FIFTY YEARS SOBER: AN ALCOHOLIC’S JOURNEY

Ross Fitzgerald AM is Emeritus Professor of History & Politics at Griffith and author of 42 books, including two memoirs and seven Grafton Everest adventures. Most recently he has published Fifty Years Sober: An Alcoholic’s Journey . In a speech at The Sydney Institute – recorded to camera for podcast and Youtube broadcast – on Monday 23 March 2020, Ross Fitzgerald recalled his fifty years with Alcoholics Anonymous and the experiences of being an alcoholic.

FIFTY YEARS SOBER: AN ALCOHOLIC’S JOURNEY

ROSS FITZGERALD

I am very pleased that one of my closest friends in Sydney, Gerard Henderson, is launching my memoir today. When writing this speech, by mistake I had originally typed … one of my closet friends, Gerard Henderson.

Well I thought that was funny! After all I do write satirical novels. But often what I think is funny, other people don’t.

Anyway, despite of everything in these trying times, Gerard Henderson is indeed launching my memoir here at The Sydney Institute, and I’m very grateful.

To put it mildly, Gerard and I go back a very long way – through decades of thick and thin, and everything in between.

For the launch of my 42nd book Fifty Years Sober: An Alcoholic’s Journey to be held just a week after St Patrick’s Day is also entirely and utterly appropriate.

Like many of us I have Anglo-Irish heritage, and alcoholism may well have been in my genes. Like many who share that Celtic background I abused alcohol. In my case, that began when I was 14 and lasted until I was 25. Since then I have managed to stay sober for half a century, with the aid of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is also the case that, even though fewer than usual celebrated this year, a number of my non-AA Celtic compatriots, as per usual, were as drunk as skunks on St Patrick’s Day itself!

Since I stopped drinking and drugging on Australia Day 1970, Alcoholics Anonymous has continued to teach me that for an alcoholic one drink is too many and a hundred is not enough. Indeed, the trick for an alcoholic like me is not to pick up the first drink, and to keep attending AA meetings.

As AA stalwarts, Broken Hill Jack and Raucous Dick used to say:

“It’s not the third drink or the fifth drink or the tenth drink that does the damage. It’s the first drink, it’s the first drink, it’s the first drink!”

Raucous Dick got his nickname because he had no sense of volume. At a Brisbane AA meeting at Kangaroo Point one Tuesday night, a lady from the next door church hall said, “Excuse me, but someone’s making our cups rattle.”

AA has some great characters and Broken Hill Jack, who hailed from Broken Hill, was one of them. At AA meetings, Jack often used to say, “Think of the long-distance runner, friends. He gave up, yet just around the corner was the winning post. The message is simple, friends. Persist and persevere.”

As it happens, Broken Hill Jack and Raucous Dick were brothers and both were very influential in the AA movement.

Years ago, a recently sober young AA member, Steve, who loathed Raucous Dick, went into a bar and ordered a beer. But just before he started drinking that beer, Dick’s words came booming through his ears: “It’s the first drink, it’s the first drink, it’s the first drink!” Steve put down the glass and never drank again. In truth, Raucous Dick saved his life.But just before he started drinking that beer, Dick’s words came booming through his ears: “It’s the first drink, it’s the first drink, it’s the first drink!” Steve put down the glass and never drank again.

When I joined Alcoholics Anonymous I wasn’t at the end of the road; I was at the end of the end of the road! The stark reality is that if I hadn’t stopped drinking and drugging at 25 years of age, I wouldn’t have made 26.

Yet had I not started drinking at 14, I may well have suicided by the age of 18. This is because, as a child, I felt like a garbage-tip, and alcohol enabled me to hold down those dreadful feelings, but only for a while. Then the progressive nature of the illness of alcoholism began to thoroughly take hold. This was until, through the agency of Alcoholics Anonymous and particularly through attending AA meetings, I was released from the need to drink and use other drugs 50 years ago. Hence this book’s title Fifty Years Sober: An Alcoholic’s Journey.

The role of Alcoholics Anonymous in combatting alcoholism and other forms of drug addiction deserves to be celebrated.

However, of the millions of lives saved and transformed by this extraordinary movement, just as many have failed to grasp its simple message and the result has been personal hell, family breakdown, and often, an untimely death. Such is the destructive power of alcohol, society’s most pernicious and damaging drug.

Alcoholics Anonymous had its fragile beginning in the American city of Akron, Ohio, On 12 May 1935 when a recently sober New York stockbroker, Bill Wilson, fearful that, being alone on a business trip, he might return to drinking, hit on the idea of communicating with another alcoholic. After making inquiries, Bill Wilson was directed to a seemingly hopeless alcoholic physician, Bob Smith. As a result of listening to Bill tell the story of his alcoholism, Dr Bob had his last drink on 10 June 1935, which is the date on which AA is regarded as having been founded.

