"It was originally going to be just an art book, but the publisher wanted to run a story with it," McDougall (63) recalled this week.
"So, I just let it go and didn't hold anything back."
The no-holds-barred narrative meanders candidly through McDougall's life and the blows he took battling alcohol and drug demons.
"The paintings and the life story went together intrinsically. I'm absolutely stoked with it. It is a fantastic record of an artist's work over 23 hard-out years and I'm happy that it's a 'recovery story', too. If it helps one person who's feeling beat down by addiction, I would be delighted," he said.
"You do get through it [addiction] and there's usually a treasure at the end of it."
McDougall was born in Wellington in 1948 before moving to Oamaru with his family, where he studied under regionalist painter Colin Wheeler at Waitaki Boys' High School.
He worked in the Pukeuri freezing works (McDougall's figures often wear his "173" freezing works number) and played drums in bands to finance an honours degree in political studies at the University of Otago, which he completed in 1971.
After working briefly as a lecturer, he left Dunedin and spent the next two decades travelling the world, working in iron-ore mines in Australia, pubs in England and oil rigs in the Arctic Circle.
McDougall is a man who was saved by a woman. He met English playwright Sarah McDougall in Australia in 1982 and they married and came to Dunedin in 1988.
The new wife was soon reading the riot act and McDougall went to dry out at Hanmer Springs.
"If I hadn't loved her so much I'd never have done it," he confessed.
"But, I wouldn't be alive today if I hadn't. And I'd never have become a painter if I hadn't gone to Hanmer and got well. Painting saved my life, really. I was a dead man walking. It's a road-to-Damascus thing."
His epiphany came when superintendent Robert Crawford asked him to paint a mural on a wall.
"That was the moment my life changed. I knew what I was meant to do."
The Broad Bay artist has held more than 60 national and international solo exhibitions.
In 2008, he held a 20-year retrospective of his work to coincide with his 60th birthday, "Hard Out - Twenty Years of Painting", at the Temple Gallery.
"I try not to censor myself," he says.
"I'm painting from within and bringing what's inside out. The painting forms and informs me as to what it is.
"I love the idea of spontaneity and letting whatever forces are out there to be part of the creation.
"The last stroke is always the title."
