“I was so enclosed and enmeshed in myself”, he writes, “that I virtually didn’t see anything outside”.

Sober for 40 years, Dr Fitzgerald calls himself an atheist. His AA group is the Higher Power that alcoholics rely on to remove their compulsion to drink. “These days in some sort of primitive ‘prayer’, I sometimes speak directly to the moon and the sea and the stars,” he says. The sight of a Willy-Wagtail especially cheers him up and the little dancing bird appears throughout his book. In the beginning is an alcoholic and in the end there is still the alcoholic, but My Name is Ross is one long look backwards at a wonderful life that would have ended prematurely in suicide had he not found a way to stop drinking.

Terrible hallucinations propelled Ross to get help after he was hospitalised six times in Cleveland, Ohio aged 25 and it’s hard to believe this sodden human being self-obsessed, self-centred, a user of women, an abuser of trust could transform into a vibrant voice for free speech, an author of 32 books and a trusted servant of many governments, as well as a man beloved by his wife and daughter and his many friends from all walks of life.

Full of humour, honesty and hope. Highly recommended.

Barbara Farrelly – South Coast Register 10 March 2010

The temptation, and Fitzgerald is clearly not one readily to refuse temptation, must have been to present this as a latter day rake’s progress: a jolly saga of men behaving badly. ‘such a lark! Stole two boots and a brass hat. Hung a notice of a bal masqué on the railing of a Baptist chapel, and stuck a board with “Mangling done here” on the Hospital gate,” as Dudley Smooth put it in a piece by Marcus Clarke in the 1860s. “Ho, for the breakage of lamps, the carrying away of signs, the petty larceny of gilt hats and wooden boots!”

There are plenty of appalling anecdotes in My Name is Ross – like his account of high life at a conference of academic historians:

”After our tenth drink of whiskey or whatever we were imbibing, the most appropriate thing appeared to be for the two of us to make a suicide pact – steal a car and drive it off a bridge. Which is precisely what we did. We stole a car, which turned out to be owned by a state ALP cabinet member. I revved it up, drove off the Camden Bridge, and finished up trapped in the car, perilously close to the water…. Initially on the critical list, I was in hospital for two months.”

The bad behaviour is not glamorized. But nor are opportunities for a good story neglected. A succession of figures are captured in vignettes, many of them drinkers or ex-drinkers. There are sessions with Doug McCallum the political scientist, who nodded off to sleep with his pipe alight, and was suffocated when his jacket caught fire. There are appearances with Josh Davis on TV Tutorial: “Although almost always half-pissed, on the television he came across as sober as a judge.” Barry Humphries has a cameo role. There are excursions to Mozambique, Vietnam, and Singapore, sometimes with up-grades and VIP treatment through being mistaken for the ambassador Stephen FitzGerald. And there is a sustained stay, much of it lost in alcoholic oblivion, in the United States.

This is both a memoir, and an account of alcoholism. The two strands endlessly interweave, as the story of Australian society of the last sixty years unfolds:
”Perhaps the most brilliant schoolmaster of all at Melbourne High was the eccentric, ultra right-wing biology teacher, Norton Hobson. After he retired, Norton confided to me that he was an ex-Communist and that, while at school he worked as a part-time operative for the Victorian Special Branch, supplying information about students and staff alike…. It is no accident that, later on, in my three Grafton Everest political/sexual “fictions” … the head of the privatized Australian Security Organization, and hence the nation’s top spy, is Grafton’s old school teacher, Les Horton. The character Mr Horton is largely based on Norton Hobson.”

”I’ve always been fascinated by spies and by pirates,” Fitzgerald writes. “While I was teaching at Griffith University, I was actually approached by a senior operative to apply for a position at the Office of National Assessments… an AA acquaintance in the Queensland police force suggested that I work for the notorious state Special Branch, of which he was acting head.”

Not all the anecdotes involve substance abuse. Fitzgerald is an acute observer of how society works, and adept at putting his observations into practice:
”In 1985, during the dreadful years of the Bjelke-Petersen regime, the head of the Australian newspaper’s Brisbane bureau, Hugh Lunn, wrote a very flattering full-page feature about me being the “Anti-Joh”… The editor of The Weekend Australian magazine, Jim Hall, had said, “I”m not publishing your piece on Fitzgerald. He’s radical. And he’s mad.”