Ten years later, in March 1945, AA began in Australia, where it was much-needed.

From its beginnings, the AA program emphasised that alcoholism was not a moral problem but a health problem, one that could be arrested, a day at a time, by complete abstinence from alcohol. To achieve sobriety in the long-term often requires some kind of psychic change whereby an alcoholic person not only stops drinking but also sees the world in a much less narcissistic light.

Many members regard their involvement in AA as a way of life. A key aspect of AA’s therapeutic process involves what can be termed the mechanism of surrender. Instead of telling alcoholics to use their willpower, control their drinking or pull up their socks, AA suggests that a much more efficacious strategy is to admit that, at least in relation to alcohol, they are beaten.

This acceptance of defeat often produces, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, a shift in attitude that unlocks new and positive feelings, especially hope and a sense of usefulness.

Surrender in AA involves the letting go of control. Thus at AA meetings one often hears a speaker say: “I’m not a retired alcoholic, I am a defeated one. I’ve thrown in the towel.” To let go in surrender is totally different from fighting alcohol (or life). It is a giving up of the battle in order to move on. Despair and hopelessness, not personal strength, is at its source.

In an important article, “The Cybernetics of ‘Self’: A Theory of Alcoholism”, which appeared in his intriguing book of essays Steps to an Ecology of Mind, British anthropologist Gregory Bateson points out that the experience of defeat “not only serves to convince the alcoholic that change is necessary: it is the first step in that change”. To be defeated by the bottle, and to know it, is the means by which the “myth of self-power is broken by the demonstration of a greater power (that is, the power of alcohol)”.

In contrast, for an alcoholic to attempt to use their individual willpower and say, “I will beat the bottle” is nonsense because the “I” making this statement is an alcoholic “I”. As Bateson usefully explains, alcoholics who attempt to use self-control to fight alcohol addiction “will not, or cannot, accept the premise that drunk or sober, the total personality of an alcoholic is an alcoholic personality which cannot conceivably fight alcoholism”.

Let me put this another way. For an alcoholic to say, “I can beat the booze” is nonsense, because the person saying this is an alcoholic person.

Few people realise that the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung was intimately involved in the beginnings of AA. As Jung explained in a letter to Bill Wilson, “alcohol in Latin is ‘spiritus’ and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as for the most depraving poison”. Jung maintained that, for an alcoholic person, the most helpful formula was ‘spiritus contra spiritum’: spirit against spirit, power against power.

It was Jung’s deeply held belief that, for an alcoholic, the primary sources of long-term recovery were to be found in something like a “conversion experience”. This should not be confused with a religious conversion. In AA it is a conversion to accepting at depth that, in dealing with alcoholism, it is not sufficient to rely on the isolated self.

This fundamental psychic change needs constantly to be reinforced or the alcoholic will most likely revert to old ways of thinking, feeling and responding, and hence will eventually drink again.

There is a tendency for some alcoholics who have stopped drinking for a time, to come to believe that they can be totally self-reliant and that they can somehow control their drinking. Alcoholic pride can suggest that the individual is not really beaten. Instead of encouraging notions of supposed self-sufficiency, self-reliance and self-control, AA restructures the whole context and asserts over and over again that, with regard to alcoholism, the person is defeated.

The AA proposition “once an alcoholic always an alcoholic” reinforces a fundamental fact. Thus, in AA, members never use the past tense about their alcoholism. No matter how long an alcoholic has been sober, we begin sharing at a meeting by saying: “My name is — and I am an alcoholic.” Thus, when I speak at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings I always begin by saying “My name is Ross and I am an alcoholic.”

AA’s only theological conception is that of a power greater than the self. This is sometimes conceived as God, as one understands that concept, or one doesn’t. Just as the traditional stereotype of what comprises an alcoholic often blinds sufferers to the reality of their condition, so too can the traditional stereotype associated with God lead to confusion and resistance.

But once the theistic, Christian (or any other) stereotype is done away with, it becomes clear that the notion of a power greater than oneself makes room for all alcoholic people, including agnostics, and for atheists like myself. This is the case as long as we are willing to accept and rely on something outside or other than the isolated self, even if it is only the AA group, or groups, which we attend.

At some time during almost every AA meeting in the world, the newcomer will hear the following phrase: “You may leave this meeting today and need never drink again.” Often this is something that alcoholics have never considered before.

While a relatively small percentage of alcoholics stop drinking and drugging from their first exposure to the AA movement, a significant number of attendees at AA eventually learn to stop drinking and using, and to stay stopped.

All the elements that comprise Alcoholics Anonymous (attendance at meetings, the notion of alcoholism as an irreversible condition, working with other alcoholics, and the Twelve Suggested Steps of recovery) are part of a continuing process of surrender that offers the alcoholic not only freedom from the obsession to drink but also a sense of meaning and a useful way of life. Maintenance of the state of self-surrender underpins personal recovery and is a continuing source of hope.

