I came across Go Ask Alice after reading Stolen by Lucy Christopher. GoodReads suggested Go Ask Alice as another insanely dark young adult novel, and of course, that drew me right in.

Go Ask Alice is a diary originally published in 1971. The diary features written excerpts from a 15-year-old teenager who is dealing with the turmoils of becoming a young adult, including pressure surrounding drugs and sex and social expectations to be the “good girl.”

When the diary was originally published, it was thought to be written by the 15-year-old girl; however, years later, we found out that “anonymous” is really Beatrice Sparks.

Sparks was a therapist and author that focused on topics impacting teens and young adults like drugs, pre-marital sex, teenage pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases.

While Sparks was still alive, there was great controversy over the actual authors of her books. She marketed the books under an anonymous identity that claimed to protect the identity of the child author. However, she was later exposed as the sole author of many of her books. Personally, this does not make me want to read her books anymore or any less. But this is important to know for many readers.

Go Ask Alice takes off after our main character, Alice, gets a Coke laced with LSD at a party. She has a fantastic trip and quickly spirals down the path of drugs, trying everything she can get her hands on from cocaine, to marijuana, to heroin. Alice finds herself drawn to the wrong crowd. She makes friends with different drug abusers, who convince her to run away from home.

At just 15-years-old Alice is living in a crappy apartment in San Francisco with one of her new friends. Both girls somehow land jobs at high-end boutiques, but during a night of partying, one of the boutique owners drugs the girls and sexually assaults them.

Fast forward a few weeks, Alice is back home in time for Christmas. As she is surrounded by the warmth of her family, including her parents, her brother Tim, her younger sister Alex, and her grandparents, she’s still scoring drugs from her local friends.

She’s attracted to uppers to combat her depressive state. Alice often talks about her mom being hard on her, being the worst sibling and child, not having any friends, concerns about her body image, and feeling lost.

Alice exhibits periods of extreme highs and extreme lows and lives within a world where she is treated as though she is invisible. And like many teenagers during this time period, Alice is interested in dating. She’s constantly worried about what boys like her, what boys she likes, and if she will ever have that perfect “first time” experience.

It continues to be an intensely rough time for Alice as she loses both her grandparents within the span of two months and witnesses her own mother have a depressive spiral as well.

Luckily, Alice begins to see some light at the end of the tunnel when she meets a local boy at her dad’s college named Joel. Alice is determined to stay clean in order to do better and get the life that she really wants. Unfortunately, because of her past, she has a lot of people who aren’t too fond of her leaving the drug lifestyle.

Alice’s old drug abuser friends bully her and even threaten to drug her little sister, Alex if she doesn’t start hanging out with them and doing drugs again. On top of this, she’s also dealing with not having any other friends because the “squares” don’t want to associate with her because of her reputation.

Alice manages to fly under the radar of her old posse and even picks up a local babysitting gig.

One night while babysitting, she was snacking on some chocolate-covered peanuts. The next day she woke up confined to a bed in the hospital. You can probably guess, but I’ll tell you anyway… Her old friends drugged the candy with LSD causing her to have an extremely bad and dangerous trip.

Alice did severe damage to herself during the acid trip and, as a result, found herself sent to a youth rehabilitation center as a consequence of violating her previous parole.

Her parents work diligently to get her out, which includes getting written statements from the people who drugged her.

Fast forward a few months, Alice is back at home with a new positive outlook on life. She has a goal of becoming a social worker, she is in a friendship with Joel, and her relationship with her family is bright.

Alice signs off her diary, saying, “Diaries are great when you're young. In fact, you saved my sanity a hundred, thousand, million times. But I think when a person gets older she should be able to discuss her problems and thoughts with other people, instead of just with another part of herself as you have been to me.”

Despite the novel’s controversial authorship, this book does a fantastic job at highlighting how dangerous a lack of support can be, especially for teenagers. Sparks uses Alice as an example of the dangers that exist in the world and how easily youth can fall prey to those dangers. Alice was introduced to drugs accidentally, which I applaud Sparks for. This novel does a great job at not blaming Alice and her choices but instead providing a 360 view of her world and what caused each domino to fall.

I would recommend this book for parents and educators of young children and young adults. Sparks really prepares this novel for the outside looking in. It offers a fantastic perspective on the struggles that occur during the teenage years. Sparks does a fantastic job of really highlighting the different stress factors in a teenager’s day-to-day life. From family to friends to relationships to self, Sparks presents Alice as a whole individual, which I think will resonate with many teenagers even today.

Thank you for reading,