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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?
To me, it’s not a question of being able to tell when someone’s go
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?
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?
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 go
Dear Dr. Ozzy:
I recently had to speak in public, and I became so nervous my vision became blurred. Is this “hysterical blindness”?
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 go
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?
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.
♦ 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?
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?