My Name is Ross – An Alcoholic’s Journey
I turn 65 on Christmas Day 2009. If I survive, I’ll be 40 years sober. This means that I have had 40 more years on this planet than I otherwise would have had if I hadn’t stopped drinking alcohol.
‘From his first drink at the age of fourteen Ross Fitzgerald has struggled with alcoholism. His story is one of despair, courage and hope – and living to see another day.
He writes about growing up in Melbourne, drinking his way through university in Australia and the US, being incarcerated and subjected to electric shock therapy and reaching rock bottom before being saved by Alcoholics Anonymous.
One of Australia’s most widely-published historians, his story is truly inspiring. Insightful and brutally honest, “My Name is Ross” is his account of life as an alcoholic and his battle to get sober and stay sober.
Contents
Preface; 1 Life/Death/Insanity; 2 Suicide/Murder; 3 Shock; 4 Damaged and Desperate/ Slowly the Poison; 5 Sydney Town; 6 ‘Adequacy, Not Perfection’; 7 Silver Trays; 8 Raffles. Spies and Brissy; 9 Birth and Genesis/Opposition and Repression; 10 Spiritual Experience and Anarchism in Practice; 11 Bears and Lions and Peter Beattie; 12 Father as Hero; 13 Waste, Regret, and into Action; 14 The A.A. Professor; 15 The Switch; 16 Under the Influence; 17 A Power Greater than Myself; 18 Do Not Be Discouraged; Endnotes; The Twelve Suggested Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous; The Serenity Prayer; How to Contact AA; Further Reading.
My Name is Ross – An Alcoholics Journey will be launched on February 2, 2010 in Sydney.
Looking forward to the book. Cheers. Matt
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After reading an excerpt of your new book in the newspaper, I was in shock. I am very much looking forward to obtaining a copy and reading the whole book.
You see, I lived in Charles St. East Brighton with my great Aunt & Uncle (The Lilies) for a few years around 1979 – 1980. Edna visited daily, often twice, and I was very fond of her.
I must tell you that despite your feelings about your childhood, Edna talked about you alot and seemed to me to be the most proud mother on earth.
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I have not read Prof Fitzgerald’s book yet. (one of the many “YETS” left in my life). But if I stick to my daily program I will. I am in the same age group as the Prof and have experienced a similar journey. Sadly, yesterday I have said “Farewell” to a friend of my last 30 years who was around the same fellowship for the last 48. This only proves to me that, as time marches on, battles can be overcome if we avail ourselves of the best with the help of God as we understand him. Many thanks to people like the Prof who have helped me, and others, over the years. I look forward to reading the book with excitement.
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Fantastic book! After just one year of sobriety this book meant meant the world to me. Thankyou so much Ross.
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Thanks Ross. Had a ‘procedure’ as they call it yesterday and had just read your story the week before as well as being at the National Convention in Coffs. Ensured that I had my ideas intact. yrs lynne
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[...] wasn’t actually too bad either despite my coming around under the sedation. Last week I read Ross Fitzgerald’s Story and that helped me yesterday. The strange chemistry of the alcoholic body doesn’t depend upon [...]
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Hi Ross,
I am only newly sober, I go to Kangaroo Point, Mt Gravatt and Mater Hospital meetings and the people there, Bob, Neal, Steve, Mike, Brian, Dave etc still talk about you with great affection.
I think you’re on the wrong track with the Jungian thing. I don’t think you did the sort of research a historian like yourself should have done. Look for some independent verification, don’t just rely on the tales in the Big Book or other AA sources, they are hardly independent. You might find the Jung-AA connection a little overstated.
Have you investigated the role of hypoglycemia in alcoholism? There is a field of research that could be very fruitful.
Kind Regards, one day at a time,
Warren
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The Northern Miner, FRI 02 JUL 2010, Page 004
A personal journey
By: Mike Griffin
AUTHOR and academic Ross Fitzgerald will be known to some Charters Towers residents and to Northern Miner readers.
He is a prolific writer and a regular political columnist in The Australian and other newspapers.
Fitzgerald has made a number of visits to Charters Towers, primarily during his time as chair of the Centenary of Federation Queensland in 2001.