But Fitzgerald had learned that Rupert Murdoch always referred to himself as “The Chief Executive”:

”I’ll give him mad, I thought, and at 2 am rang the toll-free number for News Limited in Sydney. “This is The Chief Executive”, I barked into the phone, “Tell that editor of the weekend magazine to publish Hugh Lunn’s piece on that fellow Ross Fitzgerald”, and slammed the phone down. And guess what, the next Saturday’s Weekend Australian featured a full-page feature with a large, smiling, photograph of me wearing my trademark panama hat.”

The photographed hat is a crucial element in the story he tells of how the Australian Research Council operated in handing him a five-year grant of taxpayers” money. The Bulletin had run a story on “the Successor to Manning Clarke,” naming five historians but providing a photograph of only one of them, Fitzgerald:

“When the selection panel – all scientists and mathematicians – met, they didn’t know who to choose when it came to the one place for humanities. Allegedly, a physicist professor said, “What about that bloke with the big hat who comes from Queensland?”

The ARC fellowship gave him five years of freedom from teaching, during which he wrote two political biographies, one of ex-Queensland premier “Red Ted” Theodore, the other of Fred Paterson, Australia’s only communist member of parliament. At least he produced, and substantially, unlike all too many of the recipients of such largesse.

These observations of the way our cultural superstructure operates provide a pointed context for the record of bad behaviour of Fitzgerald’s alcoholic years. And some of it is seriously bad. This is not a memoir of convivial Bohemian indulgence, but of solitary, suicidal desperation.

But as much as a saga of self-destruction, My Name is Ross is also a record of recovery and redemption. Alcoholics Anonymous proved his salvation, and he pays unambiguous tribute to its role in his regeneration. He offers an enthusiastic and persuasive picture of how AA can help, something which might encourage others to follow the path, together with a brief history of the organization. Having discovered that “Carl Jung was instrumental at the beginning of Alcoholics Anonymous”, he even tracks down his son in Switzerland for an interview.

I am not sure that the underlying causes of Fitzgerald’s addiction are ever identified. He offers some attempts at examining his relationship with his parents. He details various sexual encounters. But the fundamental fear that requires obliteration remains unidentified. Perhaps it is just the fear of life and of death’s inevitability. Whatever it is, AA clearly provides an ever-available structure, with its regular meetings that are always welcoming, that always give the assurance that there is somewhere to go to, somewhere to meet others, that you are not alone.

Michael Wilding, “Quadrant Magazine”, March 2010, Books, pp117-8

At the age of 25 he was a broken man who, in a few short years, had gone from being an honours graduate from Sydney University to a man who, after many admissions to mental hospitals, living on what few wits remained to him, and having exhausted the patience of his many friends, had reached the nadir of his life with death closing fast upon him.

Last year he celebrated two events: his 65th birthday, which coincided with the 40th anniversary of his life as a non-drinker.

As the title of this memoir indicates, it is a riveting account of that life journey whose successful outcome he attributes almost entirely to the comradeship he found in Alcoholics Anonymous; it is, however, clear that much credit is due to his wife Lyndal.

In the preface, Fitzgerald makes the critical remark which, like many such, carries within its apparent simplicity a great understanding: “The fundamental fact is that, if, each day, I don’t pick up the first drink of alcohol, I can’t get drunk.”

David Christie, The Newcastle Herald, 13 February 2010

Fitzgerald says he drank to pretend he wasn’t afraid and because of a difficult relationship with his mother and his genetic predisposition to addiction.

In person, he seems to inspire active like or dislike; in words, he is immensely likeable.

An academic, commentator and author, Fitzgerald has had a productive life, one he believes would have been cut short by suicide had he not started drinking and by alcohol had he not stopped drinking at 25. Despite being an atheist, Fitzgerald is a staunch believer in the power of Alcoholics Anonymous and devotes many words to its benefits. His constant return to this theme could become tedious but never does, due to his talent for dropping in funny or poignant stories about himself and others. Fitzgerald’s talent for writing entertainingly combines with his openness about his life and insight into broader topics.

This book might in part be a step in the AA process of revealing past wrongs, but unlike much writing of this ilk, it can be rewardingly read by others.

Lorien Kaye, The Age, February 20, 2010

It must have taken a lot of guts for a well-known political commentator and academic like Fitzgerald to write such a brutal account of his struggle with alcohol.

