I have just finished listening to your interview with Rachel Kohn – The Spirit of Things – and would like to thank you for your honesty and for sharing your journey with us.
Such a special interview. I have actually stolen your wife’s quote re the pyramids and those who may be feeling a ‘little unwell’ – just brilliant.

I went online as a result of your interview to read more and found this address. I do hope it reaches you and again, thank you.

Cheers

Katherine Cooper
Wildlife Artist

Each year we work with hundreds of hurting youth who are trying to make a fist of it all too, despite they’re very complex worlds, and it was so encouraging to hear your story and how you made it through. Thanks so much for sharing it with us.

Kind Regards,
Matt Davidson
CEO OperationHOPE Foundation

Dear Ross, Listening again on the radio it was clear to me why the web page comments were so good. A second listening was even better than my first. I know you were worried about your tears but quite the reverse: in terms of the broadcast they gave a seal of genuineness. For me, more importantly, you presented AA very realistically and very attractively – an exceptionally difficult combination to strike and maintain. There will, I guess, be some who will talk about a breach of the traditions and some, the very envious ones, may talk very loudly. But, as you know, people who chatter do not matter. What does matter is that you presented AA as relevant to the 21st century as a valid long-term treatment program and as open to god botherers as it is to atheists – and as open to Professors and writers as it is to labouers and the unemployed. You get my vote for a job very well done. Love and hugs, to you and yours, Pommie Pete

I’m not Catholic but read a lot of books etc by Richard Rohr-a brilliant thinker and speaker who lives in New Mexico and runs “The Centre for Action and Contemplation”. Judge Jimmy’s daughter Mary put me onto him a few years ago-he embraces AA and has quite a lot to say about both liberal and conservative schools that makes so much sense. And he’s funny!!!

Bless you Ross,

Milton R.
member of Saturday night Sober (Newtown)

Ross Fitzgerald is a well known journalist, historian and novelist. He is also a survivor of alcoholism, which led him to psychiatric wards, shock therapy, and suicide attempts.

For The Spirit of Things, Ross has kept a Spiritual Diary from Christmas Day (his birthday) to Australia Day. Ross reads from his Spiritual Diary, and in a conversation with Rachael Kohn, he reveals that are some emotions that are still too raw to put into words.

My Spiritual Diary – The Spirit of Things: 6.05pm, Sunday February 5, 2012 on ABC Radio National

A RECENT study and official government analysis confirm common knowledge: Australia Day is the worst day of the year for drunken violence. But if the national holiday is a celebration of our national character, what does this say about us?

If you made it out for the flags and fireworks this year, you probably got an eyeful of this phenomenon. So at SuperLiving we thought it was a good time to examine the roots of the problem and what can be done about it.

High alcohol consumption used to be a defining characteristic of Australia. But as the average Aussie drinks about 10 litres of pure alcohol per year, we rank just a little more lush than the US and at least a couple litres less boozy than Russia and much of Europe. The guilty vodka guzzling of Eastern Europe, the omnipresent table wines of the Mediterranean and brewpubs of the Anglo-Celtic isles have statistically pushed Australia down the list – but alcohol consumption and alcohol abuse are not the same thing. And from a historical perspective, our nation seems to have been largely built on this inherited old-world vice.

To explain the continental origins of heavy drinking in Australia may at first seem a justification for irresponsibility; a cultural and genetic excuse to pursue alcohol abuse without the burden of personal accountability. “We can’t help it; it’s ingrained in our history.”

But the study of the effect of alcohol on society can offer a sobering perspective on an emotional issue we don’t usually tackle academically. Understanding how alcohol washed up on our shores with the First Fleet can be an effective first step not only in moulding public policy, but in mastering personal demons as well.

Hard drinking as a cultural norm was imported from Europe at the time of Australian colonisation. These were the days which won Australia its reputation for boorish over-drinking, an era for which some estimates count close to 15 litres of pure alcohol as being consumed per person, per year. Beer was difficult to make at this time so the main form of alcohol was spirits, especially rum.

To better understand the cultural influence of alcohol in Australian history, SuperLiving caught up with historian Ross Fitzgerald, author of ‘Under the Influence: A History of Alcohol in Australia’ and ‘My Name is Ross: An Alcoholic’s Journey’.