It was during these visits that I built a personal relationship with Fitzgerald, one that has endured to this day.
It was also during those visits, and over dinner, that I noted my new-found friend did not drink alcohol. No questions were asked and no explanation was offered.
In the fullness of time I discovered that Fitzgerald had been 31 years sober when I met him back in 2001.
Fitzgerald, in his own words, and in a 2009 dated release accompanying his recent book My name is Ross – an alcoholic’s journey, he stated:
“I turn 65 on Christmas Day 2009. If I survive, I’ll be 40 years sober. This means that I have had 40 more years on this planet than I otherwise would have had if I hadn’t stopped drinking alcohol”.
My friend Ross Fitzgerald’s opinion on a range of issues is well sought after. I noted last Thursday that he was interviewed on ABC Radio for comment following the dethrowning of Kevin Rudd as Australia’s prime minister.
I was not surprised Fitzgerald joined the debate on that historic day. In part, history, but also politics, is his life.
But it is a very personal revelation that Fitzgerald has accomplished in My name is Ross.
Readers are likely to quickly get most interested in Fitzgerald’s story, even from the preface of the book, which contains a story I have heard, of the author undergoing an MRI brain scan at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney to find out why he was bleeding from the brain in four places.
To maintain his sanity, Fitzgerald admitted to reciting, like a mantra, the Serenity Prayer – a most interesting exercise for a man who is a professed atheist.
I mention that because it is that level of personal story telling that is Fitzgerald’s own account of life as an alcoholic and his battle to get sober and stay sober.
This is a book in which the author has turned the spotlight on himself after doing just that to others, for decades.
I congratulate Ross Fitzgerald on My name is Ross – An Alcoholic’s journey and recommend this book to you.
Why? Because like the great majority of Australian families, I had two family members challenged by this scourge and I can, to some degree, not only feel the author’s pain, but the pain of his family.
But by being sober for 40 years, Fitzgerald is winning. He wouldn’t dare claim, however, he has won.
And to conclude, in the author’s words: “The fundamental fact is that, if, each day, I don’t pick up the first drink of alcohol, I can’t get drunk. For decades now, I have never doubted that, for me, to drink is to die”.
* My name is Ross – an alcoholic’s journey by Ross Fitzgerald, University of NSW Press. RRP $34.95
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Letter to the editor, Australian Book Review
I usually counsel authors not to write angry letters in response to a bad review. But I feel compelled to respond to Richard Harding’s review of Ross Fitzgerald’s My Name is Ross: an alcoholic’s journey in your June issue. That it is the first negative review this very widely-reviewed book has attracted is neither here nor there; the critic is entitled to his opinion, although he doesn’t seem to be remotely familiar with the norms of autobiograpical writing, let alone the now well-established genre of addiction memoir. But because he berated the author for writing the book and the publisher for publishing it, I must respond.
Harding comments disdainfully that Ross Fitzgerald wanted the book to succeed commercially in Australia, so he may find it galling to learn that sales of the book have indeed been strong. What has been particularly gratifying however are the personal responses that Ross has received from colleagues, associates and strangers who have found his story moving and inspiring, often to the degree that they have started attending AA meetings or encouraged friends or family to do so. If Ross had written an abstract, dispassionate book rather than this brutally honest–if unflattering–self-portrait, its impact would have been limited. Finally, I have to point out to Mr Harding that the Damon Runyonesque names that he accuses the author of making up are all real nick names of real people. The organisation that is the hero of the book isn’t called Alcoholics Anonymous for nothing.
Yours sincerely
Phillipa McGuinness
Executive Publisher, UNSW Press/New South
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I have not finished your book yet but I had to tell you how inspirational it is for me. I have tears in my eyes every morning & night on the bus to and from work but it’s all good.
My daughter passed your book on to me, she has been through rehab for drug addiction & is now 8 months clean. She goes to NA meetings several nights a week & your book has inspired her to keep going. She quotes you often, as I now realise, especially that fact that you don’t necessarily like going to meetings, they are just part of life from now on.
My husband is also in recovery & your book is helping me enormously understanding the struggles he is going through. We’ve been married for 32 years & this has been the hardest period but I know now there are other people out there just like us.
