Misfit: The Unravelling of Samantha X
Amanda Goff
Echo 2025, 272 pages, $34.99

ROSS FITZGERALD

Amanda Goff’s Misfit is an emotionally raw, utterly honest, and at times very funny book. Although this is her third memoir, it is the first written and published under her own name. It opens with Goff physically and metaphorically laid bare, describing her visceral pain: “If I peel my whole body, will I discover who I am?”

While devouring Misfit, I kept thinking of another remarkable woman, Marilyn Monroe, who starred in my favourite movie, The Misfits. Released in 1961 and directed by the great John Huston, it featured the luminous but deeply troubled Ms Monroe, accompanied by two all-time male greats, Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift.

At the age of 38, after working as a journalist in London and Sydney, despite being a single mother Goff became “Samantha X” – Australia’s most highly paid sex worker. A few years later, she opened her own escort agency, hiring women over 40, for a niche market.

A bipolar diagnosis in 2022 by Professor Gordon Parker, Professor of Psychiatry at UNSW, and founder of the Black Dog Institute, changed everything for her:
“After an hour or so of reviewing me, Prof Parker said ‘Most of my patients I’m 80% sure they have bipolar. ‘With you, I’m 100% sure you have Bipolar 2 disorder.” Goff continues: “He then explained that, unlike Bipolar I which manifests in full-blown mania, Bipolar 2 involves hypomanic and depressive episodes.”

To her, this made perfect sense. She immediately retired from sex work, stepped away from being Samantha X, and began to discover who she was, and who she is now.

“The Unravelling of Samantha X” is Misfit’s helpful subtitle. Appropriately, on the book’s back cover these words are highlighted in red:
I wanted to go back to the real me, Amanda Goff. Yet there was just one problem. I had no idea who she was. I had no idea who I was. I hadn’t been Amanda for years, decades. Samantha wasn’t leaving just yet; she wasn’t going to make a quiet exit. She wasn’t that type of woman.

Misfit documents, in graphic detail, Goff’s journey of self-discovery, and her struggle for acceptance, by herself and others. She not only had to deal with being bipolar, but she also had to confront traumatic demons from her childhood, and from her more recent past. The latter included the punishing judgement, by herself and others, about her career as a sex worker, and her mental illness. It is not surprising that, from time to time, Goff reports that she was almost overwhelmed by guilt, regret, and even more by shame.

At the core of Misfit is Goff’s relationship with her alter ego Samantha X: “Part of me doesn’t recognise the woman who became Samantha, part of me hates her, and part of me yearns for her”. This thirst to recognise and redefine herself permeates many levels of Goff’s life – in business, in friendship, and relationships with family and lovers. Misfit eloquently explores the deep experience of grief that accompanies this redefinition.

An important thread running through this lucidly-written book is Goff’s alcoholism and her addiction to other drugs. This involved her suffering from chronic anxiety and depression, extreme exhaustion, a deep sense of dread, and frequent thoughts of suicide. Often she only had her dog for company.

Before Goff finally became totally abstinent from alcohol six years ago, her behaviour was almost as erratic as when she was drinking:
In other words, in those days getting sober from time to time did not make much difference to my behaviour. I went from elation, highs, mania, feelings of grandiosity to a massive slump, depression, lying in bed for days staring at the walls, intrusive feelings of suicidal thoughts. Until I saw Prof Parker I had just assumed I was ‘mad’, and that there was no hope for me.

It was only when she stopped using all mood-changing drugs that she began to dramatically change for the better. These days, to use my favourite expression for being free of alcohol and other drugs, Amanda “has nothing in her blood but blood.” Hence, now she often experiences joy and a real connection with other people, and also with nature.

One of the most common experiences of becoming and remaining sober is the question – “Surely you could have one drink now?” As Goff explains, because alcoholism is a progressive disease, “the answer is No. It is the first drink that does the damage.” She perceptively writes: “Let me hold a mirror up to those people and ask them this: what is it in me that triggers you so much? Or, really, The question should be: what is it in you that you are finding it hard to accept about yourself?”

Even though alcoholism is a health problem not a moral problem, those who seek treatment are still sometimes treated as pariahs. In Australia, people who are teetotal are often to be avoided. The theatrical alter ego of my longtime friend and fellow AA member Barry Humphries was the dribbling dipsomaniacal Australian Minister for the Yartz , Sir Leslie Colin Patterson. Barry’s favourite Les Patterson song was the raucous “Never Trust A Man Who Doesn’t Drink!”

In order to help themselves and others, it is suggested that AA members talk about ‘what they used to be like, what happened, and what they are like now’. In her early days attending meetings, but before she fully identified and stopped drinking, Amanda recounts listening to stories in the rough end of Redfern. Some members there were homeless, ex-criminals, in state-funded rehabs, who talked about self-hate and feelings of worthlessness.