Fitzgerald sees a powerful effect of alcohol on Australian politics and societal development. He evokes the 1918 Darwin Rebellion and the forced fleeing of Darwin administrator John Gilruth because “he had the temerity to put up the price of beer and restrict it.” He also suggests the 1975 unseating of Gough Whitlam was partially due to Whitlam’s criticism of the governor-general’s drinking.

But the shining example of alcohol’s stranglehold on our history remains the famous Rum Rebellion of 1808, an event that puts booze at the crux of Australia’s only successful coup d’état.

“The New South Wales rum corps overthrew Governor William Bligh because he tried to protect the small settlers against the monopolists and the members of the military who traded in alcohol,” Fitzgerald said. “It’s unusual for the military to have control of alcohol which was used as a currency. And it’s unusual to have a governor overthrown over alcohol – but Bligh has been given an unnecessarily bad press here in Australia because he really did try to protect the small settlers against the monopolists and the military.”

Although initially employed as a currency and even as a legitimate substitute for food and water, alcohol in colonial Australia left its most enduring cultural mark as a convention of manhood.

The ritual of excess

Slowly, Australia has evolved into a more wine-and-dine alcohol culture, where food and conversation set the pace of drinking, not last-calls and macho group swilling. But even though we’ve shed much of that bawdy reputation and declined in overall consumption, we still have our regular stirrings of destruction, loosely veiled as irreverent camaraderie and celebration. And nothing illustrates this colonial hangover more than Australia Day.

Official statistics for high-risk drinking in Australia reflect familiar social patterns. For both men and women, the middle age group (45-54 years) proves the most susceptible to excessive drinking. Indigenous Australians report more high-risk drinking than non-indigenous people in almost all age groups. And short-term risk consumption (also known as binge drinking) is at least a weekly indulgence for 12% of men and 4% of women.

These numbers are unlikely to surprise many people, but the recent increase in binge drinking among young women is truly startling. The Australian Bureau of Statistics is tracking this surge and cites that 11% of women aged 18-24 binge drink at least once a week (almost triple the national average for women).

For Fitzgerald our trends of recklessness and the alcohol-fuelled violence of Australia Day are closely tied to product image and availability.

“There’re a whole lot of 24-hour, seven-days-a-week licensing outlets in Sydney, Newcastle and Melbourne for example,” he said. “And there’s an absolutely clear statistical correlation between the pubs and clubs and bars open after midnight. For each hour they’re open after midnight, there’s an exponential increase in serious injury and physical and sexual assault within a range of about five kilometres.”

But although government restrictions can be placed on alcohol distributors, Fitzgerald admits legislation will not be enough.

“It’s extremely difficult to control with policy, but stopping the nexus between advertising, alcohol, sex appeal and sport would be a useful start,” he said. “The connection between sex and alcohol and sporting prowess and alcohol is very dangerous. It’s part of the culture in general.”
SuperLiving Friday 27 January, 2012

Let me open this review by saying that I don’t follow Australian politics, I don’t generally like most Australian literature and I definitely don’t know much about Australian history. The reasons for all of these things are many and complex and this is not the forum to explore my gnawing distaste. But, understanding this does shed some light on why my choice in wanting to read this memoir is so unusual. I am not quite sure what appealed to me … whether it was just the picture on the cover (what an unusual looking gentleman!) or the subtitle: An Alcoholic’s Journey or perhaps the review that I read which indicated the enormous strength of character that was required for this man to write this book. Nonetheless, I was inspired to read this book and overjoyed when I discovered it at the library. Yay for the public library!!

I have not been disappointed. Fitzgerald’s writing is magnificent. I am dumbstruck by what must be his clear brilliance, his stamina and his ability to gain clarity through the darkest mist. Reading this book has been like entering into a complex maze and trying to understand something that simply does not exist. It is hard to explain. At times I feel as though Fitzgerald is writing with clarity and at other times I am confused and confounded by the lack of structure or perhaps his ability to maintain a thought and complete it. I can only think that this must be the nature of his beast.

While his life is clearly fascinating in and of itself – who he meets, what he does and accomplishes – what this book is really about is the significance of Fitzgerald’s journey through addiction. I was particularly taken by the fact that he credits his alcoholism as saving his life – if he hadn’t drunk he would have committed suicide, he says. There is a stark wonder in this revelation and it is a credit to him that he can see the value in the experience.