As most AA meetings in Australia are open to the general public, anyone interested in alcoholism and addiction would be most welcome to attend.

One thing about AA meetings is that we always hear entertaining and edifying stories. Here is one of my favourites.

There was a long-time member called Edgy Bill, who gained his nickname because he belonged to the Edgecliffe AA group and he was also very nervous. Bill was a trade union official whose first major speech in sobriety involved being introduced to Bob Hawke when he was head of the ACTU. It was at a huge meeting at the Sydney Cricket Ground. Edgy Bill stood up and said, by force of habit – “My name’s Bill and I’m an alcoholic.” A wag in the crowd called out, “Then why don’t you sit down, you old pisspot!”

Actually, what happened to Edgy Bill almost happened to me. In 1977, I had been appointed Channel 7’s political commentator in Queensland. My first task was to speak on the 6 o’clock Brisbane news, direct to air, about Malcolm Fraser appointing Sir Zelman Cowen as Governor-General to replace the controversial Sir John Kerr.

After saying, “My name is Ross”, I caught myself just in time and continued, “and I think that the appointment of Sir Zelman Cowen as Governor-General is an excellent and much-needed healing decision.”

In 1978 at a party in the Brisbane suburb of Kenmore, where my wife Lyndal and I lived at the time and at which the G-G was present, I spoke about how much I loved Aussie Rules and in particular my father’s club, Collingwood. A pompous harridan put her nose in the air and said, “I think football’s so boring, don’t you Sir Zelman?” Our second Jewish Governor-General after Sir Isaac Isaacs replied: “In fact, I’ve just been appointed the Number One ticket-holder of the St Kilda Football Club!”

In the 1980s, Sir Zelman confided to me that one of his most precious possessions was a Sherrin football signed by then St Kilda full-forward, Tony “Plugger” Lockett.

Now here’s a piece of relatively arcane information: Lockett is the VFL/AFL’s highest goal scorer, kicking 1,360 goals in 281 matches with St Kilda and the Sydney Swans. You can file that way for later use.

If you will indulge me I have another story concerning Raucous Dick and my darling wife Lyndal, who was over 45 years sober when she died in January this year and to whom Fifty Years Sober: An Alcoholic’s Journey  is dedicated.

Indeed, Lyndal hadn’t had a drink since the very day our mutual friend, Barry Humphries, introduced us. Appropriately enough, given the sometimes explosive nature of our relationship, this was on Guy Fawkes Day, 5 November 1974. As it happens, Lyndal and I became lovers exactly a year later – on 5 November 1975 – and were married on Guy Fawkes Day 1976.

Sometime in the early 1980s, Broken Hill Jack rang me and said, “Could you do me favour, Ross? My brother Dicky’s finding life difficult in Brisbane. Next time you see him, could you please be nice to him.”

In those days, I wasn’t all that fond of Raucous Dick myself. The next time I saw him was at the Friday night AA meeting at the Uniting Church Hall in Kenmore, a meeting which Lyndal had founded. Originally, Lyndal had tried the local Catholic Church, but the priest had said: “There are no alcoholics in Kenmore, Mrs Fitzgerald.” (which was a moniker she disliked mightily). As it happens, the priest turned out to be an alcoholic himself!

Anyway, that Friday night Raucous Dick was wearing a white suit and looked rather like a Raymond Chandler detective. Thinking of something positive to say, I remarked, “That’s a very attractive suit you’re wearing Dick.” To which he responded, “I never mind a bit of bullshit, son. As long as there’s an element of truth associated with it”.

I liked him ever since.

When I was two years sober and still living in Sydney, I got offered a job at Makere University in Uganda. This was before Idi Amin got moving. As was my wont, I rang Broken Hill Jack. After listening for a moment, he said, “Are there many meetings in Uganda, laddie?”

“I tell you what”, he continued, “they live their lives a day at a time in Uganda. Do not be so silly, laddie. Stay where you are for the next two years.” Remarkably, I did what the man told me.

In conclusion, let me share with you that Lyndal’s original Sydney AA nickname was Adequate from Arncliffe. This was because at the weekly Tuesday night Arncliffe AA meeting that we both attended, Lyndal regularly talked about her striving, in her work, for adequacy, not for perfection.

It was only after listening to Adequate from Arncliffe and taking heed of James Thurber’s motto, “Don’t Get It Right. Get It Written”, that I actually started writing.

When I was drinking, I thought that I was a writer, but in those days I didn’t write a note to the milkman. Also, in my pre-AA days, as a perfectionist, my rule was, “If at first you don’t succeed, stop!”

It was only after I was three years sober that I published my first book, a slim volume of poems called The Eyes of Angels,  which got its name from the saying of the American poet, William Carlos Williams, “Poets are damned but they are not blind, they see with the eyes of angels”.