As she puts it, “It was the first time I heard the similarities. I felt I had more in common with a man who had just come out of jail than with the privileged housewives of Double Bay.”

These days Amanda doesn’t live in the past or feel fearful about the future. As she writes, “All we have is today. One day at a time. You don’t need to be in a 12-step recovery program to live by those words. I’m feeling something I have never, ever felt before – a sense of peace. I am actually really happy.”

It is pleasing to report that, through the agency of her weekly twelve-step meeting in Sydney, Amanda Goff is now four years clean and sober. As a result, she is of great assistance to helping other alcoholics and addicts on the path to recovery. In her experience, “Sobriety delivers everything alcohol promised, happiness, fun, success; a good life.” She offers some useful advice:
If you’re stuck in that cycle of drinking and drugs, know it’s because you are trying to numb your pain, just like I was …If you think you have a problem with booze, then you have a problem with booze. If you think you should stop, you should stop. If your loved ones are worried about you, time to stop. If you are reading this and deep down think it’s you I am talking to, it’s time to stop.

In the final chapter Goff writes, “You don’t need to be drinking out of paper bags, or starting drinking in the morning to have a problem with alcohol.” Having myself written for decades about alcoholism and addiction, in my opinion this is absolutely true. As someone who is fifty-five years clean and sober in of Alcoholics Anonymous, and who stopped drinking and using at the age of twenty-five, I can vouch for the veracity of Goff’s claims about the benefits for alcoholics and other addicts of total abstinence from booze and other mood-changing drugs. As she says: “I promise you won’t regret giving up drinking, you won’t regret choosing your health and wellbeing. You won’t be boring, your life won’t be over – it will be just beginning, whatever your age.”

My hope is that these words, and Misfit as a whole, might encourage those readers who want to stop drinking, but think they can’t, to realise that there is a way out.

Goff’s transformation to becoming and remaining a sober person is an inspiration. Instead of being utterly self-centred as she was when she was “living the high life”, Amanda is now of service to others, especially at her Sunday night twelve-step meeting: “My job is to help set the room up. I drag the chairs from the cupboard, hang the banners up with slogans like ‘Keep It Simple’ and ‘Easy Does It’, and set the kitchen up with the $2 Kmart mugs, teabags and packets of Tim Tams.”

Goff describes what then happens : “We sit on plastic chairs and someone volunteers to be the chairperson, and their job is to hold the meeting, and to ask members to share their stories.” “And yes”, she says, “it is like the movies.” When she shares her story she aways begins, “My name is Amanda, and I am an alcoholic addict.”

As she points out, “Service roles keep us accountable; they are a clever ploy that means we have to turn up because we have a responsibility, people are relying on us. Service roles keep us sober, and they help the newcomer.” In this fellowship, there are no bosses and no leaders. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. Older members often sponsor neophytes, which usually means taking them through the 12 steps and being a support person on the end of the phone. Apart from a small box being passed around at the end of each meeting for non-obligatory donations, it’s free.

Goff writes,” Some think it’s a cult, but it’s the only cult I know that doesn’t want your money or your children, just your health and sobriety.”

The unfortunate fact is that there is still a lot of misunderstand about 12-step recovery programs. This is part because Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous are entirely nonprofessional, and are often looked down upon by medicos and other professional people.

When I was a professor with a personal chair at Griffith University, one of my colleagues put his nose in the air and sneered: “That Alcoholics Anonymous is brainwashing.” To which I replied: “It certainly is. And I’ve got the sort of brain that needs to be washed very regularly!”

The fact is that nothing is mandatory in AA. For example, the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions are only suggested. Moreover, when members speak at meetings, they do not even have to say that they are alcoholics, and no-one can be banned from AA . Actually, AA is the closest thing to peaceful anarchism in action.

The most common misperception is that AA is a religious organisation and that members have to believe in God. This is utterly false. While there are fervent Christians and other staunch believers at meetings, there are also plenty of agnostics, and many life-long atheists like myself.

To a number of members, including Goff, the AA movement is “spiritual” in the broadest sense of the word:
Yes, we talk about God; but your god doesn’t need to be the man in the sky – it can be a higher power of ‘your understanding’. I believe in some kind of god; I believe death is the beginning of another journey. I believe we are energy, and energy never dies. My god is Mother Nature – I mean, she is undeniable.

In this fine memoir, Amanda Goff’s voice comes through loud and clear. Hence it strikes me as an excellent idea that Misfit ought become a talking book, spoken by the author herself.

Ross Fitzgerald’s new novel, Chalk and Cheese, co-authored with Ian McFadyen, about two 80 year old ex-radio stars who hate each other and end up in the same nursing home, will be published by Hybrid Publishing in July.

Quadrant, May 2025, pp 71-73.