go ask alice, cut., ever read them? Options

[*xcaitlinx*]

im currently reading "Go Ask Alice" (which is a true diary about a 15-year-old teen that's on drugs...pleasant, right?) and "Cut" (about someone that...cuts. even more pleasant)

i seem to be drawn to books about teenagers with common problems. especially diaries. even though i don't (and never will) do drugs, alcohol, or smoke...it still intrigues me. my friend was the one that has been buying books like this, including others like "The perks of being a Wallflower" and "Crank". She lets me borrow them after she reads them...and i love them.

Have you read any of these books or ones similar to them?

[NoSex]

I'm sitting here and listening to White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane. Great song. Grace Slick, the lead singer of Jefferson Airplane, conceived of the song when reading Lewis Carrol's classic novel Alice in Wonderland. She believed, in the subtext, that there were strong references to drugs and drug use. So, the song was written and published. It became Jefferson Airplane's most popular song.

Four years after the release of White Rabbit the novel Go Ask Alice was published for the first time in 1971. Go Ask Alice was published under the author "Anonymous." On the cover, below the title, it reads, "A Real Diary." With further inspection into the book, we are told that this is the true diary of a 15 year teenage girl. This is the true story of her spiral into a life of drug abuse, sexual immorality, prostitution, and ultimately death. The title of this highly provocative book taking itself from the song White Rabbit.

"Go ask Alice
When she's ten feet tall"

The song seems, very much, to describe an acid or LSD trip. It's a production of late 60's psychedelic-counter-culture-rock. Why is this the inspiration for the title of this book? Sure, the book relates to such themes, but not in the same manner White Rabbit does. White Rabbit seems to glorify and make romantic the idea of using mind-altering drugs. Go Ask Alice demonizes these things. So, why the connection?

The answer to this question can be found in trying to understand the origin of the book Go Ask Alice. As the book purports, it's origin is in reality. It is, essentially, a copy of this poor unnamed girl's diary. However, despite being placed in the teen's non-fiction section, Go Ask Alice is a fabrication. A fraud. One that has deceived and fooled audiences for over 30 years.

Flash back to the early 1970's. We are in the psychedelic era of rock. We have entered into the final stretch of the "We Generation" mentality. In this "hippie" counter-culture hallucinogen use was king. The moral panic created by this era is rather uniform. Students are bombarded with anti-drug, pro-religion, anti-sex, and anti-rock messages. All from honest, kind, and caring parents and authorities who know best. And, apparently, lie well.

Most, if not all, hysteria was born out of ignorance. The idea was that psychedelic rock would brainwash your child into a pot-smoking, LSD trippin', hippie loser. Instead of educating and speaking of the true dangers of drug use to an entire generation of youth, our society felt more comfortable hiding away in a fabricated reality of drugs and rock-music-influence. "True stories" of the horrible effects of drugs run rampant. Church officials predict that the "End is near." Parents shit themselves.

There was, and still is, a real danger in drug use. But, it was much easier to control with fear-inducing fabrications. It's a lot easier to follow, rather than lead. A great majority of the American people were stuck, and have been stuck, in a moral panic and "War against drugs."

Of all the anti-drug messages, Go Ask Alice has survived beyond; The book even fighting blind moral panic itself, not for its dubious authorship, but for its graphic content. Today, Go Ask Alice is still required reading in many youth circles and it is taken very seriously.

But, if its origins are a lie. If it is not the true diary of a 15 year old girl, who wrote it? That question is not so easily answered. However, Clues to this answer began to surface nearly eight years after the release of Go Ask Alice. In promotional material for another "real teen diary", Jay's Journal, a Beatrice Sparks is credited as the editor of Go Ask Alice. Later that same year, in an interview, Beatrice Sparks would admit that the story, despite there being a "real" 'Alice', was partially inspired by similar cases. She went on to say that the subject the book was based on did not die of a drug overdose, rather, she died of unknown causes. When asked to produce original transcripts from the actual diary, Sparks informs her interviewer that these pages were destroyed or have otherwise been lost in the publisher's locked vault. Conveniently, of course.

Doubts begin to surface. The journalists of America can uncover highly confidential government scandals, but fail to find a single person connected with the young girl in Go Ask Alice. The book is structured and written much like a drama, however, the imagination stretches when picturing a 15 year old girl behind the pen writing a personal diary. But, controversy explodes when Beatrice, now recognized editor of both Jay's Journal and Go Ask Alice is blasted by the family of suicide victim Alden Barrett.

Unknown to the public, Beatrice, after gaining some popularity for supporting the publishing and promotion of Go Ask Alice, had been contacted by Marcella Barrett, mother of recently deceased Alden Barrett. Mrs. Barrett was under the impression that Beatrice could get her son's story out to the world. A healing process could then begin. Beatrice would fulfill Mrs. Barretts wishes. Beatrice Sparks had been given Alden's journal by the family and his story was to be told.

Alden Barrett was a young teenage boy. His mother and family were members of the Church of the Latter Day Saints. He was a curious young man who questioned his family's faith often sympathizing with eastern religion. He had fallen in-love with a young girl, but was a tad bit inept in social interaction. Being denied requited love, and facing a possible broken home, Alden ended his life in 1971 with a self-inflicted gun shot to the head. His story was published both eight years after his death and the release of Go Ask Alice. The book was titled Jays Journal: The shocking diary of a 16-year-old helplessly drawn into a world of witchcraft and evil

With the release of the book came the outrage of Alden's family. They accused Sparks of fabricating almost entirely the story. Passages involving satanism, a falling away from the Mormon church, drug abuse, sadism, ritual animal cruelty and sacrifice described an unrecognizable Alden. The characters in Jay's Journal were unknown to Alden's close friends and family. The community, outraged and insulted, produced a play in Alden's memory detailing the sensational fraud and embellishment committed by Beatrice Sparks. Alden's brother Scott would later published a book entitled, A Place in the Sun: The Truth Behind Jay's Journal. The Barrett family would be tested, and suffer many hardships.

Jay's Journal, just as Go Ask Alice, is still promoted as the true diary of a young teenager. Beatrice Sparks has been a life-long Mormon. She has claimed and described, with vagueness, her work and relation with adolescents as a youth counselor in the church. When reading Go Ask Alice, Jay's Journal, or any other of the countless "By an Anonymous Teenager" diaries released with Beatrice Sparks as "editor" it becomes obvious that these are cautionary tales with religious fundamental themes.

The parents are always right, plot devices increase sympathetic attitudes, bad companions draw victims, drugs always lead to more immoral and deviant pleasures, broken homes breed evil homes, sex is to be saved for marriage alone, and death is a guarantee unless you heed these warnings.

Beatrice Sparks isn't presenting true diaries of unfortunate teenagers, she is promoting her fundamentalist values through fabrications, and making lots of money doing it. It's called 'Go Ask Alice' because Sparks hates psychedelic bands like Jefferson Airplane. Sparks wants to connect the death of a once innocent, and forgiving christian girl to the songs of popular rock artists. In her small naive world, Jefferson Airplane is the true source of all the world's ills.

I absolutely despise Go Ask Alice.