Kelly Osbourne Says She Relapsed After Ozzy’s Death — Now She’s 8 Months Sober
Did Kelly Osbourne relapse after Ozzy Osbourne died? Yes. In a new interview released September 15, 2026, Kelly Osbourne said that after her father died in July 2025, she started drinking again. She also said she is now eight months sober.
That is the clearest new fact in a story that has spent much of the past year focused on her grief, appearance and weight loss. Kelly had already described herself as physically and emotionally unwell after Ozzy’s death. This time, she connected the loss directly to a return to alcohol.
She did not describe it as a party period or a glamorous collapse. She described being unable to cope, losing the ability to eat normally, feeling like a shell of herself and reaching what she called “ground zero.”
The more useful recovery question is not whether that makes the years before it meaningless.
It is: what happens when a person who has already built a sober life meets a grief that changes the conditions underneath that life?
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Did Kelly Osbourne relapse after Ozzy died?
According to Kelly, yes.
On the September 15 episode of Paul C. Brunson’s We Need To Talk podcast, she discussed returning to drinking after her father’s death. People also reported her account the same day, including her statement that she is now eight months sober.
Ozzy Osbourne died on July 22, 2025, at age 76. Kelly has repeatedly described him not only as her father but as her best friend and one of the most important sources of support in her life.
Her new account adds something that earlier coverage did not: grief was not only affecting her appetite, body and identity. She says it also affected her sobriety.
How long has Kelly Osbourne been sober now?
Kelly says she is now eight months sober.
That gives the story a different shape than a simple “celebrity relapse” headline. The return to drinking happened after the loss; she has since stopped again and is describing the experience from inside a new sober period.
A sobriety date may reset after a return to alcohol, depending on how a person defines and tracks recovery. But a reset date is not the same thing as saying everything learned before it vanished.
Earlier sober time can still contain real practice: asking for help, recognizing triggers, repairing relationships, learning routines, discovering which environments are risky and finding people who know how to support you.
A relapse can be serious without turning the past into a lie.
Does relapse erase the sobriety that came before it?
No — but that does not mean relapse should be minimized.
Returning to alcohol or other substances can be medically and emotionally dangerous. It may mean the recovery plan needs to change. It may mean more support, different support or a more honest look at what the person was trying to survive.
What it does not do is travel backward through time and erase every sober day that came before it.
This distinction matters because recovery culture can sometimes become obsessed with the counter: day 30, year 1, year 4, year 10. Milestones can be meaningful. They can help a person mark work that was difficult and worth protecting.
But when the number becomes the whole identity, a setback can feel like proof that the entire recovery was fake.
Our guide Day 1 Sober Again: Does Starting Over Mean You Failed? looks directly at that fear.
What did grief change about Kelly’s recovery?
Kelly’s own explanation centers on the intensity of the loss.
She described being unable to function normally after Ozzy died. She has also said she lost significant weight because grief affected her ability to eat, and that she barely recognized herself in photographs during the worst period.
CWM already covered that part of her story in Kelly Osbourne Says She Didn’t Recognize Herself After Ozzy’s Death. The new interview answers a different question: the same period also included a return to drinking.
That does not mean grief automatically causes relapse. Many grieving people do not return to substances, and no single emotional event explains every relapse.
But grief can disrupt routines that recovery depends on: sleep, meals, meetings, therapy, social connection, exercise, work structure, willingness to answer the phone and the belief that ordinary self-care still matters.
If the person who died was also a major part of your support system, the loss can remove both a loved one and one of the structures that helped you stay steady.
Why the public reaction around Kelly has been so divided
Public discussion around Kelly Osbourne has been unusually harsh.
Recent Reddit threads about her grief and appearance contain both concern and contempt. Some commenters have said they hope she has strong support and recognized that she appears to be struggling publicly. Others mocked her appearance, dismissed her because of earlier controversial comments, or argued that the Osbourne family has received too much attention.
