Go Ask Alice

by

Anonymous


I read the book when I was 15 and had my doubts that whoever wrote it was 15!  Turns out "Anonymous" was Beatrice Sparks, a Mormon youth counselor!  The funny thing is, the cat was out of the bag on on Sparks by the mid '70s, yet nobody seemed to care.  The book was still on school reading lists in the '80s, though I can't imagine it is still today.  It's just way too dated.  It would have to be about Ecstasy and meth nowadays.

Did anybody actually think the book was by a teenager?  As the Wiki page points out, words such as "gregarious" and "impregnable" are not in the general parlance of 15-year-olds.  

Nah I never thought it was by someone my age either.  I didn't learn who wrote until you mentioned it now though.  Why does Beatrice Sparks sound familiar? 

Oh well I dunno, doesn't matter I guess.

It was a good (albeit dated) read.

to be honest I never knew who wrote it but I didn't think it was a real bio. I always thought of it as fiction trying pass itself off as a diary. 

I still need to re-read it tho because I didn't fully get it when I first read it.

I saw the movie. I don't recall if I ever read the book or not-maybe I did and stupid me was very gullible and thought it was real.



Cat

I forgot there was a movie... I vaguely remember seeing it!

Whenever I see something about book/movie, I ALWAYS think of Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit.  ;)




Cat

Whenever I see something about book/movie, I ALWAYS think of Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit.  ;)




Cat


which came first? The song or the book?

which came first? The song or the book?



The song. It came out in 1967 & the book came out in 1971.



Cat

The song. It came out in 1967 & the book came out in 1971.



Cat


so that mormon lady was kind of hip then huh?  cool  ;D

so that mormon lady was kind of hip then huh?   cool  ;D


The title caused endless confusion.  Yes, the book was named after the line in the "White Rabbit" song by Jefferson Airplane, which in turn was a reference to Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland."  However, this begged the question from another pop song, "Who the hell is Alice?" 

Reader's assumed Alice must be the diarist, but this is not stated in the book.  There is a minor character called Alice in the novel, but she is only mentioned in one entry. 

My sister ran with the burnouts in high school.  "Go Ask Alice" was the butt of jokes for them.  My sister even wrote an uproarious illustrated send-up of GAA!  On the other hand, it was hard to write a spoof on a book that featured LSD-spiked peanut brittle!
;D

The thing is, in the sixties and seventies there was a wing of pulp fiction in comics and drugstore novels dedicated to the perils of teenage substance abuse.  "Go Ask Alice" survived because as tawdry as it was, it was a cut above the usual guidance counselor fear-mongering.  I can't remember specific titles so much as comic book images of an a drunk mom passed out on the couch, high ball by her side, while her long-haired teen-aged son got high and cracked up mom's car on a joyride!  Will Randy find Alateen?   There was also drek like, "Help me God! I'm fourteen and pregnant, what do I do?"  Something like that. 

You know, and there were the campy movie shorts they'd show for drug awareness week.  Some kid gets stoned on acid at a party and he's having fun flapping his arms like a bird and then he's bombarded by thousands of paper cut-out pterodactyls...AAAIEEEE...freak out! Freak out! Op-art images spin back and forth and in and out whilst "Purple Haze" bleeds his ear drums....

And then some Joe Friday square cat comes out in a lab coat to tell us the truth about DRUUUUUGS!

So that's the kind of pop culture GAA harkens back to.  It's heydey was some years before my time, but we still got an earful...including Alice!

Maybe Bea Sparks meant well.  Scare tactics will deter some kids.  However, the smart-ass kids can tell when the grownups are bullsheeshting and books like GAA sometimes serve to trivialize the true dangers of drugs.
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/05/hat.gif


Nah I never thought it was by someone my age either.  I didn't learn who wrote until you mentioned it now though.  Why does Beatrice Sparks sound familiar? 

You might be thinking of Christine Sparks who adapted "The Elephant Man" into a novel?
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/15/tard.gif

There was also Beatrice Potter who wrote Peter Rabbit. There's a movie out about that.

And of course, since this is the 1970's it is impossible to forget the other big "drug fueled sex" productions.

After leaving The Brady Bunch, Eve Plumb became popular as Dawn in the 2 Made For TV Movies Dawn: Portrait Of A Teenage Runaway and Alexander: The Other Side Of Dawn.

I remember seeing both of them when they first came out.  Teen drug use, teen prostitution, teen gay prostitution, stealing food for survival, things like this were shocking on TV in the 1970's.

It is a shame that these movies are unavailable.  I bet there would be a market for a box set.

And of course, since this is the 1970's it is impossible to forget the other big "drug fueled sex" productions.

After leaving The Brady Bunch, Eve Plumb became popular as Dawn in the 2 Made For TV Movies Dawn: Portrait Of A Teenage Runaway and Alexander: The Other Side Of Dawn.

I remember seeing both of them when they first came out.  Teen drug use, teen prostitution, teen gay prostitution, stealing food for survival, things like this were shocking on TV in the 1970's.

It is a shame that these movies are unavailable.  I bet there would be a market for a box set.


