Go Ask Alice
1971
- homelessness
- bad trips
- psychiatric hospitals
- child prostitution
- probation
- hitchhiking
- child sexual abuse
- heroin
- rape
- psychedelic experiences
The story
A teen plunges into a downward spiral of addiction in this classic cautionary tale. January 24th After you’ve had it, there isn't even life without drugs… It started when she was served a soft drink laced with LSD in a dangerous party game. Within months, she was hooked, trapped in a downward spiral that took her from her comfortable home and loving family to the mean streets of an unforgiving city. It was a journey that would rob her of her innocence, her youth—and ultimately her life. Read her diary. Enter her world. You will never forget her. For thirty-five years, the acclaimed, bestselling first-person account of a teenage girl’s harrowing decent into the nightmarish world of drugs has left an indelible mark on generations of teen readers. As powerful—and as timely—today as ever, Go Ask Alice remains the definitive book on the horrors of addiction.
What it’s like
Short dated diary entries in a breathless, earnest first-person voice, the prose plain and youthful with plenty of white space between entries, so it reads like a private notebook slowly coming apart. The world is urban and grim: cold streets, crowded shelters, the bare corridors of a psychiatric ward, rendered in flat, unadorned detail rather than lush description. The vibe is bleak, didactic and wrenching, closer to a cautionary confession than a story being shown to you. Pacing is brisk and cumulative, each entry a small step downward, and the emotional register swings between hope, self-reproach and despair as a bright, loved teenager sinks into addiction and exploitation before a late, uncertain turn toward recovery. Intensity is high and not gentle. Drug use and bad trips are central, and the book touches on rape, child sexual abuse, child prostitution and violence. These are reported through the diarist's naive, non-graphic voice, but the weight still lands hard. It does not suit anyone seeking comfort. It is for readers who want an unsparing, morally earnest account of addiction, and for those who remember it from school.
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