Luke Gilbert - Go Ask Alice About Controversy

So Go Ask Alice is the story of a young woman falling into a spiral of drugs, depression, and debauchery after an accidental exposure to drugs. And the kicker is that it's supposedly ripped from the diary of an actual teenaged girl. That's pretty heavy stuff, even today. But at the same time, we've all been so bogged down in D.A.R.E. ads and anti-drug commercials that this 1970's classic scare tactic novel has lost its kick for most readers. Most of what's covered in this novel, by today's standards, would be "edgy" at best. But there was a time when this book was the height of most rebellious teenagers' reading lists because of the controversy and stigma attached to the words between the covers.
One of the biggest reasons that this novel was banned so heavily is because it "encouraged" sexual and pharmaceutical experimentation. But the fact that Alice slides so quickly and intensely into a drug-induced is actually meant to be a deterrent. She starts out wondering "I don't know why I shouldn't use drugs, because they're wild and they're beautiful and they're wonderful..." (34). and "if sex without acid could be so exciting, so wonderful, so indescribable" (36). But as you go further and further into the novel, the readers (and Alice) are shown quickly that it's not all good. There are some deep consequences for addiction, and not always ones that come at bodily harm. Alice actually changes her mind not long after she gets hooked, saying, "The garbage that goes with drugs makes the price too high for anyone to pay" (55-68). She is of courses referencing where she was raped by multiple men, while she was high. So, you know, encouraging teenagers to get high by telling them what happens to some unlucky people when they get high is a pretty solid way to subvert the system.


It's lines like these that prove not-so-subtly (but still subtly enough to get banned) that drugs can ruin a person's life. It was banned because of crude language, and the aforementioned encouragement. But it's a seriously heavy book. Alice goes through the entire cycle of addiction, and the reader walks right beside her as she struggles with her recovery. Twice. If anything, this book shouldn't have been banned. Bad language aside, it seems like shoving a literary after-school special down some 70's kids throats would have been a good idea. While the dialogue is a bit cringeworthy at times (what book from fifty years ago isn't?) and some of the situations seem a bit foreign to modern audiences, I'm glad this book is "un-banned". Because some people really need to read this. For a laugh, out of curiosity, maybe even to relate. This book is important, and if anything, the fact that it was banned once upon a perm makes it all the more profound.