Go Ask Alice

Yesterday I started reading Go Ask Alice. Today I finished it.

via

Picking up the book from the library, I knew I had heard about it. I knew it was one of those books that people who never read are affected by, and I knew it had something to do about the secret life on teenagers.


I feel a bit behind in reading this, like it should have been pivotal to my high school career in some way.
Honest to the whole world, I think I learned more about drugs in those 213 pages then I have learned in my entire life. I very clearly remember being tested in 9th grade health class about how many 'nicknames' for drugs I knew. 
Graded. 
As in, since I knew nothing, I failed. How does that work?


Getting back on track.
Knowing nothing about drugs, or the world people live in who use them, and never understanding for a moment the people who use them, I found the story....interesting....compelling....more than what I expected. I found....empathy...?....for why, and how, people could use them. Somehow, lines that she wrote made sense, and not that I would want to go through any of that- but I could see how people can manage to rationalize the high because of all the low in their lives. (Also given the context of the time, presumably late 1960's/early 1970's).


Basically what I am trying to say, is that the book hit it's target.
Before the journal entries begin the editors added a little note.
It reads:

"Go Ask Alice is based on the actual diary of a fifteen-year-old drug user.
It is not a definitive statement on the middle-class, teenage drug world. It does not offer any solutions.
It is, however, a highly personal and specific chronicle. As such, we hope it will provide insights into the increasingly complicated world in which we live.
Names, dates, place and certain events have been changed in accordance with the wishes of those concerned." 

Those bolded lines. That is what the book captures.


I wouldn't say I liked the book.
But I would recommend to read it.

And as Wikipedia, Spark Notes, and Snopes say- it is not anonymous, nor is it likely "true" as the editors say it is (specifically said by snopes);

"Our best guess is that a number of folks work at churning out these cautionary tales, which are then presented to an overly accepting public as real diaries on anonymous teens. Yet on the question of authorship, one thing is startlingly clear: whoever wrote Go Ask Alice was not a fifteen-year-old girl" (Snopes).

As an avid journalist for nearly 13 years, I find numerous things wrong and irritating with this "fifteen-year-old drug user" diary. Especially the last page and the epilogue- it bothers me and does not make sense. It is a death sentence that leaves me more puzzled than if Jonas and Gabriel live or die in The Giver.

Journal/Diary writing is an outlet. A way to expression emotions and work through thoughts. It is a chronicle for good times and an organizer during bad times. It is your own mind working through things to make sense of what is going on, and an outlet when people can't understand you.


Not a means of telling a story.