The first chapters of the book, dealing with a decade-long bender that he began at the age of 14 , are the toughest to read – not that it becomes a riot of laughter afterwards.

The author doesn’t shy away from describing his despicable behaviour that shattered his relationship with his parents and harmed so many of those around him. Initially drawn to drink by its power to anaesthetise the emotional hollowness felt by his angst-ridden teenage self, Fitzgerald explains how the numbing effect soon dissipated, but the need to drink did not.

During those tumultuous years, Fitzgerald travelled the world but seemed to spend most of his time in a variety of psychiatric wards. Liberal amounts of electro-shock therapy and prolonged hospital stays were interspersed with lonely nights, emotionless dalliances and suicide attempts.

Fortunately, at the age of 26, Fitzgerald discovered Alcoholics Anonymous. The role that the organisation has played in his life is profound, and he does an inspiring job of describing his fervent belief in its healing powers. Fitzgerald argues powerfully that alcoholism is a curable illness, and that even the most seemingly hopeless cases can be healed with the support of friends, family and AA..

It might not be a ground-breaking message, but you will never see it put forward with more conviction or courage.

Terry Oberg, Courier-Mail, Saturday February 27, 2010

Professor Ross Fitzgerald is a name I hear all the time but I can never put my finger on him. He leaves parties as I arrive. He exits dinner tables at will if I am late, as usual.

Two clients for whom I recently appeared in court in difficult circumstances both sent me copies of Fitzgerald’s book, My Name is Ross: An Alcoholic’s Journey, while I was deciding what, if anything, I should charge. They are gifts that keep on giving – and are probably all I will get. In reality, I received infinitely more than my few hours of court appearances.

Fitzgerald has written 32 books, fiction and nonfiction, but none is as important as the two I have. At 25 he took his last drink and pill. He is now 65. As an alcoholic, writing an autobiography is the stalking of yourself. Old schools of thought suggest Alcoholics Anonymous should live up to its name and remain the best kept secret in town.

At AA meetings, you were more likely to come across a satanic orgy than a meeting of yearning people trying to get or stay sober. Practising alcoholics tend to be loners during practice sessions and unless there are neon signs, electronic walkways or valet pick-up services, they might never hear of AA.

It is no use waiting for alcoholics to hit the gutter, the shelter or the morgue before they are allowed in on the secret. Fitzgerald speaks at high schools about his journey, disabusing the romantic dream world that teenagers naturally are attracted to in the world of excess. A drunk I met at Rogues Nightclub one night told me he was never going to go back to those Alcoholic Unanimous meetings. There was no room for anyone debating the virtues of the drink. And so it is …

My Name is Ross is a very timely book for me. The trouble with alcoholism and attending meetings of AA is that there is no graduation class, no diploma that allows you access to the world without returning to the halls of meetings. You have to go to the school of AA for the rest of your life, one day at a time. There is a tendency to drop out of this school. “How much more can I learn?” says one of the debating society living in your head, next thing you are a dry drunk, white-knuckling on a raft without a paddle.

AA is not a self-help group but depends on others helping each other. There is something in the human spirit that responds to storytelling and the DNA of AA is storytelling. One at a time, a speaker addresses the meeting with an outline of where he was, how he stopped drinking, drugging or whatever and where he is now. Many times it is like a stand-up comedy night. Sometimes it is a wake. There’s never a meeting that you don’t carry out a germ of an idea or a skerrick of helpful information. Meetings begin and end on time. Alcoholics need strict routine. You can always tape Underbelly, if there is a clash.

Fitzgerald writes that alcoholics are like pod people and can somehow pick each other out in a crowd. I don’t know about that but at meetings we are like fingerprint experts, pointing out similarities and dissimilarities in our groves and whorls. At times in reading Fitzgerald’s book, I suspected he accessed my computer files. His home truths were my home truths. The half-truths he told in drink were my half-truths.

He is however a far more matured human being than I would ever be, even if I lived as long as Methuselah. Fitzgerald had so much electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) before they used general anaesthetic that it wiped out many potential chapters in his book. He could ask surviving friends or relatives to write in and publish the lost years that way. Drinking and depression go hand and gland. He soared at school, university and in academia while sipping from rum bottles planted in cisterns during exams. He lived counter-intuitively and occasionally on liquid counter lunches.

