https://dangerousbooks.wordpress.com/2008/05/01/go-ask-alice/
Did anyone else know this, or am I the only one? This book was written by a middle aged “ Mormon “ housewife? I guess it was ok for her to use language and talk about sexual topics , that the church frowns upon?
Does anyone know if she had to get the Bishop’s approval to write this, and were church members banned from reading from one of their own flock ?

I don't know about the permission aspects. All I know is as a young reader at 12, it did its intended job and made me convinced that going to parties would result in a nightmare future of being strung out and abused until I eventually died.

I think as long as it was reefer madness oriented the cult would approve, perhaps not for consumption by the general membership, but saving a copy to give to a real troublemaker in the ward to set her straight on where she'd end up if she continued with all that immoral business she was surely up to. You know, women's lib and wearing jeans. Talking about ERA inside the ward house, or maybe going to Berkeley someday..shudder...

I was dead terrified of hallucinogens even before reading it. Once I reached my teens and discovered that party attendance didn't actually lead to being a runaway drugged up half-dead ho, I was still paranoid about drinking things that I didn't open myself and I would not leave the cup unattended, and it was because of that book.

Everyone in jr high for a year or two had to read that book. Someone in Salt Lake must have gotten a kickback because I believe school districts ordered them in masse.

Go Ask Alice only made me want to try it all and run off to San Francisco to open a boutique in haight ashbury.

So there must've been a cult seal of approval somewhere, otherwise I can't see the book making its way into schools. Too many ruffled Mo-ist teacher feathers otherwise, I'd think.

This was in South Carolina in the mid 70s.

William Shatner played her father in the made for tv movie but I've never gotten to see it.

I think she'll know.

Reefer Madness

"Journalist Melissa Katsoulis, in her 2009 history of literary hoaxes Telling Tales, wrote that Sparks was never able to substantiate her claim that Go Ask Alice was based on the real diary of a real girl and that copyright records continued to list her as the sole author of the work."

Sounds strangely familiar don't it?