With the release of this memoir, I’ve now published 42 books. They may not be War and Peace, but they exist and are available in print, on-line, and in all good libraries. And this is all because of me paying attention to the wise words of James Thurber, and especially of Adequate from Arncliffe, who would be so proud of me today.

I’m immensely pleased to be here  for the launch of Fifty Years Sober: An Alcoholic’s Journey , which is published by Hybrid Publishers in Melbourne, as are my last three Grafton Everest political/sexual satires, most recently The Dizzying Heights co-authored with Ian McFadyen of “Comedy Company” fame.

In these trying times of social distancing, if you want something interesting and informative to read, Fifty Years Sober: An Alcoholic’s Journey  is now available for purchase online from Hybrid Publishers and from the book’s distributor, New Holland. It is also available as an e-book.

I’m very grateful to you Gerard, & to Anne, & to everyone at The Sydney Institute. As Dame Edna Everage once said: “Thanks for having me … and I mean that in the metaphorical sense!”

Interview with Gerard Henderson

Gerard Henderson: Well thanks Ross. When I launched your first volume here tenyears ago I commented, and I now formally launch the latest volume, I commented, “If you read the book you notice that as a young man Ross found he had three conditions – drug addiction, alcoholism and narcissism, and the good news is that two were in remission. But alas, not all of them.” So, having formally announced the book I’m going to join Redfern Ross and we’ll see how we go. Many thanks Redfern Ross.

Ross Fitzgerald: Thank you.

Gerard Henderson: So, I’ve been to one Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, not as a member as yet but as an attendee.

Ross Fitzgerald: At South Sydney in Redfern.

Gerard Henderson: At South Sydney in Redfern. And you spoke, but going back to the narcissism bit, you spoke a lot about yourself.

Ross Fitzgerald: Yes.

Gerard Henderson: Now I noticed a lot of other people down there spoke about themselves. I mean, was it a room full of narcissists, or recovering narcissists?

Ross Fitzgerald: Well, in my case I’m not a recovered narcissist by a long way. But, in reality at AA we do talk about, like at that meeting you went to, meetings start on time and finish on time, and within that structure sober alcoholics talk about what we used to be like, what happened and what we’re like now. People do indeed talk about themselves. And other alcoholics then can relate, rather than being told “Pull up your socks”, we just talk about ourselves in the hope that that may keep us sober, but also enable some other alcoholics and addicts to get sober and clean. So it’s true that at most AA meetings that are called identification meetings, we do talk about ourselves a lot.

Gerard Henderson: Do you think that there’s a relationship between narcissism and alcoholism?

Ross Fitzgerald: I think there’s a relationship between narcissism, depression and alcoholism. I think it’s a closer relationship between depression and alcoholism. Certainly and lucky for the world, most AA members aren’t as narcissistic as I am.

Gerard Henderson: Yes. So, on that speech you gave, and I’m sure you have an AA stump speech, because I think you say in your book, you go to between two and three meetings a week. And you always go on Saturday because you ring me just before you go so I know you’re on the way. But that sounded like a stump speech because in our many conversations over the years I’ve heard some of those stories. So, do you essentially say the same thing at every meeting or do you say different things?

Ross Fitzgerald: I often say the same things at the beginning. I usually start off by saying “My name’s Ross and I’m an alcoholic and an addict but today thanks to AA I’ve got nothing in my blood but blood”. But often I will talk about what’s been happening in the day or recently, so of course darling Lyndal died two months ago yesterday and at the meetings that I speak at I do speak about how difficult I’m finding life without her. And how I need to really remind myself of what Lyndal used to call at an organic level that however difficult this is, nothing can actually damage me as much as alcohol and other drugs damaged me. So, if I don’t pick up that first drink or drug and I stay close to Alcoholics Anonymous, I’m hoping that I will be able to survive her death

One of my theologies in AA is there’s no wrong reason for doing the right thing, And I don’t think there’s any wrong reason for an alcohol man or woman coming to AA, or any alcoholic man or woman stopping drinking, and I also don’t think there’s any wrong reason for not committing suicide. So one of the reasons I won’t be committing suicide as the result of Lyndal’s death, however empty and hopeless I feel, is I wouldn’t want to leave that legacy to our daughter Emerald and to my grandchild Ava. So I think there is no wrong reasons not to knock ourselves off. I actually think killing oneself is an extremely narcissistic act but you might disagree with that.

Gerard Henderson: No I don’t, but we’ll come back to that in a minute. So we’re talking about Lyndal Moor, Anne and I love Lyndal and she was a beautiful woman and there are photographs in the book of her as a young woman and her as a grandmother. But tell us about “Adequate from Arncliffe” as you mentioned her. Because I don’t think anyone had ever said before that Lyndal was a member of AA, I mean some people knew it, but I don’t think you ever mentioned it in your other books.

Ross Fitzgerald: And I don’t mention it in this book because Lyndal didn’t want me to write about her being a member of AA.

