Go Ask Alice Review

Addiction, scandal, deceit, insanity- qualities that would make a page-turning, heart-wrenching work of fiction. There is a book of this nature- not fiction, but a real-life account of a 15 year old girl’s descent into self destruction, and ultimately death. Does the book seem so entertaining now? Go Ask Alice is a revolutionary novel. Not because it is a new story or because it is so raw, but because it has opened millions of readers’ eyes to the truth about adolescent drug use and its extensive impact on America’s youth.

The wonder of the anonymously written Go Ask Alice is that the story of a 15 year old girl and her year long struggle with drug addiction is based on a young woman’s true account, via her diary. The author (we’ll call her Alice) is a middle-class, white, heterosexual, American teenager growing up in the 1960’s. She has a younger sister, a younger brother, and two happily married parents. Her diary begins documenting something very important to a lot of teenage girls: boys. “Yesterday when he asked me out I thought I’d literally and completely die of happiness” (Anonymous, 1).

Go Ask Alice incorporates a wide array of issues that are prevalent in girls studies: body image, peer pressure, female sexuality, and drug use, among others. She is only 14 when she decides to keep her first diary, and within the first four pages she is already writing about dieting and her desire to be thin. She deprecates herself with her own language, saying she will stay on a diet until she has lost “ten globby pounds of lumpy lard” (Anonymous, 4). This proves that the pressure on girls and women to stay very thin in order to conform to beauty standards was just as prevalent when this book was written in the ‘60’s as it is today. It is obvious to the reader that Alice views beauty and thinness as forms of power, mediums that will help her obtain what she desires: “…maybe just before we leave and I’m thin and my skin is absolutely flawless and petal smooth and clear, and I have clothes like a fashion model he’ll ask me for another date” (Anonymous, 4).

Her personal diary is also a key insight into the way young girls think about their own sexuality. After Alice loses her virginity at 15, she feels much remorse and negativity, and it is all she writes about for days. “I wonder if all the kids had sex- but no, that’s just too awfully animal and indecent!” (Anonymous, 41). She notes how her expectations of sex and the actual experience differ drastically: “All my life I’ve thought that the first time I had sex with someone it would be something special…” (Anonymous, 41). Afterward, she beats herself up, calling herself a “stupid, bungling, senseless, foolish, ignorant idiot!” (Anonymous, 47). She is so upset that she finds she cannot sleep and starts abusing her Grandfather’s sleeping pills. This is a far reaching concern in girls studies, as the negative effect of abstinence-only education and myths of virginity work to destroy young women’s self esteem and perceived self value, as described in Jessica Valenti’s The Purity Myth.

Peer pressure is one of the most powerful forces in Alice’s life. Her entire journey into drugs begins when she goes to a party where she wants to fit in with the popular crowd. As her writing continues, readers discover that she even sells drugs to elementary school kids and to her classmates because of pressure from her boyfriend, Richie. Toward the end of the book, when Alice is attempting to stay clean once again, she realizes that it will not be as easy as she had hoped. “The kids have really started hassling me. Twice today Jan banged into me in the hall and called me Nancy Nice and Mary Pure” (132-3, Anonymous). She is even assaulted and threatened several times. What is most shocking is that the largest wave of negative peer pressure comes from Alice’s old friends when she is trying to stay off of drugs. Her parents are completely sightless to what her classmates are doing to her, and it is a stark reminder that peer pressure remains one of the toughest obstacles in young women’s lives.

In addition to teenage peer pressure, her journal vividly captures the effects of drugs on the mind, and the powerful effect a bad trip can have on one’s psyche. After her classmates trick her by lacing chocolate covered peanuts with acid, she has a violent trip unlike any she has encountered before. “I can’t close my eyes because the worms are still crawling on me… they are crawling through my nose and gnawing in my mouth and oh God…” (164). The trip is so bad that she even winds up in a mental hospital for a few weeks. Alice has constant ups and downs with loving and hating drugs, swearing off of them and scrambling to acquire them. It is a sincere depiction of her struggle between being a good daughter and resisting what she desires, which is something that many girls have trouble coping with. There is so much binary discourse surrounding girls, a dichotomy of “good” and “bad” (and nothing in between) that it can cause many problems and internal conflicts within the minds of young women. Go Ask Alice provides us with a personal dialogue of just this.

Although this book is a detailed account of Alice’s drug use, it fails to paint a complete picture of Alice as a person. In her diary, she shares her woes and triumphs, and uses her entries to vent about her feelings. The readers get to see the most personal and honest sides of Alice, which is a strength of the book. On the same note, the readers do not get the full and complete picture of Alice’s life. It is only in the last few pages of the book that Alice mentions that she is an excellent piano player. What this particular record is missing are the strengths that Alice possesses. Her diary is primarily an account of her insecurities, her vulnerability, and her low points in life. It has recorded the darkest moments of her indiscretions, with very little evidence of her likes and dislikes, her talents, or her passions. More readers may have found something in common with Alice had these details been included, even if they were provided in an introduction by the editors.

This missing element is significant because it is important for people to understand that teen drug users are not just volatile or innately prone to such dangerous activity- they can also be happy, intelligent, driven adolescents with full lives and well rounded activities. This is part of a larger picture in girls studies: peer pressure, body image issues, depression, and addiction can happen to any girl, regardless of her education level, class, race, or age. This book changes the way its readers think about addiction and the pressure placed on young girls by their peers, parents, and society to fit into a certain category.

Alice’s last entry in the diary is an optimistic one. She expresses her fears about returning to school, but reassures herself, stating, “…”I’m much stronger than I used to be. I know I am” (Anonymous, 213). She decides not to keep another diary. The reader is left with hope for Alice- she seems to be doing well, she has been successfully reunited with her family, and has her love interest, Joel, to help her through her fears. This hope is completely devastated on the next page, the Epilogue, where it is explained that Alice died from a drug overdose three weeks after she penned her last entry. This comes as a disheartening conclusion to Alice’s story, as her writing throughout the book allows her readers to get to know her, struggle with her, and become her friend. The Epilogue reminds us with a stark tone that “What must be of concern is that she died, and that she was one of only thousands of drug deaths that year” (Simon, 214). The dialogue Go Ask Alice initiates will hopefully fuel an urgency for a more prominent girls studies education in order help prevent young women from the same fate that befalls Alice.