BOOK REVIEW “GO ASK ALICE”

“Go Ask Alice”, with more than five million copies sold, is a non-fiction book that describes the reality of a drug addict teen. The anonymous author construes the idea of how present drugs are in today’s world, being catalysts for entering a laberynth with no clear escape. Alice, the main character, has only turned fifteen when she, accidentally, fell into drugs. Feeling almost invisible at a party, her “friends” told her she was the lucky one, and so she felt: “Then I noticed the strange shifting patterns on the ceiling (…) My mind possessed the wisdoms of the ages, and there were no words adequate to describe them (pg. 32-33)”.

Drugs are the beginning of a path that either has no clear end or has a mortal one, and this is what Alice’s story praises to the readers when the end takes a turning point. Reading this book made me acknowledge how hard is the life for drug-dependent teens; although sometimes we might wonder about using drugs, this wonderful and realistic story tells us how dark one’s world can become when using them. “go Ask Alice”, is definitely a worthwhile reading piece of non-fiction literature, not only for teens who may identify or learn from the story, but also for parents who may discover how drugs are seen and lived from an adolescent’s perspective.