# Go Ask Alice **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 12, 2016, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976 "2016-02-12T22:07:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2016, 10:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/81 "2016-04-01T10:20:12Z")
> [@PSXer](#): > > I’ve heard of it but never read it. It’s something old people read in the dark ages (the 70s) I’ll let you know if I ever see it released on LaserDisc. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2016, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/82 "2016-04-01T12:42:02Z")
1. Heard of it, never read it. I was never much on YA lit even when I was a YA. ---
**Author:** ![LVBoPeep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/858c86/32.png) [@LVBoPeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LVBoPeep)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2016, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/83 "2016-04-01T12:52:42Z")
I read it when I was in high school and also believed it. I believed any horror story about drugs. In camp when I was a wee kid, they told us about a girl whose friends wanted her to try drugs and slipped her a red pill and she DROPPED DEAD. That worked for me :eek:… I did hear much, much later that it was fake but it didn’t matter. I read it more as a morbid fascination with that kind of thing, I was already well conditioned to stay away from drugs. Honestly, I would have had to work really hard to find drugs- I had a bunch of horsey friends and spent all my time at the stables. My group of friends drank when we were mostly legal and as an adult there was marijuana available, which I did try and never liked, but I never had easy access to any hard drugs as a teenager. ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2016, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/84 "2016-04-01T12:54:22Z")
So awful. Even though I’m “only” 42, this book definitely made the rounds in my teen peer group, because the anonymous author was Mormon and so was I. At age 13-14, we all found it variously horrifying or titillating. It made me want to try drugs, if only because they seemed, in some roundabout way, to lead to sex. There’s your message. Revisiting it a decade ago, I laughed out loud several times at the unintentional hilarity. It’s so obviously the work of an adult woman who’s never seen a drug in her life, trying to write a teenager. The slang is laughably dated even by the standards of the time when it was published. For something that purports to be a diary, it has incredibly detailed transcripts of long conversations, including statistics (“Dad said that over 74% of…”). Even during parts of the story where she’s supposedly homeless and living rough on the street, apparently she found pen and paper in a dumpster, because there are diary entries that give no indication of being written after the fact. What a shit book. And as an avatar of the “scare kids away from bad stuff, even if you have to lie to do so” mentality, you couldn’t do much better. ---
**Author:** ![kbear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4491bb/32.png) [@kbear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kbear)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2016, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/85 "2016-04-01T13:17:44Z")
Huh…I would have read it in the seventies but I don’t think I was ever under the impression that it was being passed off as a real diary. I’m pretty sure we all thought it was fiction. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2016, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/86 "2016-04-01T13:46:28Z")
I had a copy from the '70s and it definitely said it was from a real girl’s diary. When she was homeless, she scribbled her notes down on discarded paper bags and somehow kept them to give to the publisher. You and others (like me) may not have bought it because it was so obviously propaganda, but the book definitely purported to be a true story taken from the pages of a real diary, and a lot of people believed it. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2016, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/87 "2016-04-01T15:00:38Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > I had a copy from the '70s and it definitely said it was from a real girl’s diary. When she was homeless, she scribbled her notes down on discarded paper bags and somehow kept them to give to the publisher. You and others (like me) may not have bought it because it was so obviously propaganda, but the book definitely purported to be a true story taken from the pages of a real diary, and a lot of people believed it. Yes, I’m quite sure that the quote given in Snopes on the copywrite page must have been added in later editions after the publisher started getting criticism. ---
**Author:** ![Drunky\_Smurf](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drunky_smurf/32/449_2.png) [@Drunky\_Smurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drunky_Smurf)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2016, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/88 "2016-04-01T19:40:44Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > Alice? > > Who the fuck is Alice? This. Never heard of the book and I thought the thread was about this song. ---
**Author:** ![WOOKINPANUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wookinpanub/32/132_2.png) [@WOOKINPANUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WOOKINPANUB)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2016, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/89 "2016-04-01T20:11:13Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > Alice? > > Who the fuck is Alice? Gah! You beat me to it 😛 I remember reading it and also seeing the movie, and I would have sworn I read it before seeing it but IMDB says it was released in '73. I was a pretty advance reader but seven seems a little young for me to have read such a thing. Reading the synopsis in Wikipedia, most of it rings not one bell, so maybe I’m