Ozzy Osbourne shouldn’t have survived.
He said it. The scientists said it. Anyone who watched him howl into a microphone with a bat in one hand and a bottle of cognac in the other said it. And yet, for more than five decades, Osbourne defied every expectation. He drank, smoked, injected, snorted, crashed, stumbled, and still—miraculously—showed up.
In 2025, at the age of 76, the world finally said goodbye to the Prince of Darkness. But in the huge legacy he left behind, beyond the music, the shock, and the culture, there’s also a bit of science. Particularly, in his genes.
Ozzy gets his genome sequenced
Ozzy Osbourne rose to fame in the early 1970s as the lead vocalist of Black Sabbath, a band widely credited with pioneering heavy metal. He became a cultural icon stayed one throughout his life. Ozzy is best known for his haunting voice, chaotic stage presence, and outrageous antics—including biting the head off a bat during a live performance. He became the quintessential symbol of rock-and-roll excess. His solo career and reality TV fame later cemented his status as one of the most recognizable and enduring figures in music history.
But in 2010, Ozzy joined an elite, if unlikely, group: the first rock star to have his entire genome sequenced. He dived into the uncharted world of celebrity genomics. His reasoning was pure metal:
“I was curious,” he explained. “Given the swimming pools of booze I’ve guzzled over the years—not to mention all of the cocaine, morphine, sleeping pills, cough syrup, LSD, Rohypnol…you name it—there’s really no plausible medical reason why I should still be alive. Maybe my DNA could say why.”
In 2010, the companies Cofactor Genomics and Knome, Inc. analyzed Osbourne’s genome using a then-state-of-the-art platform. It took three weeks and cost tens of thousands of dollars. Today, you could do it overnight for a few hundred bucks. But back then, it was cutting edge and no one had ever run a genome like this before.
Their declared mission was to understand how Ozzy’s body had withstood what should have been a fatal lifestyle. They looked at genes related to metabolism, addiction, and neurobiology. And what they found was messy, inconclusive, and deeply intriguing.
A gene for alcohol (and addiction)
They didn’t find a smoking gun. But they found a lot of “interesting smoke.” Among the haze of genetic oddities, one stood out like a spotlight on a dark stage: a single-letter variant in the regulatory region of a gene called ADH4—alcohol dehydrogenase 4.
The ADH gene family encodes alcohol dehydrogenase enzymes, which are responsible for the primary metabolic breakdown of alcohol in the liver and stomach. Osbourne appeared to have a unique mutation variation near this gene that body to produce the ADH4 protein more efficiently, allowing him to metabolize alcohol significantly faster than the average person.
This provided a potential biological explanation for his famously high tolerance, which reportedly included consuming several bottles of cognac in a single night. But it also makes addiction much more likely. People with a high tolerance for alcohol (and other addictive substances) are more likely to become addicted; they want more, they don’t feel the side effects as much. According to researchers who analyzed the findings, this variation made addiction six times more likely for Osbourne than for the average person.
Osbourne was said to have dismissed the cocaine finding, quipping that anyone who had consumed as much as he had would have become addicted regardless of their genes.
The ADH4 variant wasn’t the only surprise in Ozzy’s DNA.
He carried two rare versions of CLTCL1, a gene that affects how cells absorb and recycle material, a process critical for neurons. The variant made a “grossly different” version of the protein, according to the genetic report. This gene helps nerve cells communicate. And in Ozzy, the system looked unusually rewired.
Another finding involved COMT, a gene that helps regulate dopamine, the brain’s “feel-good” neurotransmitter. Osbourne carried a rare “warrior/worrier” combo—a blend of high and low activity variants. That might explain some of his volatile behavior, his intense stage presence, or his ability to flip between chaos and control.
The analysis of Osbourne’s genome revealed a small segment of DNA that was identified as Neanderthal. In 2010, many writers jumped on this opportunity, but scientists knew very well that this was expected and not surprising at all. Most modern humans of non-African descent inherited between 1% and 4% from Neanderthals through ancient interbreeding events. But it was still cool to see.
A part of your legacy is written in your DNA. The rest, you write yourself
Osbourne’s genome is not a Rosetta Stone you can use to translate things directly. It doesn’t decode his addiction or musical genius. It doesn’t explain why he survived things that should have killed him. Genomes can only tell you so much about a person (Prince of Darkness or not). In fact, science often avoids outliers like Ozzy.
He was, in every sense, extreme: in life, in choices, and in genes. But sometimes, it’s precisely these edge cases that can reveal new insights. In 2010, there was talk about sequencing more genomes from rock stars and people with extreme lifestyles, but this didn’t really catch on. Sequencing became cheaper and much more common, but Ozzy remained a singular case study at the crossroads of biology and biography.
Ozzy Osbourne died as he lived—on his own terms. Two weeks before his death, he performed one final show in Birmingham, seated on a throne, flanked by his original Black Sabbath bandmates. It was ten hours of celebration, chaos, and thunder. His last Instagram post read “Back to the Beginning. The Final Show” without offering any explanation. After all, he didn’t need one; his legacy speaks for itself.
Ozzy Osbourne’s genes were a bit unusual. But they don’t explain the music, the madness, or the myth. Most of what made him Ozzy couldn’t be sequenced, categorized, or modeled. It was loud, unpredictable, and defiantly human.
His memoir, Last Rites, comes out this October
“People say to me, if you could do it all again, knowing what you know now, would you change anything? I’m like, f*** no. If I’d been clean and sober, I wouldn’t be Ozzy. If I’d done normal, sensible things, I wouldn’t be Ozzy.
“Look, if it ends tomorrow, I can’t complain. I’ve been all around the world. Seen a lot of things. I’ve done good… and I’ve done bad.”
