Every time some musician drinks, snorts, or shoots his way off this mortal coil, it’s inevitably answered with, “And yet, Ozzy Osbourne still walks the earth.” (See also: Keith Richards.) In a way, it’s almost unfair. Here’s a guy who did more drugs in his day than any of us could hope to ingest in two lifetimes, even if we doubled-down on the weekends, and yet he’s still knocking around, saying kooky things, and releasing new albums while we’re worrying about accidentally overdosing on Xanax, scotch, and Ambien. What’s his secret, anyway? Thanks to science, we may soon know the answer!
Researchers at the St. Louis-based Cofactor Genomics have launched a study into why Ozzy’s decades of hard partying haven’t killed him, with Osbourne’s full participation. With Cofactor’s help—and at Osbourne’s request—a Massachusetts genomics company is currently mapping Ozzy’s DNA to discover what sort of magical helix construction enables a man to take LSD every single day for six months and emerge with only minor dementia and a noticeable tremor. A spokesman for Cofactor admonishes that while it may not provide any concrete answers about Ozzy’s specific longevity, it could still provide us with a better understanding of the relationship between DNA and the environment. And maybe someday, in the far-off future, we can all get retrofitted with the “do whatever the fuck you want” gene and blow a few rails of ants together.