mixing it up with another tawdry YA book. Really the only thing that sticks in my mind is a scene where a boy french kisses her (that was revolting and arousing at the same time) and I think he twists her arm or hurts her in some way (but not full on sexual assault). Another thing I remember is my cousin being very excited about the movie and when the commercial would come on she’d say something about “Jamie” which it appears is the name of the actress who plays Alice. This cousin lived in West Hollywood so now I’m wondering of she knew her (she knew lots of actors). ---
**Author:** ![chizzuk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e36b37/32.png) [@chizzuk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chizzuk)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2016, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/90 "2016-04-01T21:06:15Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Yeah, definitely not used in the 90s. The closest I can remember is a book that Google reveales is called [Tangerine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangerine_%28novel%29), which is all sorts of fucked up. I guess the lesson about how psychopaths can really exist and how adults will lie to cover up for them is accurate, though. We also read [The Chocolate War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chocolate_War), but even Wikipedia seems to ignore what made that one controversial–the fact that it talked about masturbation and cum–stuff that isn’t really essential to the plot and seems to have been included to create the controversy in case the story itself didn’t. > > For some reason, our Civics teacher read these books to us every Friday while we worked on our homework. She never did spell it out, but I guess is was a freedom of speech issue for her. Tangerine. Oh, man. I can’t remember how old I was when I read that book, but the scene where it’s finally revealed how Paul went blind has stuck with me right up until this day. I don’t remember anything of Go Ask Alice, but Tangerine was so screwed up. Not quite to the level of We Need to Talk about Kevin, but up there. ---
**Author:** ![DaphneBlack](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/daphneblack/32/5389_2.png) [@DaphneBlack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DaphneBlack)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2016, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/91 "2016-04-02T16:59:01Z")
I’m 33, and I read it for school, but not as ‘assigned reading’, in 7th grade (1994-5). Was never confused about its fictionality. I read the Chocolate War and its sequel in 5th grade, and was disturbed by them. Especially the decapitation-fake-out scene. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2016, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/92 "2016-04-02T18:40:18Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > I heard the woman who wrote it wrote several more in the same vein about the pitfalls of promiscuity, etc. Basic paranoid 1960s parent stuff. Probably too early for a cautionary tale about devil worship. I haven’t read it, but Beatrice Sparks also “edited” the 1978 book _[Jay’s Journal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay%27s_Journal)_, about a boy who joins a Satanic cult. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2016, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/93 "2016-04-03T00:00:47Z")
> [@](#): > > If you grew up the 80’s or 90’s, did you read it? Have you at least heard of it? If you’re younger, is it still known today? I started to read it when I was 10 (in 1987) but it’s one of the only pieces of reading material my mother ever took away from me - she didn’t think it was appropriate reading material for a 5th grader. I was allowed to read it four years later. ---
**Author:** ![melondeca](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5a626/32.png) [@melondeca](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/melondeca)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2016, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/94 "2016-04-03T01:37:09Z")
I’m 37 and I read it, but not until I was in my twenties. ---
**Author:** ![ZPG\_Zealot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e47c2d/32.png) [@ZPG\_Zealot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZPG_Zealot)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2016, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/95 "2016-04-03T19:57:39Z")
I have always found it odd that with it’s highly anti-drug message it’s also one of the more frequently challenged books in teen libraries. By that I mean challenged by conservatives as inappropriate for teenagers not because of it’s literary merit. ---
**Author:** ![CaptMurdock](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/captmurdock/32/11736_2.png) [@CaptMurdock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaptMurdock)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2016, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/96 "2016-04-04T18:17:07Z")
Never read the book, but saw the movie in junior high in social-studies-or-something class. The only scene that sticks in my mind was when she was babysitting and (supposedly) some friends of hers slipped some pills in her bottle of Coke and she tripped out. ---
**Author:** ![CGav8r](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/34f0e0/32.png) [@CGav8r](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CGav8r)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2016, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/97 "2016-04-04T19:16:27Z")
My teen daughter read it last year - she thought it was real, and because it was a window into the past, she wasn’t sure if that was how people talked. The lingo reminds me of this routine from Paul F. Tompkins: [![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Zk_-u0wejk8/hqdefault.jpg "Paul F. Tompkins - "Go Ask Alice"") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk_-u0wejk8) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976.md?page=4)