Fitzgerald’s life is heavy and the stories that he tells in this memoir are mostly depressing and equally weighed down with portent. His moments of joy and light are few and far between and many (if not most) of his central relationships are plagued with tragedy and/or despair. But, reading this book has, in and of itself, not been depressed. Fitzgerald is grateful that he is alive, thankful that he has had all these experiences and indebted, publicly, to so many people. One cannot help but be inspired.

Without doubt a fascinating individual who has made incredible contributions, not just to politics and academia in general, to the people around him too.
Anon

I have just read ‘My Name is Ross’, or to be precise, I have just had you read it to me (thank you!), as I drove the 1000km from Alice Springs to Tennant Creek and back to attend the magistrates court circuit, where I, a legal aid lawyer, represent clients, most of whom are in trouble because of their alcoholism.

My article about alcohol policy in my neck of the spinifex, ‘Damming the Rivers of Grog’ (at http://members.ozemail.com.au/~pipmcmanus/Damming%20the%20Rivers%20of%20Grog.pdf), concludes with these words:

“if we don’t fix up this grog business, I can tell you one thing: whatever else we do to stop the violence, whatever else we do to address this town’s social problems, however much money we spend, whatever laws we pass, or gaol sentences we impose, or programs we deliver, or houses we build, or theories we devise, or prayers we offer, I can tell you one thing: if we don‟t take the hard decisions and fix up this grog business first, whatever else we try, will fail.”

The concluding chapters of your inspiring book make a strikingly similar point: for an alcoholic, staying sober is a pre-condition to achieving anything else.

Here in the Northern Territory, our consumption rate is higher than the world’s heaviest drinking country, Luxembourg. And in Central Australia, we drink even more heavily than our cousins in the Top End. The book I write in my head every day is called “My name is Alice Springs. I am an alcoholic.” As I live in a town where alcoholism is not just a personal pathology, but an epidemiological plague, I focus on population-based measures, and in particular supply reduction, through my involvement in the People’s Alcohol Action Coalition (http://paac.org.au).

‘My name is Ross’, however, makes me wonder if there is a way we can use the AA approach more effectively in Central Australia. There are AA meetings in Alice Springs, but I don’t think they are very well patronised. I suspect that this is because the culture of drinking abusively is so entrenched, so embedded, and so ubiquitous in our poor sodden community, that it is well-nigh impossible for alcoholics to stay sober, even with the wonderful support that AA provides them. In particular, the web of kinship and other cultural obligations in which Aboriginal alcoholics here are enmeshed is extraordinarily powerful.

These problems are profound, but, as you demonstrate so compellingly, there is no rational choice but to confront them. The story of your journey is uplifting and full of insights. I gladly, sadly, take your advice, and practice pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will. Cheers.

So, I began to think you had another reason, which was you wanted me, finally, to understand and come to grips with and forgive my father for his alcoholism, to understand why he could not live up to his responsibilities as a husband and father to my mother, sister and me. That you wanted me to realise it was an illness he couldn’t overcome, because in the 1950s, the lifeboat called AA, obviously whilst here, wasn’t as well known, available and accepted in Australia as it is today. And then again my father might have been one of those about whom you wrote, who couldn’t or wouldn’t try to embrace its worth.

Well, the path you led me on to forgive my father hasn’t been an easy one this past fortnight while I’ve read your book, I can tell you. For the first hundred pages I didn’t like you as a person much at all; I just couldn’t take anymore of your downhill spiral (I’m a selfish, self-centred wuss). I was aching for some good news to come along. Were it a book I had picked off a shelf at random, I probably would have stopped reading it early on. But, I persisted because you asked me to read it. And then the second 100 pages became quite a different book, not just about but included your determination to be well, but the second half contained wonderful stories by and about a really fascinating human being — you!

You made me cry, which I didn’t like you doing to me. As it is, I cry every day for Jamie (died aged 28 on 31 Jan). Frankly, I don’t need someone making me cry even more. Already, I live as if I’m on one long roller coaster ride. I cry every day because I miss my boy so very much; he was so looking forward to my book being published, and he’d be so chuffed at this week’s news of the reprint, so soon after release. Elaine is working in Jakarta this week with UNICEF, so the house in East Hawthorn is lonely. I’ve been picking up your book, and within minutes I’ve be crying again because you’re telling me that I should be forgiving my father. And then that prompts me to cry because I’m still grieving my mum, two years dead. Like you, I basically ‘lost’ my mum as a young child, in my case, to her choosing fucking sport over me (Wimbledon, etc; I did her eulogy). I cry because I’m also grieving my sister who died from complications to her MS in 2001 (did her eulogy too), and finally for Jamie this year (third eulogy). I’ve learned by the way that I don’t suffer from depression but rather passionate sadness, a term I cope with better.

