“Sugar & spice & everything nice acid & smack & no way back.” This painful rhyme opened the heartbreaking diary of Alice, a 15-year-old girl addicted to drugs. Go Ask Alice revealed the brutal reality of how drug addiction can destroy any individual’s life. Drugs do not discriminate based on ethnicity, gender, religion, age, etc, and innocent Alice learned this difficult lesson and various others as a naïve child.

Alice belonged to a small, pleasant family of a brother, sister, and loving parents. She attended a public high school and desperately wanted to be “popular.” From clothes and friends to drinking and drugs, Alice was willing to do whatever it took in order to feel accepted. Her first encounter with drugs took place when a friend slipped LSD in her coke at a party. Little did Alice know, that one trip could cause her to become addicted to the feeling of nothing. As the diary unfolded, Alice described the multiple times that she ran away, sold drugs, experienced sex, fell victim to rape, and worst of all, stayed in an insane asylum. Her relationship with cocaine, tranquilizers, pills, Dexies, Speed, marijuana, acid, ecstasy, LSD, etc was incredibly painful to read. Alice’s life in its entirety was not completely drug revolved, however. There were diary entries that described her first love, compassion for her patient and forgiving family, and various goals for the future, which made her fate incredibly difficult to accept. With tears rolling down my face and falling on the worn pages of Go Ask Alice, I learned some of life’s most difficult lessons vicariously through her life.

Based on my incredible reaction to Alice’s diary, I would definitely recommend this breathtaking novel to other teenagers or young adults, especially those facing addiction. However, even those who live a clean and healthy life should read Alice’s extreme story to fully understand the effects that drugs can have. This diary serves as a warning to those uneducated and wake-up call to those who can relate. Go Ask Alice has the ability to save countless lives worldwide.

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