Go Ask Alice

Go Ask Alice is a novel by youth counsellor Beatrice Sparks, first published in 1971. It is the story of a troubled young woman who seeks solace in drugs and the counter-culture. She comes to grief as a result. It is famous for its Drugs Are Bad message, being banned for references to sex, rape and drugs, and almost certainly being a fake. Rather than being a Real Life diary of a young drug addict, it is the work of Beatrice Sparks. It is classic School Study Media.

The novel is a dark Coming of Age Story. The work takes the form of a "diary", the keeper of which is not named. Usually she is called Alice, from the title, but her name is actually Carla, and Alice is an addict who she briefly meets on the street. Carla is a sensitive fifteen year old girl, alienated from her conservative parents and initially without friends. When she does start making friends and discovers the The Sixties counter-culture she also encounters drugs. Her first experience is benign: she is unwittingly given LSD at her friend Jill's birthday party and has a pleasant trip.

Carla loses her virginity while on LSD. She is guilty about this and her drug use. She and her female friend Chris take to dealing drugs for their respective boyfriends. Upon discovering said boyfriends having sex with each other, they leave for San Francisco, leaving their families as well.

In San Francisco they move into a small apartment and get jobs. Their vow to stay clean does not last, in fact they use harder drugs. While on heroin at a party, both girls are raped. A long series of unpleasant events follows. Carla gets on and off drugs over and over again. Chris gets in trouble with the police and Carla returns home, but upon being harrassed by other stoner kids since they think she's a "squealer", she's framed for drug possession and is sent to an asylum, where she sorta bonds with a younger and even more broken girl named Babbie.

The novel at first seems to end on a high, so to speak, with Carla reunited with her family, off drugs, with a boyfriend named Joel and showing greater maturity. A epilogue slams that with a Downer Ending.

The portrayal of sixties hippie culture is limited. Tellingly, political protest and music are scarcely mentioned. It works best as a critique of the hedonistic excesses of the movement. As a "warning work" it has similarities to Requiem for a Dream. It has a similar theme of disenchanted youth going off the rails as is found in The Catcher in The Rye.

If you are looking for the trope that used to have this name, please see Alice Allusion.

