Go Ask Alice

Go Ask Alice Summary/Response

Go Ask Alice is a diary written by a fifteen year old girl who deals with many real life situations. In the beginning of the book the main character struggles with self image and low self esteem, like many fifteen year olds face. She’s not as thin as she wants to be; she wants to be more popular and doesn’t really have many friends. Her father ends up getting a new job and their whole family has to relocate. She finds a group of new friends in her new town and they invite her to a party and she is introduced to drugs unknowingly. From this point she is suckered in by a world of drugs. She starts getting into more dangerous drugs, and uses them on a regular basis. She eventually goes to a rehabilitation center to get off of the drugs, but when she does her old friends pressure her into doing drugs again and tease her because she doesn’t. She stayed drug free for awhile and in her last diary entry she decides to not keep another diary because she feels strong enough and doesn’t need a diary to be her support. The author leaves an afterword saying that three weeks after her last diary entry she was found dead due to a drug overdose, unsure of it was on purpose or accidental.

From reading this summary on the book, I could see why people wanted the book to be banned. From my opinion I don’t think it should’ve been banned. It seems like if you read it entirely it shows you step by step the problems she had to deal with and what she got her self involved into and how hard it was to get out off. She had to deal with people teasing her, and being pressured into things. Which happens to young teenagers very frequently, they don’t know where they belong and they try to turn to something or someone for help. Sadly some of the teenagers turn to drugs, and I feel this book would show you that drugs are not something you want to get into. They could ruin your life forever.