This book is a complete and utter piece of shit. I only finished it because it was so short and because I occasionally indulge in a hate-read.
For those who are unfamiliar with the lore, Go Ask Alice is purported to be the posthumous diary of a teenage girl whose chance encounter with LSD at a party led her down a rapidly degenerate path that had her turning tricks, living on the streets, and ending up dead within the span of a year. It was published in 1971, at the height of the American establishment freakout around drug culture, and it’s clearly written by a person who has never knowingly been in the same room with an “illegal” substance.
We now know that the real author was Beatrice Sparks, a Mormon youth counselor who produced several sham stories of this nature to scare kids senseless about drugs, Satanism, pregnancy, etc. Sparks claimed to have a PhD, but there was never any confirmation that she earned a doctorate or had formal training as a counselor.
It’s crap—utter garbage. A contrivance made up and published by uptight old people who would rather blame drugs on their kids’ behavior than their own shitty, repressive parenting. It doesn’t even read like the voice of a teenager, and the “reefer madness” levels of hysteria around LSD and drug culture are so transparent at one point I yelled at the damn book to shut the fuck up.
And look, I’m not a fool. I know all to well that addiction is a thing, and that we can (and must) do more for people who legitimately suffer from its effects. But having your first drug experience by getting your Coke spiked with LSD at a party and having a good trip, then ending up dead a year later is preposterous and insulting.
Anyway, fuck this book.