Like many alcoholics, he is a hypochondriac who will outlive everyone. He won a Fulbright Scholarship to America where he spent much of the time in saloons, mental homes and in the arms of women who took mercy on him.

A psychiatrist told me I had an almost supernaturally excessive need for nurture. I spent much of my life hoping to be rescued from myself by women. Women are no longer attracted to shipwrecks who love the relentless rocks. I once snuck a glance at a referral from my GP to a new psychiatrist, “Charles, is a difficult customer with a lot of baggage.” It is little wonder our sessions didn’t work out with such a sordid letter of introduction.

So it is not on the couch that we alcoholics try to get well but on the hand chairs in church halls or school auditoriums. We respond to the sound of many hands cupping. I envy the meetings in Los Angeles in the 1970s when sobriety reignited the sex organs of men and women, who had meetings in spa pools naked, at least according to James Ellroy. AIDS wiped out nearly everything.

Fitzgerald’s book is far deeper and wider and funnier than the picture I paint. He has a prodigious memory, not corrupted by ECT or alcohol or drugs in the past 40 years. He gives us the highlights, the lowlights and the spotlights in a razzle-dazzle of words and characters. Alcoholics who are out he names. Others are called Broken Hill Jack, Cast-iron Kate, Under-the-Stars Len and so on. I remember some of them.
Anonymity guaranteed, Fitzgerald’s past did not condemn him to it. AA helped him not to live in the wreckage of the future. Long before the Power of Now, AA practised it a day at a time.

There are some quaint hangovers, so to speak, from the strictly anonymous early days of AA. Members of the fellowship would swap or pass on tape recordings of especially gifted speakers whose identification talks were sometimes electrifying. I got a plastic covered tape with Sir Anthony H on the white sticker on the side. His voice was unmistakably Hannibal Lecter’s slimy tongue-licking brogue. Yet we nod to each other as we pass back the tape as if the secret is safe with me.

Anyway, shout Ross Fitzgerald’s name form the steps of the Town Hall. He has come to free us, to free us all.

The Sun-Herald February 21, 2010

Later on, Professor Fitzgerald comments that “alcoholism is such an insidious disease that, unless we learn to deeply remember what happened to us under its influence, it can convince us that we are OK now and that somehow, despite all the evidence, we can drink with impunity or fix ourselves up on our own”.

This missive of My Name Is Ross is that it is crucial for alcoholics to remain vigilant and to learn how to live life on life’s terms – which, for an alcoholic, is particularly challenging.

I have known Ross for close to two decades. We disagree on some issues. However, before we met, I admired his article “Inside Alcoholics Anonymous” which was published in Quadrant in October 1982. Previously I had enjoyed the radical leftie teacher character Craig Steppenwolf – which Ross developed with his friend Barry Humphries in 1975, the final year of Gough Whitlam’s government, for Humphries’ show At Least You Can Say You’ve Seen It.

The very funny script was published in Quadrant in November 1975 – the final scene had Craig hanging out in the Ho Chi Minh unisex toilet block at West Camberwell High where he continued his profession as a de-educational strategist.

It so happened that the cover of the November 1975 issue of Quadrant was the only book or magazine in the Henderson abode which our elder daughter Elizabeth ever disfigured when she was an infant. Elizabeth drew horns on Craig Steppenwolf – as depicted by Barry Humphries. Our younger daughter Johannah’s one act of literary vandalism in infancy occurred when she ripped pages out of the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer. Johannah left the Douay, or Catholic, version of The Bible unharmed. As Craig Steppenwolf was wont to say: “Do you read me?”

Ross and I first made personal contact at The Sydney Institute quite some time ago. As Ross acknowledges in his book, he is somewhat self-absorbed, has a “personality that brings out criticism in spades from others”, and a little bit of him goes a long way. Yet we get on well. He calls me “brother” and I call him “Ross”.

Ross can also be alarmingly frank. When a mutual male acquaintance in his late thirties, who had not married, told Ross some years ago that he was engaged to be married, Ross replied: “Congratulations. What’s his name”. The person in question is now a father.

We discussed Ross’ proposed memoirs at our occasional lunches over recent years and I suggested the subtitle: “An Alcoholic’s Journey”. It seemed to me that what was important about Ross’ life story is that an alcoholic can become sober and live a successful life and enjoy a successful career.

