book defense

By: Jackie Burfield
3rd hour.
“Go ask Alice” By Anonymous

“Go ask Alice” is a book by an Anonymous author. It is the story of a teenage girls experience with getting hooked on drugs in the 1960’s. In the beginning the author and her family make a move to a new place for her father’s job. The author doesn’t like it at her new school and has problems adjusting but finally makes a new friend named Beth, but they drift away in the summer when Beth has to go to an all Jewish summer camp and the author goes back to where she used to live to spend the summer with her grandparents. While shopping with her grandpa she runs into a girl from her old school that invites her to a party. At the party is the first time she experiences drugs when LSD is slipped into her coke without her knowing, for a dangerous party game. After that night she can’t stop thinking about drugs and gets hooked. She goes home and is still battling addiction and it get worse until she decides to run away. After feeling ready to come home she comes home and instantly is overwhelmed by pressure from everyone and runs away again. After a few months the author writes about how she realizes that she is going no where on the path she’s on and decides she wants to quit drugs for good.
“Go ask Alice” was banned/challenged because of the frequent discussion of drugs and sex, but when they banned/challenged it they failed to see how the author was no where near encouraging these things. “Go ask Alice” is about the author’s horror story of how drugs can take over your life, and how hard they are to fight once you’re addicted. In go ask Alice it started out as an experimental thing with the author where she was just curious about drugs but then out of nowhere she was addicted and willing to do anything for drugs. I think that this book is a good book for teenagers to read because it tells the truth and consequences of decisions.
I enjoyed this book because it helped me gain a better understanding how drugs can really affect you and I’d strongly recommend it to anyone to read, especially people who think drugs won’t affect them.