Go Ask Alice

are you against people who are forced into rehab or those who want to kick their habits and choose to go themselves? cause i understand the forced thing. what i'm against is that it costs so much. most the people who have serious problems with hardcore drugs can't afford rehab. thats why i want to work for one that is cheap (free?) and uses good techniques.

 

that would be ones that take medical coupons, or DSHS. there are alot of treatment centers like that.The one big one in my state Ceder Hills got shut down(state funding was low or some shit)which is sad it helped alot of people.

 

That is some sad shit right there. When my mother-in-law OD'd she was sent to the hospital first (she died, but they managed to revive her) and after that she was sent to a rehab center for only 3 days. 3 worthless days. Seems that the only people who can get help are fukt up celebrities and Conservative radio hosts.

 

too bad theres not more free or lowincome treatment centers for drug addicts who seek help, but cant afford it.



"Talk about clout! How does this grab you? Robert G. was newly sober, living across the street from the old Big Hall on Pine Street in a studio apartment. Two months later, he was managing the 18-unit building, owned two pickup trucks and was hiring people from the Hall to do maintenance work. "I was never stupid," he said. "I´d always been ambitious and now there was no stopping me."
Except for his sponsor, who didn´t like the look of all that activity. "You´re doing too much too fast," he told Robert. "Material things got you in trouble in the past and you´re headed that way again."

So Robert sold everything and started over. Now, that´s sponsor clout!

Robert sobered up at King County´s late lamented Cedar Hills Treatment Center. Cedar Hills closed Oct. 15 of this year because of budget cuts. Robert counts his sobriety from Feb. 10, 1984. He got to that point only after careening through four treatment programs in Taos, New Mexico, and Denver. His fifth and final program was Cedar Hills.

A cousin brought him to Seattle from a treatment program in New Mexico. He got work as a laborer, but couldn´t hold a job and wound up living at the Morrison Shelter in downtown Seattle.

"They took me dying from there to Harborview, where I was sent to Cedar Hills for 60 days. That was the winter of ´83-´84, and I count my sobriety from that time."

Robert didn´t start serious drinking and drugging until he moved from Taos to Denver after his graduation from high school in 1962. "Denver was the big time. It fascinated me." But his substance abuse problems got progressively worse as he married, had two children and developed a reputation as a womanizer as well as a drunk. The marriage ended after six years and set in motion a lifetime of estrangement from his three sons which he has not yet been able to overcome. It also contributed to his financial woes. More about that later.

"I was a laborer and a jack of all trades. I also became a habitual offender, to the point that the judge told me that ´any judge who opens this record and smells alcohol is going to send you straight to the penitentiary.´ I tried to beat the system by moving to Albuquerque, but I had the same problems there so I came to Seattle."

Robert, who´s Mexican-American, said he was well aware of his problem before he got here, but was too proud and too full of machismo to do anything about it. Cedar Hills changed that for him, and changed his life. "I loved that place. It broke my heart to see it go down. I did a lot of soul searching while I was there. It was part of the treatment program."

When he graduated, he signed up for an aftercare program that kept a roof over his head while he went to a meeting every day and every night at the Big Hall, Fremont and Easy Does It. The dances which were a fixture of AA in that era helped him too. "I made good friends that way."

Though Spanish-speaking, Robert never limited himself to Spanish-speaking meetings. He had a sponsor at La Esperanza, but he had sponsors at two other meetings too.

After a year of sobriety, Robert began training as a substance abuse counselor. He has earned an associate of arts degree at Seattle Central Community College and is working on a bachelor´s degree. He began his counseling career in 1987 at the Salvation Army, and the next year moved on to his present job as a staff alcohol and drug counselor at Central Area Recovery Center, 464 12th Ave., Seattle.

Working with drug addicts and alcoholics helps him stay sober, Robert said. He works with street alcoholics and addicts in Pioneer Square and the detox center. He´s also involved in a housing program called Shelter Plus Care, which has three clean and sober houses. He also does group and individual counseling at the Recovery Center.

Now 59, Robert has spent many years putting his life back together. No sooner was he hired in his present job than the child support authorities from Denver came calling. He´d never paid a cent while he was running around the West, "drinking, being crazy, insane," so the back due was huge--$30,000. IRS came calling about the same time, looking for $600.

"I felt like running again," Robert said, but instead, he signed over most of his check and squared himself with the government. But the child support took longer-12 years, in fact. He made his final payment last year.

"It was a struggle all those years. I got a loan to pay off the Denver obligation, and I´m still paying on that but I´m managing okay. It will be paid off by the middle of next year."