Gerard Henderson: But you’ve mentioned it at this talk.

Ross Fitzgerald: Yes. Because Lyndal’s dead.

Gerard Henderson:  So what would Lyndal have thought of that?

Ross Fitzgerald: It’s very hard to know that, bro. I don’t think she’d mind under the circumstances. But certainly Lyndal was totally different from me. I mean I proclaim my membership of AA wherever I go. Lyndal told almost no one in the general public. But she also, when we were teaching together at Griffith University her name was Lyndal Moor. She never told people she was married to me. So often she’d come back with these dreadful stories that people were telling her about this awful Ross Fitzgerald which is, it’s amazing she stayed with me bro.

Gerard Henderson: Yes. Well it’s amazing she started with you bro.

Ross Fitzgerald: Well the persistence was something that she’d never experienced before. The level of persistence.

Gerard Henderson: Yes, one of your friends said to me, I said to him, he was a poet, I said to him “How come that Lyndal married Ross?” and his reply was “Well, he nagged at her so often she married him to shut him up”. I mean there’s a degree of truth in that, is there not?

Ross Fitzgerald: Yes, although Lyndal tends to claim that she never actually said yes.

Gerard Henderson: But she didn’t actually say no?

Ross Fitzgerald: But she didn’t actually say no.

Gerard Henderson: Well before we move on I just want to go back to a question on AA, but you just talked about death and you talked about suicide and in your book you mention at least one attempted suicide where you drive the car off the cliff.

Ross Fitzgerald: The Camden bridge.

Gerard Henderson: The Camden bridge.

Ross Fitzgerald: That was a suicide pact with a young man who I had never met until that very day. And after the 13th rum and beer, the most appropriate thing in the world appeared to us to be to steal a car and drive it off a bridge and I drove it off the Camden bridge. It turns out the car belonged to W.C. Wentworth. It’s a complicated story.

Gerard Henderson: Who was a Liberal politician, right?

Ross Fitzgerald: He was a Liberal, I think he was minister for Aboriginal affairs.

Gerard Henderson:  Yes he was.

Ross Fitzgerald: And what happened was I drove it off the bridge. I was very, very ill and I was taken to the Royal Prince Alfred hospital by ambulance. And it just happened that the surgeon was a man called Miles Little who until recently was the Professor of Surgery at Westmead and also a very good poet. And he operated on me, did these amazing operations and saved my life. When I was a couple of years sober suggested that I should go and thank the people who’d helped me. So when that first book of mine The Eyes of Angels came out, I took it to Miles Little. And he was so pleased, he was the first person to pin me as an alcoholic because after I’d been on the critical list they found me pulling the drips out of my arm to try to go to the pub. Anyway, he was so pleased to see me and I gave him this book of poems The Eyes of Angels, and he said “I’ve just had a book published Ross, there’s no poems in this one but there’s plenty of you”. And the book was called Liver Trauma. It was about the six most amazing operations he’d performed in his career as a liver surgeon because the big hepatic vein had got severed. He saved my life.

Gerard Henderson: So, talking about, that was your I think it was your only suicide attempt

Ross Fitzgerald: No, I tried to kill myself in America.

Gerard Henderson:  Oh yes, we’ll leave that. But talk about wanting to die, because as I recall, I watched the 7:30 program probably eight or nine years ago discussing euthanasia and you’re there and you speak from the audience but you’re sitting next to Lyndal who says nothing. But at that stage there was a serious contemplation that you and Lyndal had about the importance of the euthanasia option. But when Lyndal got close to death and was dying there was no mention of it then was there?

Ross Fitzgerald: Well, it depends. She was sick for about two and a half years. And it was very important for her wellbeing that she had the possibility of knocking herself off as a way out. But in fact that didn’t happen. Because she died very peacefully.

Gerard Henderson: The Jewish hospice.

Ross Fitzgerald: At Wolper Jewish hospital. I have to say though, bro, that I became less and less enthusiastic about voluntary euthanasia while Lyndal was still alive.

Gerard Henderson: I rang you up on one occasion and you said to me, “Oh it’s too late for her to kill herself”. And I said to you, “Does she want to kill herself?”. And you said, “I don’t know”.

Ross Fitzgerald: No. Well she wanted to die at the end quickly and fortunately the palliative care specialist obliged her and she did die very quickly and peacefully. Believe it or not, Lyndal’s is the first dead body I’ve ever seen in my entire life. And I’m glad I did because I still find it hard to believe she’s dead but at least having seen her body, and she looked so beautiful actually.

Gerard Henderson: Well she looked beautiful even in sickness because there’s a photograph in the book and she’s only a few months off dying and she looks beautiful then. Whereas you turn up in one of the photographs in your pyjamas and another one in your singlet.

Ross Fitzgerald: That’s right.

Gerard Henderson: So. in other words you’re saying very briefly the palliative care worked well for her?