I was pleased to accept Ross’ invitation to launch his compelling book and I congratulate Phillipa McGuiness and the team at the University of New South Wales Press for the decision to publish this important memoir.

Ross Fitzgerald commenced drinking alcohol, while a student at Melbourne Boys High School, in mid 1959 – aged 14 and a half years. He had his last liquored refreshment just over a decade later – in November 1969 – and gave up abusing prescription pills on Australia Day 1970, just after his 25th birthday. Ross regards his sobriety as commencing on this date and he clocked up 40 years as a sober man on this day last week. Full recovery took some years. Well done Ross.

A reading of the early chapters of My Name is Ross reveals the young Ross as a narcissistic, alcoholic, depressive. By the end of the book it is clear that two of these conditions are in remission.

As for the narcissism. Well – Anne Henderson (who unfortunately has another commitment this evening) drew my attention to the photographic library in the middle of My Name Is Ross. It contains no fewer than two dozen images of the author.

Then there is the account of young Ross’ sporting youth. A wicket keeper for the Victorian Schoolboys team. A bowler, who opened the pace attack for a university team. A batsman who once made a century. The declaration of such achievements reminded me of an old ditty to narcissism, which I have slightly revamped for the occasion:

I am the batsman and the bat
I am the bowler and the ball
The wicket keeper
The pavilion cat
My name is Ross
I do it all.

Perhaps not quite everything. For the author reveals that he can’t cook a chop, or wash a sock, or put in an electric light bulb – but has always been able to find a woman who can handle such essential tasks. Or almost always.

My Name Is Ross is very much a tribute to the teetotal Lyndal Moor, whom Ross met when he was a recovering alcoholic and whom he married in November 1976. Lyndal is some dish and was Australian Photographic Model of the year in 1970. Like me, Ross married a non-adoring type. One of the gorgeous Lyndal’s strengths is that she does not put up with all of Ross’ crap – including his obsessive focus on his various medical conditions – all of which, reader beware, are listed in these memoirs.

In the book Partners (which Ross co-edited with Anne Henderson), Lyndal cited some of Ross’ illnesses – from “cancer of the little finger” to “anything anyone else has, especially if it is in the news”.

In his chapter in Growing Old (Dis)gracefully – which was co-edited with Lyndal –Ross described Lynda as someone who is not the slightest bit interested in illnesses. So much so that, to a Ross refrain that he didn’t feel very well, Lyndall remarked: “Darling, the pyramids were built by people who didn’t feel very well.”

Ross’ story of his life as an alcoholic is brutally frank. Put simply, he was a loathsome, rage-filled, drunk. Under the influence, Ross drew up serious plans to murder two women who had dumped him. He never paid bills or the rent. There were numerous suicide attempts, unsuccessful of course, including driving a stolen car off Camden Bridge in Sydney’s west. And there was time spent in psychiatric units and memory loss resulting from ECT (or shock treatment) and alcohol-induced amnesia.

Ross relates how, during his years on the booze, he was sacked by two universities. This seems a bit harsh, on reflection. In my days as a student in the late 1960s and as an academic in the early 1970s, our alcoholic academics enjoyed permanent tenure – along with permanent access to the staff bar.

As Ross now concedes, he was an unprincipled user of young women. Readers of My Name Is Ross might well conclude that Tony Abbott’s advice to his young daughters not to screw around was soundly based. Fortunately, Ross escaped revenge attacks from the siblings or friends of his aggrieved young female victims. But as one woman wrote to Ross, when rejecting his clumsy attempt at apology some years later, “obviously, you are still the same vicious shit”.

As someone who has consumed an alcoholic beverage at the Moor/Fitzgerald household while enjoying Lyndal’s fine cuisine, I can attest that Ross is not a wowser. He is comfortable being in the presence of alcohol. It’s just that he cannot trust himself to be home alone with booze. Ross understands, from painful experience, that some of us cannot successfully consume alcohol.

I have always held the view that there is something to be said for alcohol. Let’s be frank. Without some Australians having been under the influence, some of us would not be here today. I have not done any research on this (perhaps I should apply to the Australian Research Council for a grant – it funds much more trivial topics than this). However, I suspect that quite a few of my generation, especially those of Irish-Catholic background, were conceived on a Saturday night with a little help from Mr Carlton-United and/or Ms Penfolds – perhaps even a little Johnnie Walker.

