In 1972 they blew $72,000 on the drug. And the album they recorded that year, “Vol 4” cost only $60,000 to make. That’s a lot of sneeze cheese. And on the album notes, they wrote, “We wish to thank the COKE-Cola Company of Los Angeles. That’s subtle.
“We were young blokes, doing what young blokes do,” guitarist Tony Iommi told the Guardian, before acknowledging the recklessness of their younger days. “Nobody could control anyone else. I was doing coke left, right and center, and Quaaludes, and God knows what else. We used to have [cocaine] flown in by private plane.”
It was on the accompanying tour that Geezer Butler drank something spiked with acid and he tried to jump out of a hotel window. This is when he began weening himself off drugs. The singer, Ozzy Osbourne wasn’t so lucky. In 1978 he was fired for substance abuse and replace by Ronnie James Dio.