faraway country like Turkey should immediately go and see a doctor—not wait until they start howling at the moon—’cos it could be “a life and death matter.” Even though I didn’t finish my own rabies treatment in 1982 after eating a bat’s head on stage, Bernard says the injections I had in hospital later that night might very well have saved my life.

S.

Dear Dr. Ozzy:

I can’t stop taking sleeping pills—this has been going on for about five years now. I’m out of work, and at a loss what to do. Help.

I’m convinced that once you start relying on sleeping pills, it damages your sleeping pattern forever. A lot of sleeping pills are made from benzodiazepine, which is the same family as Valium—very addictive stuff. When I finally got off it after 25 years, it was the worst withdrawal I ever had from anything. The way I stopped was by switching my sleeping medication to an anti-depressant called trazodone, and I recommend that you talk to your doctor over there in Japan about doing something similar. The secret is to go very slowly: there’s no hurry. I also tried using a non-benzodiazepine sleeping pill, Ambien—or zolpidem—but it was the worst. My short-term memory got so bad I didn’t even know what time of day it was (see here). Mind you, I wasn’t just taking the regular dosage. I built up such a tolerance, I was popping the fucking things like M&M’s.

Dear Dr. Ozzy,

I keep waking up in my next-door neighbour’s front garden. I live alone, so either someone is coming into my house in the middle of the night and carrying me there, or I’m sleep-walking. Have you ever heard of this? What can I do about it?

I’m always pottering about in the middle of the night, fast asleep. I was in a B&B one time, and I sleep-walked into the wrong room, got into bed, and carried on with my whatever dream I was having. Then this big hairy bloke climbs between the sheets with me. I wake up and go, “What are you doing here?” He takes one look at me, screams, claps his hands over his wedding tackle, and goes, “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE?” Sadly, there ain’t no cure for sleep-walking, as far as I know. But it’s not always a bad thing. A few years ago, for example, I was sleep-walking around my house in Buckinghamshire, when I walked smack into a burglar. If that doesn’t wake you up, nothing will. I almost caught the guy, too. I put him in a headlock for about five minutes, but didn’t have any handcuffs or anything, so in the end I thought, fuck it, and threw him out of the window… and he hobbled off across the field with about $3 million worth of Sharon’s jewelery in a plastic bag. Still, looking on the bright side, if I hadn’t been sleep-walking, I would never have met a real-life diamond thief.

Dear Dr. Ozzy:

Is a marriage automatically dead if the two parties start using separate bedrooms? I ask because my wife has developed a snore loud enough to wake the mummies in Egypt, and I can’t sleep next to her without large and unwise doses of medication.

No, relax, your marriage ain’t over. I know quite a few people with very healthy relationships who sleep in different rooms, ’cos they don’t want to listen to a human chainsaw next to them when they’re trying to get some shut-eye. I mean, if you’re the first one to drop off, it ain’t a problem—and it’s easy to get offended when your other half starts complaining—but for the poor sod who’s still awake, it’s excruciating. Having said all that, you might want to look into some anti-snoring gizmos before taking the separate-bedroom option. If you get on the internet you can find all kinds of things, from mouthpieces to clothes pegs and special pillows. Why not give one of ’em a try?

T.

Dear Dr. Ozzy:

For years I’ve fantasised about what it would be like to be a woman—to the extent where I’ve started to shop for girls’ clothing and wear my wife’s underwear when she’s away on business. How can I explain this to her, or is that a terrible idea?

Okay, so you’ve got two choices, David: pluck up the courage to tell her now, or get caught later. It’s really that simple. As much as you think you can hide this forever, it’s obviously such a big part of who you are, I guarantee that one day you’ll have a couple of drinks, put a frock on, and the missus will come home early and hit the roof. That’s go

Dear Dr. Ozzy:

My husband has bought a “hot tub” and put it in our back garden, but I refuse to get in it, because I’ve heard horror stories about the water becoming a breeding-ground for germs. He says I’m worrying too much, and spends half of the weekend in there. What’s your opinion?

You’re both right. There’s nothing better than being outdoors in a hot tub on a crisp October evening, drinking a nice glass of something cold. At the same time, if you don’t maintain a hot tub properly, it can turn into a swamp, with algae and frogs and fuck-knows-what-else floating around in there. I mean, even though it’s shiny and blue, with pressure jets and mood lighting, a hot tub is still basically just a big boiling cauldron of chemicals. The worst is when you have a party and a bunch of hairy blokes climb in there, all burping and farting and blowing their noses. That grosses me out, that does. Another thing with hot tubs: you’ve gotta watch the heat. I used to get blasted on cocaine, feel my heart begin to pound, then try to calm down by jumping into 900-degree water. One time, I swear my head almost exploded. But if your husband cleans his new toy regularly—tell him to sign up for a weekly maintenance service—there’s no reason not to take a dip. You never know, it might improve your love life.

5

I’m fucked if I know what this is, apart from the fact it begins with the letter “Q.”