Ozzy Osbourne has blamed the stress of reality telly for his family’s problems with drink and drugs.
The Black Sabbath legend, his wife Sharon, daughter Kelly and son Jack starred in MTV's The Osbournes 20 years ago.
But just three years after the show’s launch, the family quit in 2005, amid struggles with addiction and mental health crises.
After moving to Los Angeles, the singer and his family starred on the MTV reality show, which debuted in 2002.
But 73-year-old Ozzy has told how their show did far more harm than good.
Speaking to The Sun, the rocker admitted: "When you've got a camera crew living in your house 24 hours a day seven days a week it gets a bit crazy.
"The kids were doing drugs and alcohol and I'd gone back on the booze.
"By the time year three came along Sharon sat us all down and said, 'Do you want to carry on?'. Everybody just said no."
One of the show's main plot lines involved Ozzy trying to undo years of hard partying by eating well and running on a treadmill.
But it turned out the Black Sabbath rocker was indulging in his vices behind the scenes.
Ozzy previously revealed: "When the filming ended, I'd go in my little bunker and smoke a pipe and drink about a case of beer every day.
"I'd give myself some goodness and get up early in the morning and go jogging for six miles."
The show did cover some of the famous family's darker moments including mum Sharon's battle with colon cancer and Ozzy's quad bike accident.
Distraught over Sharon's diagnosis in series two, Ozzy was also taking a raft of prescription medication.
The singer previously admitted he can't bring himself to watch the show back because of the state he was in.
"I was wiped out on pills," he admitted to the Los Angeles Times.
"I couldn't talk. I couldn't walk. I could barely stand up. I was lumbering about like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. It got to the point where I was scared to close my eyes at night - afraid I might not wake up."
But the addiction issues didn’t stop with Ozzy.
Unbeknown to her family, Kelly first started abusing prescription painkiller Vicodin after being prescribed it for tonsillitis when she was just 13.
At one point, the teenager was popping 100 pills a day and throwing up blood, and later explained her addiction was to blame for the screaming matches she had on the show.
Kelly was rushed to rehab for the first time of many in 2004 and at one point a desperate Sharon resorted to locking her in a padded cell.
Series two saw Jack finally come clean about his own demons and enter a rehab facility for an addiction to opioid painkiller OxyContin.
The 17 year old - who was also relying on cannabis and booze - told the camera crew: "I want to be in control of my life. I was really loaded, and I just sat on my mum's bed, and I just said, 'I am going to go pack my bags... I'm ready to go. I want to go; I need to go.'"
Jack did manage to get clean and celebrates 19 years of sobriety this month
The antics of the family achieved much attention during its four seasons, and although the show had been centred on the lives of the rock star's family, it did not feature Ozzy and Sharon's eldest child, Aimee Osbourne, now 38.
While Kelly and Jack were happy to take centre stage, their big sister Aimee wouldn't have a bar of it and moved out of the family home aged just 16 when she found out the cameras were coming.
She also banned her visits from being filmed, and Sharon, 67, later admitted the situation put a distance between them.
“I know that my eldest girl couldn’t live in our house because we were filming and it drove her insane," Sharon told her US talk show, The View.
"She felt, too, that she didn’t want to grow up on camera. She hated the idea, it was appalling to her. And so she left at 16 and I regret every day that she did.”
Despite not wanting to be in the spotlight, Aimee is now a singer and actress and recently told NYLON magazine in 2020 she was simply too young to cope with her life being so exposed.
"It was just not my aspiration. Everywhere you went people wanted to know everything, and that when you’re growing up that can be kind of intimidating," she said.
"The idea of kind of letting it all out there at that point, at around fifteen... Nobody at fifteen wants anybody to see how goofy their parents are."
Aimee and Sharon remain close and are often spotted enjoying girls' shopping trips. But as for her younger siblings, there is no love lost.
"I wouldn't say there is an ease between us," Aimee once said of her strained relationship with Kelly, 37, and Jack, 36.
"But there is an acceptance. Do we socialize? No."
But it hasn’t all been doom and gloom for the Osbourne's as the show thrust them into the spotlight and launched them into two decades of careers in telly.
Ozzy's family have pursued their own careers since appearing alongside him in the show, with his wife and youngest children having pursued other TV projects.
Sharon was notably a judge on the X Factor in the UK between 2004 and 2017. She more recently co-hosted US chat show the Talk from 2010 until her departure amid a racism row last year.
Kelly's credits have included being a panellist on Fashion Police from 2010 until 2015 and having appeared as a judge on Project Runway Junior between 2015 and 2017.
Her brother has fronted travel shows including Adrenaline Junkie (2005-2009) and has since ventured into paranormal TV projects such as Portals to Hell, since 2019.
He recently got engaged and is expecting a baby with his fiancée Aree Gearheart.
Ozzy has spoken about how he is battling mental health problems as he struggled to cope with Parkinson's, the pandemic and recovery from operations.
The father-of-eight recently revealed that he is in therapy, and he and Sharon are moving back to the UK after complaining the rise in tax has priced them out of the US.