I was fortunate to have been in at school in the days of religious instruction in a Methodist class when the minister brought in a woman from AA. Her standing up in front of a class of 13 year old girls saying “Hello my name is Ethel & I’m an alcoholic” had a profound effect on me & consequently I knew from that time that addiction was an illness.
Thank you for your honesty & humour. “Chair seeks table” still cracks me up!!
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Hello Ross-As far as I can recall,you and I have never met, but I seem to have heard a bit about you from my brother Jim Jones!I didn’t have an opportunity to speak with you at Butch’s(aka Jim!)funeral-but I think he would have been moved by your beautiful eulogy to him–I know I was. Living in NZ for so long,has made it difficult for me to remain in close touch with Butch,Dos and Ruth’s daily lives-but you were able to tell me things about my brother of which i was unaware-thank you.In March this year,my mother Donna gave me your book to read–’My name is Ross’.I read it non stop-and realised how ignorant I was of the very difficult journey a recovering alcoholic has to endure. Butch took me to an AA meeting once, but I just didn’t understand then what it was all about.I see many alcoholics in my work as a Reg. Nurse,and I live in a small town-where there is limited support-however i do what i can and have often referred to Butch’s journey when i am trying to help someone.And I can now recommend your book!!!I never realised just how much support you all gave each other!!!! Thank you for writing about your painful(and joyful) experiences!!
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reviewed by Danielle Mulholland
Ross Fitzgerald was born on Christmas Day in 1944. His elder brother Rodney had died in his father’s arms on the way to the hospital in 1942 when he was only six months old. From his parents, Fitzgerald inherited low self-esteem and an aversion to funerals. His toxic relationship with them fostered in him a fear of life itself. At fourteen, Fitzgerald started to drink. Although for the most part, he appeared to function through school, through university and through life, he was, in fact, functioning at the most superficial level possible. Fitzgerald had become an alcoholic. In his memoir, My Name is Ross: An alcoholic’s journey, he shares his fears, experiences, loves and losses with the reader with a frankness that is disarming as well as inspiring.
Ross Fitzgerald was not a stereotypical, bottle-in-a-brown-paper-bag, snoring-on-a-park-bench alcoholic. As he carefully describes, alcoholism can take many forms but all of them are destructive: emotionally, professionally, socially, physically and psychologically. Fitzgerald functioned sufficiently well in society to achieve many admirable things and meet many notable people. Inside however, he was not functioning at all. His story tells of his struggle with alcohol and the profound effect it had on his and other people’s lives. When he gave up alcohol entirely, this did not prove to be the end of his story.
Narrated in the first person, Fitzgerald takes the reader on his journey with him. To anyone who has known or been an alcoholic, his story resonates with a realism that is disturbing and, at times, distressing. He has not spared himself, his actions or their consequences, but speaks of them with a disarming honesty and pragmatism. He tells in great detail of his descent into alcoholism, the warnings against drinking by friends, his estrangement from family and those same friends, and finally, his acknowledgement of his problem and first trip to AA.
Written in a chronological order of events, Fitzgerald provides enormous insight into life after alcoholism. The challenges, the passion to help others and the difficulties of his work life, whereby he was forced to socialise and network. These events always include alcohol, as it is embedded in Australian culture as a relaxation and relationship building tool. Fitzgerald has become an outsider because of his decision not to drink, because we live in a society where non-drinkers are viewed with suspicion and, at worst, ostracised.
This book generates empathy towards the alcoholic. It provides an explanation as to why people may drink, how difficult stopping is, the irreparable damage it does to relationships (both personal and professional), why people need to want to stop themselves, and how AA is so valuable to people as a support network as it does not judge. The tragedy is so many people do judge, forcing most alcoholics to find refuge in the numbness of their addiction.
Fitzgerald has literally bared his soul in this frank and fearless account of his life as an alcoholic. No one could do otherwise than congratulate him on his courage to put pen to paper and expose the most intimate parts of his life in order to help others understand the problem of alcoholism in a society that venerates alcohol to the point of obsession.
Reviewed by Danielle Mulholland
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