Don’t get me wrong, I think your book is captivating; extremely raw and powerful. Your story is real and your writing is wonderful, with great phrases like, ‘in AA we are playing for our lives’, ‘the carnival between my ears’, everything [in life] hinges on a slight shift’, ‘most of us aren’t lazy; most often, we are afraid’. And frequently, as I used, ‘one day at a time’.

Then there are the coincidences and similarities: alcohol in the family for starters; your focus on your illnesses (page 126), which I tend to do; your interactions with police chiefs (compared with my interaction with Terence Lewis’ son, my fellow jackaroo at Augathella; and how after your father died you just couldn’t go back to live with your mother — I couldn’t with mine either. I assume by ‘jackaroo priest’ you mean novice priest.

Forgive me, but I did wonder at times if Lyndal deserves you, especially during your early mentions of her. Is she really happy that you’ve divulged so much of your relationship? Tell me to mind my business. My wife, Elaine, doesn’t want me to say in another book I’m writing that we met on the Internet, even though three couples cite our example as leading them to the Internet and marriage.

I’ve had a drinking issue. Following a dinner party on Australia Day 2008, I stopped drinking for over two years. I drink again now, but pretty much no more than two glasses. Often, a fortnight will go by without my having had a glass. You might read a problem into that (‘Don’t pick up the first drink’).

On the issue of faith, I’ve taken in what you wrote, but I believe in Jesus because He gives me hope. And without hope, I’m stuffed. Of course I struggle to understand why God took Jamie (probably to relieve him of his pain — see story on my website). But I also understand that we’re not supposed to understand God’s ways, which I know sounds easy and is a bit of a cop out for rational thinking. Like I say, if I don’t have hope, what else do I have? What else is there in this shitty world? If you really want to know, I want to be in heaven with Jamie; I’ve been close to ending it all — planning how to go about it in detail — but God keeps putting things in the way, like the success of my book — book talks this and next weekend, a formal dinner speech at Marcus Oldham College next Friday night, to stop me; I’m too busy to end my life right now. Maybe God does want me to hang in there? ‘For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.’

You reminded me of the time I sat opposite Judith Hancock in her study, explaining to her how to make philanthropic fundraising work for her at Brisbane Girls’ Grammar. And I got to know Stuart Babbage through my work with Ridley College. On 9/11, as the planes hit, I was above Chicago en route to JFK (Japan Airlines dumped us and left us stranded in Chicago). I just loved your stories in the second half of the book, like the ‘fashion conscious’ student on page 127. I can’t believe you stayed at the Metropole; I volunteered in Hanoi for six months last year, and all I could afford there was coffee, as I watched how the other half lives.

My favourite George Burns line is this: ‘When I was 90 my doctor told me give up smoking. Doctor’s dead.”

And I’ve always loved that story about Katter on the road, and “Pig” followed by “Bitch”.!

As regards the magic trick, my son, Richard (31), a magician among other attributes, wrote this for me to send to you:

‘Dad, my first guess is that the magician used some suggestive technique to lead your friend to that card to start with. Or, did your friend tell the magician what the card was before he saw it sealed in the plastic bag? There may have been some exceptional slight of hand to make your friend think there was only one plastic bag — or only one card in the plastic bag. Without seeing it, I can’t really be sure, I’m sorry.’

I’m so pleased that Emily is okay. And I’m glad you’re a qualified atheist. I’m sorry to read about your hearing and eyes. Take care.

In the end, My Name Is Ross has been a great help to me. Thank you. You had a rough time, and your story does help me to count my blessings — and to think more generously about my alcoholic father. Maybe, one day, when you’re in Melbourne or I’m near Redfern (my best school friend’s office is Myrtle Street, Chippendale, and Elaine used to live in Newtown) — and if you’re not angry with me for writing what I’ve written above — we could share a sandwich lunch — and a soda water. My number is below.

Please write lots more books like this one, well, the second half of this one. Thank you again for your very kind review of JACKAROO.

Best regards

Michael

PS Two film producers associated with Melbourne Business School (where I work) have a copy of the JACKAROO film script. One of them believes it would make a good ABC telemovie.

PPS I had a 4 x bypass in 2004. I think we all live on borrowed time.