In mere months after dropping acid, our diarist bears witness to rape, satanism, prostitution, ho-mo-sexual intercourse and went from living in a nice stable suburban nuclear family to dying of dope on the streets of San Francisco!  Our tragic diarist didn't really want any of it, of course; all she wanted was to make a good man a good wife and bring up children someday...but then she went to a party where the boys were playing "button, button, who's got the button?"

Can you say Christian Right youth counselor?
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/07/nopity.gif

BTW, there was an element of this in the movie "Traffic" starring Michael Douglas, who seems to be getting the roles that used to go to George C. Scott!
::)

The title caused endless confusion.  Yes, the book was named after the line in the "White Rabbit" song by Jefferson Airplane, which in turn was a reference to Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland."  However, this begged the question from another pop song, "Who the hell is Alice?" 


(Alice is a disease, Christopher Robin went down with it, didn't he?)

But who the... "hell" is Alice?

No sir, the word "hell" does not appear in any respectable version of the song that I've ever heard.

No, seriously, Alice was this chick who lived next door to me.  Grew up together, and I wound up with this 24-year-long crush on her.  Got a phone call about it - friend of mine said thought I'd heard.  I rushed to the window and looked outside - she was right.  Big limousine rolling up into her drive...

Oh, I don't know why she's leavin', or where she's gonna go.
I guess she's got her reasons but I just don't wanna know.
'Cause for 24 years, I've been livin' next door to Alice...

In mere months after dropping acid, our diarist bears witness to rape, satanism, prostitution, ho-mo-sexual intercourse and went from living in a nice stable suburban nuclear family to dying of dope on the streets of San Francisco!  Our tragic diarist didn't really want any of it, of course; all she wanted was to make a good man a good wife and bring up children someday...but then she went to a party where the boys were playing "button, button, who's got the button?"

Can you say Christian Right youth counselor?
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/07/nopity.gif

BTW, there was an element of this in the movie "Traffic" starring Michael Douglas, who seems to be getting the roles that used to go to George C. Scott!
::)



*Spoiler Alert*

I mentioned how stupid I thought this book was in another post.

At the time I read it, I had already experimented with acid, and found the author's descriptions completely off the mark.  It's like they took every bad trip story they'd ever heard and mixed them all together in one. 

Another thing that made me roll my eyes was the very end of the book, when Alice finally gets it together, and her old friends come to visit her while she's babysitting, and give her, I think it was coca cola spiked with acid.  Right?  And isn't that what kills her?  Her friends were so mad at her for getting clean that they decided to get her high again?  I mean honestly, who does that?  I knew so many druggies when I was young, and none of then would have done that.  Most druggies are selfish.  They want to keep their drugs for themselves.  When one of my friends got clean, I always thought "cool, more for me."  I didn't plot ways to drag them back down.  And when I got clean, my friends were all totally supportive of me.

One of these days, Alice.
To the moon, Alice.
Alice doesn't live around her anymore.




Cat

*Spoiler Alert*

I mentioned how stupid I thought this book was in another post.

At the time I read it, I had already experimented with acid, and found the author's descriptions completely off the mark.  It's like they took every bad trip story they'd ever heard and mixed them all together in one. 

Another thing that made me roll my eyes was the very end of the book, when Alice finally gets it together, and her old friends come to visit her while she's babysitting, and give her, I think it was coca cola spiked with acid.  Right?  And isn't that what kills her?  Her friends were so mad at her for getting clean that they decided to get her high again?  I mean honestly, who does that?  I knew so many druggies when I was young, and none of then would have done that.  Most druggies are selfish.  They want to keep their drugs for themselves.  When one of my friends got clean, I always thought "cool, more for me."  I didn't plot ways to drag them back down.  And when I got clean, my friends were all totally supportive of me.


Oh, it's one of those things you can't deny ever happened.  Acid can't kill you.  The worst it can do is induce a temporary psychotic state.  This is serious because you never know how an individual will react. Violent or suicidal behavior is possible, but not likely, contrary to popular myths.  The dosed subject will probably just end up scared out of his or her mind for a few hours.  If you're not expecting it, a horror trip is likely. 

Coupla things:  If you spike a beverage with LSD, it will dilute the psychoactive properties.  There are a lot of variables here, but I never knew anyone who put it in a big glass of Coca-Cola.  Come on! Let it dissolve p.o. on its own or on a sugarcube maybe.

The LSD experience is so subjective you can't say a person wouldn't experience what "Alice" experienced...but it is implausible a teenage diarist would write about it that way unless she wrote it for somebody else to read and the entire premise of GAA is that it was a private diary written haphazardly and "found" after said teenage diarist expired!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/12/glasses9.gif

Full disclosure: I've never done LSD, I just know lots of people who have.  I wanted to, but decided against it because of my clinical depression.

Acid myths that persisted at least until I was in high school:

The drummer from (insert band name) did too much LSD and now he thinks he's an orange and he won't let anyone near him because he's afraid they'll peel him.  (alternate: He thinks he's an orange and he's afraid somebody will juice him).

Three college students took acid and stared at the sun for eight hours straight and now they are permanently blind.

A girl sitting for a child dropped acid and thought the baby was a Thanksgiving turkey and roasted it in the oven!
:D

A girl sitting for a child dropped acid and thought the baby was a Thanksgiving turkey and roasted it in the oven!
:D
That chick lived down the road from me!