Ross Fitzgerald: Yes. And typical of Lyndal, our daughter Emerald and Ava and our son in law came out for Christmas, my birthday, I was 75 on Christmas Day. Lyndal moved forward the Christmas celebrations a week. And so it was a week before Christmas Day she cooked the entire Christmas dinner, Turkey and everything. She knew what was happening because on actual Christmas Day, she broke down and I had to take her to casualty and then she went to another hospital and then moved to the hospice. And they treated her wonderfully well at Wolper.

Gerard Henderson: Oh that’s good. So Shane Foley who has been active in helping alcoholics in his field for many, many years has put a couple of questions, because we don’t have an audience tonight. So what Shane has put to me to ask you is how do you know if a person you’re talking to or others close to them are alcoholic? I mean how do you work that out?

Ross Fitzgerald: So how can someone know whether they are alcoholic or someone close to them are?

Gerard Henderson: That’s it.

Ross Fitzgerald: I think as a general rule of thumb one needs to ask oneself is alcohol costing you more than money? For example, is it costing you loss of jobs, loss of relationships, does it cause you to act in ways that you regret? The second question to ask is, if after having picked up a drink, the first drink, can you guarantee your behaviour thereafter. Because usually, as I’ve said in my speech, it’s the first drink that produces the craving. And then I think the third thing to ask is does it happen often that you don’t, that after having gone out somewhere, you have no memory? That you suffer from alcoholic amnesia. Because my understanding is that that sort of alcoholic amnesia doesn’t happen to social drinkers. So if you answer yes to two out of those three questions, I think you can answer yes I am an alcoholic or yes he or she is an alcoholic.

Gerard Henderson: Before I go to the next point that Shane raised, I think you said to Alan Jones this morning that it was your first drink as a 14 year old, still in your schoolboy cap.

Ross Fitzgerald: Hat.

Gerard Henderson: From that drink you knew you were an alcoholic, pretty well. And looking back?

Ross Fitzgerald: Yes

Gerard Henderson: That drink exploded in a way.

Ross Fitzgerald: Yes, well what happened was this. My father, as you know, was a very tough man who played football for Collingwood, played a hundred games for Collingwood seconds and never played for the firsts. His father died of alcoholism, destroyed the family and destroyed the family business. So I would say my father was an alcoholic who never drank. Because dad knew that if he picked up a drink he’d end up like his father. And he had a pathological fear of alcohol. He also knew that his only living child, me, if I started to drink I’d end up in terrible trouble. But now I can’t remember what the question was.

Gerard Henderson: Well I can’t remember what the question was either. But I can remember what the answer is so that’s good enough.

Ross Fitzgerald: Oh, I know, about my first drink, that’s what I was going to say.

Gerard Henderson: Oh, your first drink, yeah.

Ross Fitzgerald: We didn’t have alcohol in our home. And I’d heard that a brandy, lime and soda was a drink that some people drank. I’d been to the doctor about 11 o’clock – I used to go to the doctors a lot because I learnt to be sick. It was about 11 o’clock and there was a pub called Her Majesty’s Hotel near Melbourne High School. It was also called Maisys because it was run by a drag queen called Maisy. I went in and said, “Could I please have a brandy, lime and soda?” And the barman said, “Yes but I suggest you take your school hat off first son.” But that was like putting aeroplane fluid into me. Although alcohol never made me feel as good as other people, let alone better than other people, it held down the pain of being myself for a while. But alcoholism then took over.

Gerard Henderson: So at a young age you had a lot of pain in being yourself. Why would you be so painful about being yourself at the age of 14?

Ross Fitzgerald: Well I never knew my mother and father when they were happy. My poor old mum would lie when telling the truth would do. And my elder brother Rodney died in my father’s arms when the babe was only six months old. Of course, after that, they both had nervous breakdowns. Every now and again my mother Edna (Barry Humphries used to sometimes get her to come to his shows and he would say there’s a real Edna here tonight) would say, “Do you see the brightest star in all the skies?” I’d look up and she’d say, “That’s your brother Rodney.” And I’d think, “Goodness me.” I mean I had a burning resentment against that brother.

But the reason I felt like a garbage tip was that it’s very hard for a child not to have any sense of what’s true and what’s not true. And my mother was a liar. If she gave you a trinket she’d say it was gold. And I must say Gerard that one of the things that attracted me most to Lyndal. It was not just her physical beauty, but that she was utterly honest. And the fact that she loathed my mother was also a very good sign.

Gerard Henderson: Well she was very honest with you. I mean she didn’t take many of your medical obsessions very seriously. I think she wrote for the book Partners that Anne Henderson co-edited with you of your concern about having cancer of the little finger. I think she dismissed that.

Ross Fitzgerald: Yes. When we were a year sober, I whimpered and said, “I don’t feel very well.” And Lyndal said, “Darling, the pyramids were built by people who didn’t feel very wel.l” Although Phillip Adams tells me that’s not true, that they were actually very well fed, the workers.