This, of course, does not apply to the Fizgerald/Moor offspring – the beautiful Emily, who is here this evening. Emily was conceived when her father had been sober for over a decade. Ross relates how he was not allowed to be present at Emily’s birth – and then concedes that this did not upset him one bit. I concur. It has always seemed to me that, for men of our generation, the real challenge was to have been present at the conception – rather than at the birth. A task which is becoming increasingly challenging due to modern technology and lifestyle changes.

There are many insights into Ross in this memoir. When I first ate out with Ross, I was surprised that he insisted on ordering the dessert before entrée or main-course – and then obsessively checking with the waiter to ensure that his ice-cream was still in situ. It turns out that this is a family tradition, inherited from his father’s side.

Readers of My Name Is Ross will learn that, with at least one person, the author has enjoyed a telepathic communication. There is much to be said for this – especially for those intent on reducing their telephone bills. Also, on occasions, Ross “speaks directly to the moon and the sea and the stars”. It is not clear whether any of these entities respond.

My Name Is Ross is an entertaining read with some witty anecdotes of tales told at various Alcoholics Anonymous meetings around the world. But it is also a significant work – especially for its message about the link between depression and alcohol and drug abuse and the causal connection between addiction and some suicides or attempted suicides.

Here Ross’ advice is direct. Those afflicted with alcoholism should deal with their drinking problem first and then see what’s left of any other conditions. After becoming sober, invariably they will find that their acute depression was inflamed by alcohol or other drugs.

Before Ross moved to Sydney from Brisbane, I arranged for him to make a reservation at the (then) University and Schools Club on Phillip Street. On each occasion, prior to arriving at the Club, Ross used to ensure that all liquor was removed from the mini-bar in his room. I then understood just what a challenge each and every day is for Ross. As he writes: “Each day not drinking alcohol or using other drugs is the paramount fact about my life.”

Ross knows that he is still living on borrowed time because he remains powerless over alcohol. He also understands that, without alcohol, he can manage his depression. With alcohol he would revert to what he once was – a narcissistic, rage-fuelled, alcoholic depressive – and quickly die.

Lyndal Moor has been central to Ross remaining sober along with some of Ross’ friends who are mentioned in these memoirs. Ross has also benefited from the great work of Alcoholic Anonymous. AA preaches an uncomplicated faith – if a sober alcoholic does not “pick up” a drink, he or she will not revert to the insidious disease of alcoholism. It’s as straight forward – and as difficult – as that.

Alcoholics Anonymous is a path-breaking organisation – all the more so because it refuses to accept public or private funding. It’s all about people dealing with, and resolving, their own problems. And it’s all about dry alcoholics supporting each other in an endeavour not to “pick-up” each and every day.

Ross reflects on AA’s lack of sentimentality. He quotes George E. Valliant’s seminal work The Natural History of Alcoholism Revisited to the effect that so-called harm-minimisation by controlled drinking is but a mirage. For alcoholics, only the abstinence model works.

In his memoirs Ross wonders out loud how he became responsive to AA when so many men and women, who were and are much kinder and smarter than he, never managed to get sober for any extended time. To me this seems due to Ross’ sometimes annoying persistence. But it works.

Persistence got Lyndal to what used to be called the altar – assisted, fortuitously, by her determination never go out with a man who could change a light bulb. Persistence has ensured Ross’ professional success over four decades. And persistence has kept Ross true to the principles of AA.

Once again, I congratulate New South for publishing My Name Is Ross and I call on the author of this quite courageous memoir to make some comments. His name is Ross.

Gerard Henderson, The Sydney Institute, 2 February 2010

Despite these achievements, it is immediately obvious that the defining characteristic of Fitzgerald’s life is that he is an alcoholic, albeit one who has been sober for 40 years. So, although this book is his life story, told in chronological order, it is as much a meditation on the nature of alcoholism and the virtues of Alcoholics Anonymous as it is autobiography.

When I read on the dustjacket that Fitzgerald has been sober since he was 25, I wondered what all the fuss was about. After all, he wasn’t drinking for very long. The first couple of chapters, however, quickly exposed my naivete. Fitzgerald had a very unhappy childhood, caused, it seems, by an innate emotional fragility combined with his parents’ inability to overcome the infant death of his elder brother. His mother, Edna, appears to have responded to the death with a refusal or inability to show her living son sufficient love, care or affection. Fitzgerald’s father comes across as a much kinder but ineffectual parent.

