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.
The diary starts and ends in September - covering a two year period. Capturing the torture and hell of adolescence, it tells the story of the lonely and self-hating female protagonist, under constant pressure from her "perfect" parents. Her first encounter with drugs is when she drinks something at party spiked with LSD. It takes the edge off of her bad feelings but as she delves into the darkness of drug addiction her life becomes consumed with highs and lows. The diary entries vary erratically from optimism to despair. Although there are some out-
dated references to hippies and a lot of expired slang, the book continues to be a classic for teens in the present day. Though the debate over its authenticity continues, there is no debating the profound effect its text has had in the last twenty-five years. At the end of the book, the teenager is finally happy and over her drug addiction. She decides to stop keeping a diary. Three weeks later, she is found dead from a heroin overdose. The circumstances of this are unknown.
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