Reddit is not evidence about Kelly’s private recovery. But it is useful evidence of a broader tension: people often decide how much compassion someone “deserves” before they respond to that person’s pain.
Recovery does not work very well as a popularity contest.
Accountability for past behavior and humane treatment during grief can exist at the same time. You do not have to approve of everything a person has ever said in order to avoid turning their relapse or bereavement into entertainment.
What happens when friends think grief should be over?
Kelly told The Independent that she lost friends after Ozzy’s death and no longer speaks to some people who expected her to be “over” the grief.
That part of the interview may be as important as the relapse disclosure.
Support is easiest during the first visible crisis. People send messages, bring food, attend the funeral and ask how you are doing.
Months later, the world resumes its schedule.
The grieving person may not.
That mismatch can become isolating. And isolation can matter in recovery, where a person may already be tempted to withdraw when shame, cravings or difficult emotions rise.
Support does not require agreeing with every choice. It does require understanding that grief does not follow a social deadline.
How to Support Someone Who Is Newly Sober looks at how to remain available without turning support into supervision.
Does grief mean the recovery plan has to change?
Sometimes it may.
A recovery plan built for ordinary stress may not be enough for bereavement, divorce, trauma, illness, caregiving or another major disruption. That does not mean the old plan failed. It means the conditions changed.
Someone may need more frequent contact with a therapist, doctor, sponsor or peer group. They may need help rebuilding meals and sleep. They may need to avoid certain environments for a while. They may need people who can sit with grief without immediately trying to make it disappear.
The exact plan is personal and, where appropriate, should involve qualified care. A celebrity interview cannot prescribe one.
But Kelly’s story illustrates a useful principle: sometimes “getting back on track” is not repeating the old recovery routine harder. It is noticing what this new season requires.
OliviaC: grief can change what recovery needs without erasing what recovery already taught you
OliviaC reflection: I think one of the cruelest ideas around relapse is that it reveals the earlier sober years were somehow fake.
As though one difficult season can retroactively cancel every morning you woke up and made a different choice.
It cannot.
But I also do not think compassion requires pretending a relapse is small.
A return to drinking can be dangerous. It can scare families. It can reopen old patterns quickly. It can require a person to admit that the support system that worked before is not enough for what is happening now.
Both things can be true.
Kelly Osbourne says she drank again after losing her father. She also says she is eight months sober now.
The meaningful part is not deciding whether those two facts make her a recovery success or a recovery failure.
The meaningful part is seeing recovery as something alive enough to be revised.
Sometimes grief changes the map.
You may have to call more people. You may need different boundaries. You may need to stop expecting yourself to become the pre-loss version of you again.
And you may need friends who do not disappear because your sadness lasted longer than they expected.
Starting again is not the same thing as starting from nothing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did Kelly Osbourne relapse after Ozzy Osbourne’s death?
Yes. Kelly Osbourne said in a September 15, 2026 interview that she returned to drinking after her father died in July 2025.
How long has Kelly Osbourne been sober now?
She says she is eight months sober.
Did Kelly say grief caused the relapse?
Kelly directly connected her return to drinking with the period after her father’s death and described being unable to cope. That is her account of her own experience; it should not be generalized into a claim that grief causes relapse for everyone.
Does a relapse mean previous sobriety did not count?
No. A relapse may reset a sobriety date depending on the person’s recovery framework, and it can require changes in support or treatment, but it does not erase the progress, learning or sober time that came before it.
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Sources
People — Kelly Osbourne says Ozzy’s death led to a return to drinking and that she is now eight months sober
We Need To Talk with Paul C. Brunson — Kelly Osbourne interview, September 15, 2026
The Independent — Kelly on grief, losing friends and people expecting her to be “over” her father’s death
Reddit — public discussion around Kelly’s grief, appearance and support
Wikimedia Commons — Eva Rinaldi archival image, CC BY-SA 2.0
Editorial note: Public discussion was used to identify audience tensions around judgment and support, not as factual evidence about Kelly Osbourne’s private recovery. This article reports Kelly’s own statements and does not provide medical advice.