Fitzgerald surmises that if he had not taken up drinking, he would probably have committed suicide by the time he was 17. Instead, he started on the booze at 15 and soon his idea of a Saturday night out was to sit in the local cemetery drinking a flagon of wine. It didn’t make him happy but he stayed alive. Remarkably, despite the drinking, Fitzgerald was a brilliant student, topping most subjects and gaining a vital scholarship to university. There, initially, he also had great academic success, again despite spending almost all of his time in the pub.

He must have been a charismatic and intelligent young man, because although the drinking got far worse and was compounded by addiction to prescription drugs, he managed to have relationships with several women and bluff his way into research and teaching positions in the US. There, however, his drug and alcohol use escalated to the point where he spent 15 months in mental institutions.

He was eventually sent back to Australia, where he encountered AA and at 25 began the period of sobriety that has extended to this day and enabled him to be a stable and happy husband and father, as well as sustain a remarkable working life.

The first third of the book covers Fitzgerald’s unhappy childhood and drink-soaked early adult years. It’s a sad fact that people – or perhaps it is just me – find stories about troubled lives more entertaining than those about happy and balanced people. As a narrative, the book reaches its climax a little too early. Fitzgerald’s life after he stopped drinking is amazing, full of incredible achievements that dwarf those of most people. But the pages devoted to this part of his life don’t provide the same thrill and excitement as those covering the drinking years.

However, this is a memoir, not a work of fiction. Fitzgerald couldn’t choose retrospectively to extend his drinking for another 10 years just to entertain his readers. And, importantly, in the latter pages he has many profound things to say about alcoholism and the nature of humanity. Most interesting are his thoughts on AA, particularly his experiences as an atheist within an organisation where Christianity dominates. As this fact suggests, Fitzgerald has always been, above all, an iconoclast and this book illuminates all the joy and suffering of that state of being.

David Messer, Sydney Morning Herald, February 13, 2010

The raw honesty of “My name is Ross: An Alcoholics Journey” is compelling, confrontational and breathtaking . To reveal so much of himself in such candor show Professor Fitzgerald was deadly serious in his stated aim to help and encourage other alcoholics in their struggle with the demon drink.

Few well-known authors would have had the guts to write such a book .

By a third of the way through this painful journey I felt compelled to offer a silent prayer of thanks that I had escaped the destructive clutches of alcohol. This is a moving, authentic story, made more powerfully so by the warts-and-all way in which it is written.

I am amazed that Fitzgerald actually survived his alcoholism to write this book. He should be dead . As his early life races through the clouds and excesses of alcohol it takes him to the brink of destruction time and time again ; in and out of mental hospitals, subjected to electric shock treatment, suicide attempts, driving a car off Camden Bridge in Sydney all as a result of alcohol, drugs including LSD, amphetamines and barbiturates (all of which he swallowed, but never injected) .

The author says that ‘subtlety has never been my strong point’, but I suspect the frankness of this book is due in a large part to Fitzgerald’s ‘process of admission, reparation and repair’ as part of his beloved AA’s recovery program .

When I had come to terms with the initial shock of the book’s rawness, I realised that an alcoholic could read it and conclude that its utterly revealing honesty was helpful in that difficult journey from despair to seeking help.

One thing is certain : readers will conclude that the author’s much-loved wife, Lyndal is absolutely correct when she tells Fitzgerald when he is under going medical examination that he is ‘lucky to still have a brain from which to bleed’ .

The emotional struggle in dealing with his feelings for his mother and father is another painful recurring theme, and probably contributed to his anxiety and constant search for happiness. His love for his father is contrasted with his dislike for his mother, and ironically he was left with the final decision to turn off the life-support machine to end her unconscious life .

One of Fitzgerald’s few regrets is that his father never got to meet his wife. The three loves of his life are Lyndal, his daughter Emily and his father. These relationships are not just a powerful thread through the whole book. They have shaped his life.

The author loves to tell stories. The book unfolds as a conversation in a relaxed style as if Fitzgerald is telling the story over a few orange drinks at an Australian BBQ. His guests may be drinking alcohol, but Fitzgerald is standing fiercely with his non- alcoholic beverage in his hand.