Gerard Henderson: I don’t think Phillip would know, actually. I really don’t. You mentioned Barry Humphries and, like Lyndal, Barry rarely discussed his alcoholism. I knew about it when I was a university student because I knew a professor at Sydney who had come to visit Barry in hospital in Melbourne and he told me. But I don’t think he mentioned it.

Ross Fitzgerald: Yes he did. Barry wrote about …

Gerard Henderson: Later on, but not earlier.

Ross Fitzgerald: No certainly not earlier on.

Gerard Henderson: Anne and I went up and saw his show in Newcastle with his previous production to the current one that was on recently, and he did discuss it then. So, you had an early involvement with Barry didn’t you?

Ross Fitzgerald: Well we drank together and we got sober together. And indeed, the last mental hospital we’d both been in as patients was a place called Delmont in Malvern. The night before we were due to be discharged we got taken to a very big AA meeting at the Malvern Town Hall. After the meeting, I came up to Antique Harry in tears and said, “Harry, do you ever think I’ll get this thing?” And instead of saying no hope unless you get off the tablets which is true but not very helpful, Antique Harry said to me, “Son, if you stay close to this movement you’ll be alright.” And those words connected with my heart. And as damaged as I was, and I was very damaged, I had a lot of shock therapy, as damaged as I was I knew Harry couldn’t have had faith in me, how could he? But what he had faith in was the meetings of AA and the structure of AA. Starting on time, like psycho-analysis, starting on time and finishing on time, and within that structure sober alcoholics talking about what we used to be like, what happened and what we’re like now.

Gerard Henderson: So you and Barry are both graduates of Delmont?

Ross Fitzgerald: Yes.

Gerard Henderson: And probably the most two distinguished graduates they had I guess?

Ross Fitzgerald: Probably. Barry often tells the story, because he drank again. He was on a plane and the steward said, “Would you like a drink?” and Barry said, “I don’t drink alcohol.” The steward said “Well you’ve just had one”.

Gerard Henderson: And that was it?

Ross Fitzgerald: That was it

Gerard Henderson: He was back on it again? And then he was off.

Ross Fitzgerald: But he’s 50 years sober now himself.

Gerard Henderson: He’s 50 years sober himself. So going back to another question from Shane which is, “Why after having been sober for 50 years do keep attending the meetings of AA?”

Ross Fitzgerald: Well, if I stop coming to Alcoholics Anonymous for more than a fortnight consciously, that would be a sign that I’m doing this on my own. But I’m not sober because I’m strong or pretty or clever. I’m only sober because I’ve surrendered. But I need to surrender day after day. Because if I stop going to meetings of AA, I would soon forget. And William James says in the varieties of religious experience, in the long term battle between the will and the imagination, the imagination wins out every time. So, I need to realise that I need help to stay sober and to organically — to use Lyndal’s phrase — organically remember where I’ve come from.

Gerard Henderson: But was that true of Lyndal, “Adequate from Arncliffe”? She didn’t feel the need to go to these meetings did she?

Ross Fitzgerald: Well as I said, she founded the Kenmore AA meeting in Brisbane.

Gerard Henderson: Yeah but she didn’t keep going did she?

Ross Fitzgerald: But for the last 15 years of her life she didn’t go to AA except she’d go to my AA anniversary which was Australia Day, 26 January. But, unlike me, Lyndal didn’t feel the need to go to any meetings, whereas I need to go to a few a week.

Gerard Henderson: So, tell us a bit about AA because it seems to be one of the most diverse and democratic groups in any country.

Ross Fitzgerald: Anarchistic

Gerard Henderson: Yeah. Because there you’ve probably got judges, you’ve got public servants …

Ross Fitzgerald: Prostitutes

Gerard Henderson: Prostitutes, you’ve got university professors …

Ross Fitzgerald: Narcissists

Gerard Henderson: Narcissists and guys who drive trucks and all sorts of people. When I was there I noticed just how diverse it was.

Ross Fitzgerald: That’s because the only requirement for membership in AA is a desire to stop drinking. And so it brings together a whole lot of people who share one common thread and that is the desire to stop drinking and stay stopped.

Gerard Henderson: So you wonder about people like Bill Wilson and Bob Smith who set it up in 1935 which isn’t all that long ago if you think about it.

Ross Fitzgerald: In 1945 here in Australia, Dr Sylvester Minogue was one of our founders in New South Wales and he used to get locked up in his own psychiatric hospital.

Gerard Henderson: So, they set it up. As I understand it, it’s what would be called a non-government organisation, and NGO, but it never got any government money.

Ross Fitzgerald: Well AA refuses to take money from outside sources. Bill Wilson initially tried to get money from John Rockefeller and Rockefeller said, “Money will spoil this.” And so we never ever accept money from, except at the end of the meeting, we put some money in the plate if we have any.

