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By reading the first two pages of this book you tend to believe, that Alice is a teenager like you and me. She has to face the same problems everyone of us has to. For example she worries about her boyfriend Roger and she thinks about doing a diet. Anyway I forgot to tell you a little bit about Alice herself. Alice is a fifteen year old girl from a middle-classed family. She has got a brother and a sister. So you see, everything seems to be normal.
One day Alice's father tells the whole family, that he is planning to move to another town (the name of the town isn't mentioned in the text), because he will become the new dean at a university. Now Alice is very happy and she wants to start a new life in the new town. Alice even starts to diet in order to be admired at her new school. Then after saying good bye to her friends and to her grandparents, Alice and her family travel to the new town, where they own a big house. But life there doesn't develop as easy as Alice had thought. At least not for her, because Alexandria and Tim, her sister and brother, have already found friends. But all the pupils in Alice's class ignore her and nobody shows ambitions to talk to her. After a long period of loneliness and a period of considering the world as a dark and grey place, Alice finds a friend. She is called Beth and is a Jewish girl. Alice and Beth become good friends and spend a lot of time together. Then after school is out, Alice decides to spend her holidays in her old hometown, at her grandparent's. A fateful decision. On July 10th she goes to a party at Jill's, one of her former friends. At this party she makes her first experience with drugs. One of the kids mixed her a LSD-tablet in her coke and Alice didn't recognise at first. For her the trip was like floating to another sphere, another world. She saw a lot of strange patterns and the most beautiful colours she had ever seen. The whole world seemed to be wonderful and enjoyable. Two days later she goes out with another of her old friends, Bill. During this date she tried some Speed and against her decision not to take drugs again, she starts liking them. Afterwards she feels very bad about what she had been doing and she wants to come away from the drugs. Her grandfather's little heart-attack comes as an ideal excuse not to go to another of "these" parties. But then she goes to Bill again and while being under the influence of drugs, she had sex for the first time. But now she has the worry whether she is pregnant or not. So she decides to fly back to her parents. Coming home doesn't make such a big change. Her mother forces her to eat more and because of her worries she has to take sleeping pills in order to get any sleep. After some weeks she meets Chris, a girl that works in a little boutique in town, and after some days, Alice makes the decision to work in the shop too. But working in this shop doesn't make live easier. Not only the stress from school, but also that fact, that Chris introduced her to pot, compresses the story.
EPILOG
This is a rare and unusual document, based on a diary kept by an adolescent who has the ability to use the language to convey the reality of adolescent experiences. This diary is another one written in the traditionell style of Anne Frank. It is very interesting to read, because it shows exactly how one girl got drawn into the drug scene and how she struggled to free herself. Unfortunately without success.
This book seems to try to teach us some important lessons. One may be, that it shows, that any adolescent may be caught up with the drug scene. It gives us the message, that drug-users are by no means all sleazy never-do-wells, but they are also pleasant and intelligent young persons. Furthermore the diary shows why Alice started taking drugs. It was the lack of personal confidence and the poor social assurance. The drugs had grip on Alice, because she felt unwanted and unsecure and while taking drugs she felt wonderful and exepted.
I think, that in the end Alice committed suicide, because she had no real friend to talk to. Her former friends lost interest in her as soon as she dropped out of the drug scene and they began pushing her around. Furthermore Alice didn't dare to speak to her parents about her real problems and so her only "friend" was her diary. Therefore it isn't hard to imagine, that Alice died three weeks after her decision not to keep another diary.
I enjoyed reading this book very much, because it shows exactly how hard it is to drop out of the drug scene.
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