Go Ask Alice provides examples of these tropes

• Adapted Out: The movie version cuts several characters, including Carla's grandparents and younger sister, on-and-off-again love interest Roger, and most of the people she meets while in the mental hospital. However, it expands Beth's role.
• Addiction Displacement: At the beginning of the novel, Carla finds respite from her troubled home and school life in junk food. Then she discovers drugs, which she finds not only suppress her appetite and help her lose weight but make her feel good.
• Alice Allusion: In relay: the book is named from "White Rabbit", a song by the contemporary psychedelic band Jefferson Airplane who in turn saw drug imagery in Alice in Wonderland. Carla in the novel also wonders if Lewis Carroll was on drugs when he wrote it.
• Anonymous Author: Or published as such, at any rate.
• Based on a Great Big Lie: Ostensibly the real diary of a teenage girl, it was, in fact, entirely fabricated by Sparks. She has also released a series of other "true diaries" in the same vein as Go Ask Alice, but dealing with different subjects, such as AIDS (It Happened to Nancy), teen pregnancy (Annie's Baby) and depression-linked Satanism, we kid you not (Jay's Journal).
• Bi the Way: Despite her own less-than-enlightened attitudes about LGBTQ+ people, Carla wonders more than once if she might be at least bisexual - first when she realizes how miserable she'll be while Beth is away at camp and wonders if she might be in love with Beth, and later at the height of her drug use when she mentions feeling so aroused that she'd like to sleep with a girl. Her conclusion seems to be that it's drugs that make people behave this way.
• Break the Cutie
• Broken Bird: Carla and also her friend Babbie, whom she meets while in the asylum.
• Coming of Age Story: Ticks the boxes.
• Contemplating Your Hands: This stoner cliché makes an appearance: in one scene hands become fascinating under the influence.
• Dan Browned: The book is not the result of researching a real account. It is fiction.
• Depraved Bisexual: Sheila the fashion designer. She and her boyfriend Rod are the ones who rape both Carla and Chris in San Francisco.
• Did Not Do the Research: At one point in the narrative the girl talks about living in Coos Bay, Oregon. She then enthuses about the Psychedelic Shop and the Diggers Free Store. Both establishments were in San Francisco and had long been closed by the time of the narrative.
• Drugs Are Bad: Basically Drugs Are Bad: The Book the same way Requiem for a Dream is Drugs Are Bad: The Movie.
• Downer Ending: At first you think it is going to be a happy ending with the main character changing her life for the better. But then in the epilogue, you find out that she died three weeks later of an overdose. It's not clear if it was an accidental one or if she was killed by other drug addicts.
• Emo Teen: Carla, Babbie, Chris.
• The Generation Gap: As a theme. It helps divide Carla from her parents. It even extends to substance abuse: it's mentioned that many kids pick LSD, pot, etc. over alcohol because drinking is "their parents' thing," and that parents are hyper-vigilant about their kids sneaking drinks but never seem to notice missing pills.
• Growing Up Sucks
• Hormone Addled Teenager: Carla and her friend Beth are unable to enjoy their double date because the boys insist on seeing a dirty movie and then try to fondle them during the film.
• Jewish Best Friend: Early in the novel, Carla befriends an equally awkward girl named Beth, who is Jewish, and learns a lot about the faith and culture. She becomes so attached to Beth at one point she wonders if she thinks of her as more than a friend. However, it's implied the two grow apart after Beth gets a boyfriend. In the movie, Beth breaks off the friendship due to "Alice"'s drug escapades, but they reconcile by the end once "Alice" is clean and sober.
• The Law of Conservation of Detail: The fact that the book follows this is cited by Snopes as evidence that it is fake. After all, one would expect a real teenage girl's diary to ramble on about silly gossip rather than focusing so much on her plot-relevant drug addiction. When this first came out, many reviewers simply assumed it had been edited to take out all the chit chat.
• Malicious Slander: After Carla calls Jan's parents when Jan shows up stoned to a babysitting job, Jan dedicates her life to making Carla's a living hell, which apparently includes this (although Carla never finds out exactly what rumors Jan has been spreading). Jan later falsely accuses Carla of being a pusher, which puts Carla under suspicion after her ex-friends dose her.
• Misery Lit: The book tried to pass itself off as this, but is now widely agreed to be a work of fiction.
• My God, What Have I Done?: In her sober moments, Carla regrets the pain and suffering her drug habit and attendant problems have brought on her family. They forgive her, but she has a harder time forgiving herself.
• My Name Is Not Shazam: As noted above, Alice is not the protagonist's name. Officially she's "anonymous", though a quote from a drug dealer's child indicates her name is actually Carla.
  • A Made for TV Movie adaptation goes ahead and gives her name as Alice, presumably because Viewers are Morons.
• Relationship-Salvaging Disaster: Chris's parents, who had been on the brink of divorce, bond again due to their daughter's drug escapades. They eventually move away to start over.
• Rule of Three: Carla uses this in her writing a lot. "Nice, nice, nice!" "I do! I do! I do!" and so on.
• Scare'Em Straight: The work's probable objective, as an anti-drug tract.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Carla's struggles and growth are rendered sadly pointless by the epilogue.
• The Sixties: The setting, as filtered through an anti-drugs activist. At one point Carla mentions listening to the Beatles song "She's Leaving Home," which, being on the Sgt. Pepper album, would place the beginning of her drug experimentation no earlier than 1967 (and her death at 1969).
• Slipping a Mickey: Carla's journey with drugs begins when she drinks a bottle of Coca-Cola spiked with LSD at a party. Later on, her stoner ex-friends spike some candy with LSD (in the movie version, it's another soda instead), and when Carla consumes it she has a bad trip which almost kills her.
  • At the height of her drug experimentation, Carla herself considers trying to to this to her own brother, adding that she hopes that if she did it would give him a bad trip. Once she gets clean, though, she's horrified when Jan threatens to do this to Carla's younger sister (brother in the movie).
• Teen Pregnancy: Carla loses her virginity to a boy while stoned and almost immediately fears that she might be pregnant; although she isn't, she begins abusing tranquilizers and sleeping pills to help her relax, and it's implied she continues to abuse them even after she learns she isn't pregnant. Later on, though, she meets a girl who is.
• There's No Place Like Home: Carla runs away twice (once in the movie), but both times comes to her senses and realizes how much she misses her family, and decides to go home, resolving both times to stay off drugs for good. It... doesn't quite work out for her.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: At one point Carla resorts to providing sexual favors (including, but likely not limited to, fellatio) in order to get money for a fix.
• Weight Woe: The beginning of the book has Carla feeling fat and going on a diet. She quickly discovers that drugs help suppress her appetite.