Presented as a real diary written by an unnamed 15 year old drug user, Go Ask Alice follows the life of a middle class suburban teenager for a year and a half as she begins to experiment with and later becomes addicted to drugs. The narrator eventually runs away from home only to end up living a drug addicted life on the streets; stealing and prostituting herself, preyed upon by men and other young addicts, alternately sick from grief and withdrawal, she eventually returns home and is faced with all the difficulties of getting and staying clean, as well as re-entering the cruel and unforgiving social world of her old high school. It all takes place against the backdrop of all the usual teenage life situations: popularity, body image, romance, fitting in, parent problems, school issues, etc. The story is presented in the first person through the diary entries that, presumably, we were never meant to read. Okay, it’s dated. (“The fuzz has clamped down until the town is mother dry”p.96-97).) But the story is still frighteningly believable and the dramatic ending, a notice that after the last, hope filled, diary entry the girl was found dead from a drug overdose, leaves open the question of whether “Alice’s” OD was intentional or not.
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