In a pained acknowledgment, Robert said the children of that marriage, now adults, are total strangers. He has tried to make contact in recent years, but without success. It´s a happier story with two other sons by a different relationship. With sobriety, he has been able to overcome the past. These young men now visit periodically. "I´m proud of them. They´ve stayed away from drugs and alcohol. They´re both married and have their own families."

Budget cutbacks which are devastating area treatment programs are a cause of great concern to Robert. But he intends to soldier on until local government overcomes its mania for cutting the budgets of vital social programs.

Meanwhile, he and his new wife are enjoying their mini-farm on the Skykomish River, where they raise chickens, lambs, peacocks, two dogs and four cats. He´s also an enthusiastic hobbiest-car racing and fishing.

"Life is good, but it´s going to get better when we can restore some of the programs that have been shut down," he said.

 

didn't read all of your posts, but its still a good book

 

Have you read Go Ask Alice? If so, what did you think of it? My boyfriend thinks that it's too stereotypical and seems made-up. I'm not sure if I think it was made-up or not. In either case I still really loved it. If you didn't read it you should, it was published by Avon and the author is anonymous. Its supposed to be a girls dairy...hippies, drugs, sex, parents, ahhh its great. I loved it because it was JUST like reading someones diary and god knows thats always fun!

 

been discussed here many times... ("utfse")

generally this book is considered to be pretty much a fabrication...

 

The book absolutely is a fabrication. Here is a link:


http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/askalice.asp

 

oh..well i think it would stil be fun to just beileve it was real....

 

I didn't get to finish the book but from what i have read I really liked it.

 

i read it two years ago, and although i can't remember it i know i thought it was good

 

its good but its also sad..i cried...='(

 

I think I read the book the first semester of my senior year in highschool and as touching as I found parts of it, I knew it was complete bullshit. I come from a broken home, a bad neighborhood, horrible parenting, and THE worst influential friends ever. However, my dissent into drugs was purely my own doing and it never escalated farther than marijuana use or the occasional popping of a muscle relaxer.

Teens, as far as I know, are more in control of thier destiny, especially the angle of drug use, than most adults are willing to believe. Some may turn to drugs and alcohol because of family problems, such as my mother did at 11 (drinking excessively until she was 28). However, most teenagers are now experimenting with drugs purely because they have grown up in a world that tells them not to blatantly while giving mixed signals with movies and television shows that glorify the life style. I know D.A.R.E. in all of it's splendor did little more than make me curious as to what marijuana would do. At the same time as I wrote my mandatory exit-essay in the 7th grade to finish the program, my uncle was teaching me the proper ways to roll joints.

Of course, I didn't try marijuana until my 8th grade year. It was purely because I saw that it made my headache go away while I was hanging out with friends who were smoking it. I had decided that D.A.R.E. was right, marijuana was wrong. And then the blessed stuff made me feel better without my even smoking it. I was an addicted shot-gunner for months before I actually picked up a joint. Oh well, the rest is history.

Now back to the matter at hand, Go Ask Alice is too journalistic, the grammar is notoriously mature, and the content itself is too focused on the drug use to be a real teen's journal. As was mentioned on the website, no matter the environment a teen is in, especially a girl, they all write in the same style about the same things: boyfriends, break ups, friendships, and trends. Never in any diary that I kept (and I fancy myself an intelligent mature teenager) did I mention my drug use or my lifestyle. I KNEW already what I was doing. I didn't need to remind myself. I wrote or seemingly pertinent emotional plot points in my own life-story.

Okay, my rant is over. The book is not by a teenager. Period.

Holly

 

Has anyone ever read this book and if so what did you think of it?

 

I liked it when I was 4.

 

I must I must increase my bust...

 

I read it, as an adult, and I rather enjoyed it. It had a voyeuristic quality that I like.

 

preachy, unrealistic, & totally made-up by an adult writer...

(& not actually excerpted from the diary of a teenage doper chick who died/suicided/whatever...)


there's much better doper diaries around; & much more informative stuff written about youth drug-using subcultureal phenomena out there...


(and there have been several thread here about this exploitive & mendacious book... ummmm, utfse?)

 

I only looked a few pages back so SORRY if that annoys you.

Can you give me the names of some better diaries like that instead of assuming I'm in love with this book? I only wanted to know people's opinions on it! Give me some good ones to read!!

 

I was thinking of Are you there god, it's me margaret



alright go ask alice, I read it in 7th grade, I forget it exactly, I think I liked it, though. I read one of her other books a few months again, it had a pair of jeans on the cover.. I liked that one too