Is this phony diary still on school reading lists?  I can't imagin it is.  However, it was a universal pop culture reference in the '70s and '80s, and stemmed from the popularization in youth culture in the 1960s of LSD and marijuana.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Ask_Alice

You might ask why a grown man would think of such a thing.  Dunno.  I just remember reading it in Jr. High just as my sister read it the previous decade.

"Go Ask Alice"

by

Anonymous

That was supposed to be the intrigue.  This really happened to some poor suburban girl...and you could be next if you don't stay away from those demon drugs! 

Turns out the entire diary was a mock-up by a middle-aged Mormon youth worker named Beatrice Sparks. 

We didn't know it at the time, but we all could tell no 15-year-old girl wrote it.  As the Wikipedia article points out, teenagers don't write like that, not in their diaries.  Big words such as "gregarious" and "conscientious" were reserved for term papers.  Furthermore, the "Go Ask Alice" is a first person narrated pulp novel with calendar dates dividing chapters.  Sparks attempted a bogus adolescent informality in the book, but to instill all that drama she interwove the mechanics of prose.  A young teen might not have the analytic ability to define why, but she can tell it's a phony from the start.

My oldest sister and her friends were post-sixties drama club types--geeks who smoked weed.  Among the lot they wrote several "Go Ask Alice" spoofs.  I heard them dramatizing one with a cheap tape recorder and laughing like all get out! 

Meanwhile, marijuana habituation was taking its toll on their own psychological development, familial relationships, academic marks, and respiratory health.  A few of them, my sister included, went on to use psychedelics and cocaine. Two became hardcore alcoholics. None of them died, but I can say drug abuse hindered each one of them in some way.

Am I telling you scare tactics don't work?  Exactly.

Pot and acid are dangerous drugs, but when you condescend to young people about them with tripe like "Go Ask Alice," or Scott Baio After School Specials, the kids will have no reason to respect the message.  Furthermore, when you exaggerate the dangers of pot--especially pot ("One toke off that reefer, mister, and you've bought yourself a one-way ticket to hell!"), kids will take the opposite tack and underestimate the dangers.

I read "Go Ask Alice" when I was 15 and noted all the lines my sister laughed at.  If I had wanted to drop acid "Alice" would not have given me the slightes pause.  Later I did want to use LSD, but the book that stopped me was "LSD: My Problem Child," by Dr. Albert Hoffmann, the Swiss scientist who synthesized the drug in the 1940s.  I weighed the pros and cons and decided against it.

I remember reading the book in jr. high school and the 1973 TV movie. I never knew it was fake until a few years ago.

I don't recall reading the book (but I may have) but I remember watching the movie-and thinking it was based on a real-life diary. Years later, I found out it wasn't. Of course, I have always associated the book/movie with "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane because of that line "Go ask Alice, when she's ten feet tall". I thought the song came from the movie because I knew the song was about drug. How wrong I was.  It was sometime in the 80s, I remember "White Rabbit" coming on the radio and listening to it-I mean really listening to for probably the very first time. That was when it hit me that it was about "Alice in Wonderland" and NOT the book "Go Ask Alice". It was by this time that I knew that "Alice in Wonderland" was basically about a drug trip so it all came together.

But, I still can't help but thinking about "Go Ask Alice" whenever I hear "White Rabbit".



Cat

I read the book, but I never knew it was fake.

I'd appreciate it if you didn't make generalizing assumptions as to how teenagers never tend to squalor their vast vocabulary inside of the documentation of their lives. I, for one, am a teenager who "writes like that."

Er... No, I'm not really. :P

That book was fake? >:( That makes me mad! The only reason I never did drugs is because that book scared the crap out of me... okay not really but that was a big part of it  DAMN think of all the fun I missed out on... stupid impressionable youth!

That book was fake? >:( That makes me mad! The only reason I never did drugs is because that book scared the crap out of me... okay not really but that was a big part of it  DAMN think of all the fun I missed out on... stupid impressionable youth!


It's not too late...

I tried to read it, but was bored by how slow it moved.  I never knew it was fake, just that it sucked. I was reading The Mists of Avalon at the time and my english let me report on it.

Never had this thrust upon us, but the basic "Drugs are bad Mmmmmkay" videos were prevalent.

Never stopped us.

Max is right, when you talk down to kids, they're gonna flip you off and do it... out of spite!

Does "Go Ask Alice" have anything to do with the Jefferson Airplane song "White Rabbit?"


Opps, nevermind, Cat answered that already! I always knew it had something to do with "Alice in Wonderland" because in the Disney movie she grows really tall after taking some kind of pill thingy.

I don't recall reading the book (but I may have) but I remember watching the movie-and thinking it was based on a real-life diary. Years later, I found out it wasn't. Of course, I have always associated the book/movie with "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane because of that line "Go ask Alice, when she's ten feet tall". I thought the song came from the movie because I knew the song was about drug. How wrong I was.  It was sometime in the 80s, I remember "White Rabbit" coming on the radio and listening to it-I mean really listening to for probably the very first time. That was when it hit me that it was about "Alice in Wonderland" and NOT the book "Go Ask Alice". It was by this time that I knew that "Alice in Wonderland" was basically about a drug trip so it all came together.

But, I still can't help but thinking about "Go Ask Alice" whenever I hear "White Rabbit".


Actually, the book took it's title from the song.  If you read the book, you will notice that the "writer" never gives her name.  The song was made in 1967, and the book came out in 1971.

I remember reading it in the early 1980's, because there was talk about banning it from our school library.  I wanted to see what everybody was talking about.  It is actually faily typical of the genre and era.  Like "Dawn - Portrait Of A Teenage Runaway", "Alexander - The Other Side Of Dawn", and so many "Stay clean and sober" books and movies of the early 1970's.

BTW, did you know that in the movie, William Shatner played Alice's fater?  That alone would probably make me want to take some drugs.

"Oh gawd, no dad!  Not another chorus of 'Rocket Man'!!!!"

i remember when my sister read it.  She was really into it.  Well, she was into all those "help me a\i'm a teen" books.

I remember the film.  it was awful I think.


Mushroom is right that the genre produced a lot of redundant material.

I read it, and even though I thought it was totally far fetched, it still scared the crap out of me, but I ended up going out and doing all sorts of drugs anyway.  What can I say?