Go Ask Alice

my mom got this book for me a couple years ago, she said she read it when she was younger. i liked it, although it was sad. but it didn't keep me off of drugs or anything. it was just something that i enjoyed reading.

 

yeah ditto expect for the mom part, i bought this myself

 

I had to read it at school and fell in love with it. It's one of my faves. I never get sick of reading it.

 

i bought it cuz i heard good things. i read it. i liked it. but it was not actually some girl's diary.. after i read it i looked it up and the guy that "helped discover the diary" or wutever wrote it or somthing. idk my facts very straight so dont quote me but anyway, it was a pretty good book with a very disapointing ending..

"the subject of this book died three weeks after her decision not to keep another diary.
her parents came home from a movie and found her dead."

 

I remember reading it when I was like 12 and liking it...but I tried to read it again and had absolutely no interest...it was better when I was younger, now its "bleh"

 

i didnt like it. i kinda thought it was a bunch of bullshit.

 

I don't like it that much, but then again if I'm gonna read a book about drugs its gotta be hard core. No book about drugs ever seemed to put me off, drug books always made me want to use more. They intrigued me.

It's a load of bull shit about it was straight outta a girls diary, that shit was wrote by a real author who decided to go anonymous to make it look real, like a young girl had really wrote it, yeah right it's just another "fear factor" thing!

 

It's alright to read if you're bored, but I think it's pretty overrated.

 

i liked it. but isn't based on a true diary of somekind?

 

^ "Supposedly."

 

Just remember that the book is a FAKE!

Look it up.

This is an anti-drug propoganda book.

Its funny to see that it didn't work however.

 

Exactly!

 

Totally. When in doubt, turn to snopes.com!

We had to read it in junior high (it had just come out). Creeped me out, and I completely fell for it. I found the TV movie even creepier. Drug abuse is a serious problem, but putting out sensationalistic garbage like this is not the way to fight it. It still is an entertaining read after all these years, however.

 

That's absolutely right.

Publishing works sharing about the dangers of drugs is great; but releasing a bunch of false garbage trying to scare others into not trying them is inexcusable.

Go Ask Alice is a total fraud, which personally makes me mad that the publishers still sell it as is.

But looking at my old 1972 printing, close examination shows that while the spine says, "Autobiography", the official classification for it inside cleary states "Fiction".

Beatrice Sparks, the self described "Mormon counselor and activist", unveiled herself as the "editor" of the book just in time for the publishing of her next title. She kept saying in interviews that she was a youth counselor and such, but was deliberately vague with interviewers when asked for specifics on precisely where she had earned her Phd. Sparks was in fact shady about everything, and at one point when asked if she could produce the diary she said she couldn't because she had "destroyed" a lot of it after transcribing it and that the rest was supposedly locked away in the publisher's vault. Sparks has given to date not a single shred of evidence to support that what she has done was based on reality.

Also, looking up the legal records of the book in the copyright records list her as the "sole copyright holder", which is usually reserved for an "author", not an "editor" or "presenter".

To make things even shadier, there was a family who's son had died and they had thought that Sparks would be the right person to present their son's sad story in his own diary to the public, so they gave it to her. In the result, called Jay's Journal, Sparks used only a handful of the diary's original passages and made up an entire fake angle about him supposedly getting into violent forms of satan worship and slaying kittens and all sort of ridiculous nonsense, which the family says was never in the original journal in the first place. It caused a horrible ordeal for the poor family, and cast even further darkness upon Beatrice Sparks's claims.

Sparks has made it clear that she doesn't care: all just to push her personal agendas and to make a buck at the same time. What a fanatic.

 

I read the book, found it entertaining.

 

Wow Star Cat. I had no idea it was that bad! What a skank!

 

I'm forced to admit though, some of it got sort of entertaining because some of it was unintentionally hilarious.

Did you know that if you ask for the book in a library that publicly carries it, they will get it straight from their "fiction" section? Seriously!

For anyone interested: to do research on the book, just go to Google and type in the phrase "is go ask alice real drugs" in the search area, and you'll get links for the situation. Also, for some interesting reading try looking at the customer reviews for "Jay's Journal" by Beatrice Sparks on amazon... one of them is the brother of the guy the book was "based" on, and does he ever have quite a bit to share about the experience!

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention: there is evidence that at least one other person was involved. In 1998 The New York Times wrote the following in a book review:

Linda Glovach, since exposed as one of the "preparers" — let's call them forgers — of Go Ask Alice, has just written Beauty Queen, about a girl who flees her alcoholic mother, becomes a stripper and dies of heroin addiction.

However, the reviewer did not mention the source of this information.

 

I read this book when I was 15 and just moved to a new town. I have a 13 year old daughter now and would never let her read this book. When "Alice" is skinny, and popular she is doing drugs. When she is fat and lonely she is not on drugs. This book made me want to do drugs, which I did, I didnt abuse drugs, but I did like pot. Don't do any today, because I tell me kids not to so I have to set an example, and I don't want to be a lair. But this book made it seem like I could meet new friends which I did, though I wish I would have had better friends some with goals and ambition. I wasted a lot of time on escaping life when I should have been living it. Well, I am 41 and though my life is good I wish I would have tried harder in school, and not cared about having friends. I wish I were my own best friend then. Like I am now, if we could all learn that sooner, you can't go back in time.........

 

I knew that book was weird! It just totally seemed wrong. I admit it was still entertaining though.

-Oh, and it totally didn't turn me off drugs :/ Just got me more interested.

 

I think Ill read it, I almost bought it in NYC, But didnt.