Ozzy Osbourne reveals in his posthumous memoir Last Rites that Matthew Perry attended AA meetings at his home. The Black Sabbath rocker, who passed away on July 22 at 76-years-old disclosed that the late Friends star had tried very hard to get clean before he died of an accidental ketamine overdose in his hot tub in October 2023, which five people have now been charged with.
Osbourne wrote about Perry in the new book, per Us Magazine : “He used to come to our house for AA meetings, or so my wife tells me. The funniest, most talented bloke. And he was trying so hard to stay on the right path.”
He continued: “Then one day he listened to his addiction telling him it was OK to get loaded, and that was it – game over. I felt so sad when they said he’d been found in his hot tub, unresponsive, with ketamine in his system. He’d given everything he had to stay clean. But it wasn’t enough.”
Perry, who died at 54-years-old was well-known for his advocacy for sobriety, having openly discussed his own battles with addiction.
In 2018, he was hospitalised after his colon burst due to opioid misuse, the Metro reports.
The star told People Magazine in 2022: “The doctors told my family that I had a two percent chance to live,’ the star revealed to People Magazine in 2022.
“I was put on a thing called an ECMO machine, which does all the breathing for your heart and your lungs. And that’s called a Hail Mary. No one survives that.”
In his 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers, & the Big Terrible Thing, he wrote about the drug that ended his life, as reported by Entertainment Tonight.
He penned: “Taking K is like being hit in the head with a giant happy shovel. But the hangover was rough. Ketamine was not for me.”
Ozzy also famously battled various addictions throughout his life.
In Ozzy’s memoir, he also described 2012 as the year he last ‘fell off the wagon’ after wife Sharon Osbourne ‘busted’ him.
Ozzy revealed how the X Factor celebrity, who recently expressed gratitude to her fans for their support following her husband’s passing, sold cars purchased by the lead singer during his last spree.
The Paranoid singer then attended 90 meetings in 90 days at the AA Log Cabin in West Hollywood.
He reminisced: “It helped me, all that AA stuff. Got me started on the way back to being sober.
“If you’re on your own, the voice in your head is too persuasive.”
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However, Ozzy’s health battles – including a Parkinson’s diagnosis in 2020; complications from his quad bike accident as well as a fall in 2019 which led to multiple surgeries – saw him resort to some substances again to cope with the pain over the year before his death.
He confessed on his Madhouse Chronicles podcast in October last year: “I am happier, but I am not completely sober. I use a bit of marijuana from time to time.”
Ozzy lauded Sharon as his inspiration to avoid harder drugs, saying she ‘kicks his butt all the time’ and would ‘make life so difficult’ if he reverted to old habits.
He added: “Even with marijuana she will f*****g find it and get rid of it.”
He went on to say that he no longer attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, but ‘maybe he should’ after they previously ‘got him sorted out to a certain degree.’
Rocker Ozzy was once so out of it on drugs that one morning in 1989 he woke up in a jail cell accused of trying to strangle Sharon the night before.
The Black Sabbath star was told he was under suspicion of attempted murder but had no memory of the events. Sharon dropped the charges against her husband, insisting she didn’t recognise Ozzy in his drug-fuelled state.
According to The Sun on Sunday, Sharon said: “I had no idea who was sat across from me on the sofa but it wasn’t my husband. He goes to a stage where he gets that look in his eyes, the shutters were down and I just couldn’t get through to him.
“And he just said, “We’ve come to a decision that you’ve got to die”.
She added: “He was calm – very calm – then suddenly he lunged across at me and just dived on me and started to choke me.
“He got me down on the ground on top of me and I was feeling for stuff on the table. I felt the panic button and I just pressed it and the next thing I know, the cops were there.”
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Sharon and Ozzy tied the knot in 1982 in Hawaii after meeting in the 70s when she was just 18-years-old. Her father, Don Arden, was Black Sabbath’s manager and in 1979, he fired Ozzy from the band due to substance issues.
Ozzy then spent months in hotels using drugs before Sharon stepped in and helped him recover, later going on to become his manager.
Ozzy previously credited Sharon for saving his life.
He told Australian music guru Billy Pinnell: “Truly, without my wife at my side, I wouldn’t be here, without any doubt. I wouldn’t be alive, I wouldn’t be singing,’ he said. ‘She saved my life every day.”