Gerard Henderson: But when I was there I wasn’t allowed. I was happy to make a contribution and I was told you can’t. If you’re not part of the group you can’t.

Ross Fitzgerald: If you’re not a member of AA, because AA is self supporting through our own activities.

Gerard Henderson: And do you think that’s one of the reasons for its success?

Ross Fitzgerald: Absolutely.

Gerard Henderson: Because you’re independent?

Ross Fitzgerald: And because it really is an anarchistic organisation in the sense that there is no governing body. Nobody can be stopped from coming to AA. There’s no, you know, the fact that especially early on, the fact that one was you know, gay, or in prison or this or that. Bill Wilson and Dr Bob realised that the only way this can work is to allow it to be open for anyone who has a desire, however slim, to stop drinking.

Gerard Henderson: We’re sort of winding up now. What AA has in common with The Sydney Institute is punctuality. You start on time, you finish on time, everyone knows when it’s going to end. When I was there I noticed no one left early because everyone didn’t have to rush for anything because they knew it would stop, I think it started at 2.20 and it ended at 4, I think those were the times roughly.

Ross Fitzgerald: 2 to 3:30pm.

Gerard Henderson: 2 to 3:30pm, so it’s an hour and a half. And it all sort of works.

Ross Fitzgerald: Well that structure is very important. One of the many things I like about The Sydney Institute is the fact that, no matter what, it starts at 6pm and finishes on 7pm for example.

Gerard Henderson: And you like the routine?

Ross Fitzgerald: Absolutely.

Gerard Henderson: Your life is built around routine?

Ross Fitzgerald: It is. And it’s like traditional psycho analysis. That the meetings start on time and finish on time no matter what.

Gerard Henderson: I think you I remember you had some dealings with Dr Joe Santamaria at St Vincent’s in Melbourne, a well known doctor who was a specialist in this area.

Ross Fitzgerald: In alcoholism

Gerard Henderson: In alcoholism and some other areas of addiction. I think you told a story once about him, of a woman who went to him and then he wrote a prescription to her GP, I guess.

Ross Fitzgerald: Well the prescription was to an address, and the address was a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in Richmond. And he wrote, “I prescribe large doses of Alcoholics Anonymous for this reluctant debutante.” But Dr Joe Santamaria, Bob’s brother, was once asked, “What are the most dangerous drugs in Australia?” He said, “Alcohol, alcohol, alcohol.” And that is still true. Alcohol is the most pernicious and dangerous drug in terms of its effect on society. This is not to, in any way, diminish the terrible things that happen with ICE addicts and so on. But in terms of the drug that’s most abused in our society, it’s alcohol.

Gerard Henderson: So, final question, I’m a young boy or these days I might well be a young girl, I’m 14 years old and I’ve just gone in and got a whatever it was …

Ross Fitzgerald: A brandy lime and soda

Gerard Henderson: A brandy lime and soda and I go back and talk to my parents or perhaps to a friend and they ring you and ask your advice. What do you say to someone who might end up as you were before you went sober for 50 years? What advice would you give them?

Ross Fitzgerald: Well it’s rather like the advice Lyndal and I gave to Emerald our only daughter. Lyndal and I pointed out that both her mother and father are alcoholics, so she needed to be aware that there is probably a genetic predisposition to alcoholism in your case. It’s hard to know what advice I’d give. What I often do is to say, if people have a child, or a young relative who’s showing signs of alcoholism, perhaps the best thing is for those people to go to AA and for the children to go to Alateen. So AA is for the lovers, families, mothers and fathers and friends of alcoholics, and Alateen is for young people whose parents are alcoholics.

Gerard Henderson: Okay, and you can’t go to AA until you sort of surrender or want to surrender from drinking?

Ross Fitzgerald: Well, some people say that. But you see, it’s like, there’s no wrong reasons for someone going to AA. When I was on the parole board for 20 years in Queensland and the New South Wales State Parole Authority, I’d often send prisoners and parolees to attend AA meetings – as a requirement of their parole. There are quite a few who go to Alcoholics Anonymous and not wanting to stop drinking, but actually after hearing the meeting, and hearing, identifying with those very things that they thought nobody else did or nobody else felt, often just going to some meetings of AA can bring about a desire to stop drinking.

Gerard Henderson: So, I think that’s a good spot on which to end. And so all the best with this and we hope we’ll have you back in 60 years sober which is only 10 years away and there may be more sort of tall stories to put in here that you’ll remember.

Ross Fitzgerald: And I don’t think we’ll need to keep the seat warm for you, or Anne for that matter.

Gerard Henderson: But you don’t, some of these stories seem to grow as the years go on, because there’s a lot of good fun in this book, there’s a lot of good stories, and a lot of sad stories too. So we miss Lyndal but we say, “Ross, many thanks.”

Ross Fitzgerald: Thank you Gerard.