Go Ask Alice

Bibliography:

Anonymous. (1971). Go ask Alice. New York: Simon & Schuster, 213 pp.

Genre and Awards:

Fiction- Drug Abuse

ALA Best Books For Young Adults, ALA Best of the Best Books for Young Adults,

Before beginning this blog, I must record my ignorance to the controversy regarding the authorship of Go Ask Alice. I assumed the anonymous author, who I will refer to as Alice, was an actual person.

In the diary, Alice, a relatively normal middle class girl, inadvertently tries LSD by drinking a Coke laced with it at a party. She experiences an incredible trip, but vows to never use drugs again. In her next few diary entries, which occur in less than a week’s time, she progresses from being horrified by the “low-class” and “despicable” nature of drug use to allowing her new friend Bill to inject her with speed.

Alice’s accelerated progression from accidentally ingesting LSD to intravenous drug use was the cause of my skepticism. I didn’t find the timeframe or description of events realistic at all, so I Googled the book. The “diary” is reported to have been written by Beatrice Sparks, a psychologist and Mormon youth counselor, who claimed to be the book’s editor.

I finished the book (even though I hate being intentionally mislead) and it was relatively entertaining, but continually unrealistic. Particularly troubling is the way addiction is dismissively presented. Alice goes through several promising periods of sobriety even after trying such addictive drugs as heroine. During these periods of abstinence from drug use Alice documents almost no cravings.

The most disturbing relapse occurs after Alice and her friend Chris return home from San Francisco. They fled to San Francisco after turning in their ex-boyfriend drug dealers to the police. At first, Alice is happy to be welcomed back into the comfort and safety of her family home. But shortly after returning home, she gets some drugs at school and runs away. On the road, she loses complete track of reality and prostitutes herself in exchange for drugs. The diary continues in this up and down fashion. The ending, as you might expect from a manipulative fake diary about drug abuse, is down.

This book does not address multi-cultural issues beyond selecting a white, middle-class family to confront this topic, suggesting drug abuse can affect any home.

I would not recommend this book to students because the language is outdated and the writing is contrived and poorly developed. I believe even unsophisticated readers will determine that the diary is a fraud. If I had to select an age range, I would select ages 14 and older.