He tells of his encounters with a long list of real life characters, mostly ordinary Aussies, and his yarns such as being mistaken for Dr Stephen FitzGerald, Australia’s Ambassador to China, bring a genuine chuckle to the reader.

Naturally Fitzgerald makes passing references to his numerous other writings and literary works, including the history of Queensland, his anti-racist views about indigenous Australians and, of course ,his love of AFL and life’s deadly sins. These provide a strong contrast to the boozing destructive behaviour of his youth and act as a beacon of hope for alcoholics.

His career as a political commentator and academic compels him to literally throw in the occasional political barb, such as his criticism of Gough Whitlam’s treatment of East Timor and even his opposition to my Christian generosity towards Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen.

For all the years I have observed him, Fitzgerald has lived by the motto of ‘speak the truth to power’, which is why he is both admired and disliked from one end of Australia to the other. He has genuine friends and enemies who will go to their graves either hating this book or admiring his guts for writing it.

His enemies will pick out his excesses and mutter behind his back as they have always done. His friends and the objective reader will see the journey of his life from near-death to a successful academic and literary career as nothing short of amazing.

As Ross Fitzgerald struggled to survive alcoholism, he came to understand that actions have consequences. In a world where alcohol daily destroys lives and costs the community a small fortune, this book is a significant contribution to understanding the struggle of alcoholics. As it dramatically illustrates, alcohol has no respect for position or wealth.

Now 40 years sober and 65 years old on Christmas Day 2009, Fitzgerald has by writing this book used his profile to shine a light on the ugly social effects of alcoholism.

I now better understand the demon drink from within the soul of an alcoholic, and it is not a pretty picture. This book has given me a better understanding of some of the homeless people I see every day in Los Angeles and the ongoing struggle they live with hourly.

This is Ross Fitzgerald’s best book and will make a lasting contribution to public debate on this complex and difficult issue. It is also a gutsy book. It took guts to write and, frankly, guts to read. But it must be read.

Review by Peter Beattie , former Premier of Queensland, Australia
‘My Name is Ross: An Alcoholic’s Journey’, by Ross Fitzgerald, New South, pp 240 , $34.95
Spectator Australia, February 12, 2010

Griffith University Emeritus Professor Ross Fitzgerald, a member of the NSW Government Expert Advisory Committee on Alcohol and other Drugs, has battled with alcohol addiction for most of his life.

Professor Fitzgerald has been sober for 40 years, with his last drink on Australia Day 1970.

“That means I’ve had 40 more years on the planet than I otherwise would have had,” he told brisbanetimes.com.au yesterday.

Professor Fitzgerald said alcohol and socialising went hand-in-hand in Australia, and that needed to change.

“Alcohol is so critical to our society that our language reflects that, so ‘to drink’ means to drink alcohol,” he said.

“And ‘what’s the matter, don’t you drink?’ means ‘what’s the matter, don’t you drink alcohol?’.”

Professor Fitzgerald, who this week launched his book My Name is Ross – An Alcoholic’s Journey, said excessive drinking could make people “very dangerous” to be around.

Something must be done to stop the cycle of of excessive drinking before it starts, he said.

“At a governmental level, there should be extensive education in schools,” Professor Fitzgerald said.

“There should be a ban on advertising alcohol before 8 o’clock at night and, very importantly, we should break the nexus between alcohol and sport, in exactly the same way they did with cigarettes.”

Professor Fitzgerald said the approach for treating diagnosed alcoholics also needed to change.

“Unfortunately in Queensland Health, there is still a concerted move to get alcoholics to control or moderate their drinking, when there is absolutely no evidence that over a long time this works,” he said.

“I’ve been running the line for the past 40 years that the only safe option, the only safe therapeutic goal, is total abstinence.”

That could only be done with a support network like Alcoholics Anonymous, he said.

Professor Fitzgerald’s comments came on the eve of a public hearing into alcohol-fuelled violence in Brisbane.

The parliamentary inquiry will continue today when its fourth public hearing is heard at Queensland Parliament House.

Law, Justice and Safety Committee chair Barbara Stone said witnesses would include anti-violence campaigner Paul Stanley and criminologist Professor Ross Homel.

“We know that this matter can not be instantly remedied and we are drawing on a wide range of sources to seek long-term solutions and to improve cultural attitudes to alcohol consumption,” she said.

Published by brisbanetimes.com.au