You're Wrong About - Go Ask Alice Part 1 with Carmen Maria Machado

Episode Date: May 9, 2022

This week we begin our journey into the totally true not at all made up diary that has been scaring America’s teens for fifty years. Digressions include Jell-O, magic mushrooms, and ironing your hair, and Sarah promises to trip with Carmen. “Button, Button” is by Richard Matheson.You can hear Part 2 here and Part 3 here.Here's where to find Carmen:WebsiteSupport us:Bonus Episodes on PatreonDonate on PaypalBuy cute merchWhere else to find us:Sarah's other show, You Are Good [YWA co-founder] Mike's other show, Maintenance PhaseLinks:https://carmenmariamachado.com/http://patreon.com/yourewrongabouthttps://www.teepublic.com/stores/youre-wrong-abouthttps://www.paypal.com/paypalme/yourewrongaboutpodhttps://www.podpage.com/you-are-goodhttp://maintenancephase.comSupport the show

You know, it would be really traumatic. Any exposure to the substance that could potentially allow us to treat trauma. Welcome to You're Wrong About. I'm your host Sarah Marshall. Today we are learning about Go Ask Alice, which has been terrifying America's youths for 50 years. Go Ask Alice was published in 1972. It has never been out of print since. And for comparison's sake, the Baljar, which was published in 1971 and has also never gone out of print, has sold over three million copies in its lifetime. Go Ask Alice has sold nearly six million. Go Ask Alice was published as the real-life true story of a real teenage girl who descended into a hell of drug use addiction and a spiral leading into death itself. And it all started with an LSD trip.

And you will be shocked to learn that there is a relationship between this book and the War on Drugs. This is part one of a multi-part odyssey through this book. We're going to get to the beginning of the downward spiral. And I'm so excited to be going on this downward spiral with Carmen Maria Machado. Carmen is the author of many wonderful books, including In the Dream House. And I think that she's one of the most interesting people writing and thinking about horror. And so it was a great joy to think about probably the most horrific book that has ever passed for educational in the American school system. So relax into your shag carpet, have a bottle of Coke, and enjoy this episode.

Hello. Hello, how are you? I am at this moment fantastic because it is impossible to read this book without wanting to tell someone about like every third sentence that you have read. And now I get to talk to you about it. It's true. I have highlighted so much of this book. It's quite silly actually. And who are you? And what do you do when you're not talking about this book? My name is Carmen Maria Machado. I'm a writer, I guess. And I have written three books, Her Body and Other Parties. It's a short story collection in the Dream House, which is a memoir and the Low Low Woods, which is a comic series from DC Comics. And I'm so happy to be talking about, I guess, also a work of horror literature with you, but on a very different part of the spectrum.

Yes. And did you read this when you were a kid? I did. I did. You know, it's funny because I definitely remember reading it and I couldn't have told you one single thing about it before I started rereading it. And now that I'm rereading it, I'm like, I think this book was more formative to me than I recalled or that I've given credit to because there's a lot of stuff in here that is like familiar and is reminding me of like things that I did and said as a young person that also has lingered into adulthood. And I'm like, could it all be because of this book? And it's been really, yeah, it's been like a very odd

experience revisiting it. Yeah. There is something really powerful about returning to something that was formative to you in a way that maybe you didn't really realize. And I mean, that reminds me of, I feel like there's kind of a lot of creepy pasta type stuff that's like, remember this thing you saw on TV when you were a kid? It was pretty scary, right? And I've, well, I've been thinking too that these things kind of connect. I've been researching Judy Garland, possibly for show related reasons, and asking people, when did they first see the Wizard of Oz? And a lot of people have the answer I have, which is like, I can't remember when I first saw

the Wizard of Oz. I started watching it before I was forming discrete memories or like if I was, I don't have that anymore. So it's just always been there. Yes. I don't even know what like age group this is supposed to be for. I guess like teens, but I probably read this book when I was like, if I already guess, like maybe nine or 10. Yeah. Yeah. It shaped me, I think, in ways that I'm just beginning to understand. So. Yeah. As all our episodes are, it's a journey into the self. And I remember also reading part of this in fifth grade, which seems really young. You know, this was a time when we were doing

anti-drug education, dare type stuff or like quite young kids in schools and like reading this now, because I think I kind of petered out after about 50 pages because the issue with this book that makes it, I think, feel more real. And this reminds me of Michelle remembers is that like either something horrible is happening or it's so boring. I just could not make it through the like initial chunk before she started doing drugs. And so I feel like I was saved by my short attention span in that regard. Well, you're lucky because you didn't go into high school writing weird short stories about drugs that you'd never taken. I was writing a lot of Newsy's fan fiction. So I did have like a thing where like Spot Conlin is doing opium. But that's

another show. Yeah. So we're talking about Go Ask Alice. This book is turning 50. It was published kind of around the time young adult fiction was being invented as a genre. It is allegedly a real life diary by a real teenage girl. That's how it was marketed. Initially, that's how many people first experienced it. And that's what I totally believed about it when I was a kid. And we now know that that's not true. And we're going to get to the details of its untruthness after we work through the book itself. But I want to start by going through this story and giving you the experience of it, whether you read it once or have read it recently or are never going to read it. And Carmen, I want to start with with you setting us up and

telling us who is the story about? Where do we begin? Not to like begin by just reading the beginning, but like the opening is so, I don't know, it felt so real. I feel like the experience of this book that was so strange for me was that it was simultaneously the realest and fakest thing I'd ever read in my life. Because there were parts of it that were so like, oh, this is actually sort of how a teenager thinks. And then there were parts that were like so like sort of pedantic and didactic and like silly that I was like, you know, this is obviously not real. We sort of begin with this Alice, this amazing line like yesterday, I remember thinking I was the happiest person in the whole earth in the whole Alex galaxy in all of God's creation. Could it

have only been yesterday? Or was it endless light years ago? Yeah, I was thinking that the grass had never smelled grassier. The sky had never seemed so high. Now it's all smashed down on my head. And I wish I could just melt into the blondness of the universe and cease to exist. Which I feel like is that sort of like high and low, maybe because I'm also this moment of my life where I'm like, in this moment of high and low, but I'm like, oh, God, that's so that's so like being a teenager, right? So she begins with buying this diary, she's like, you know, writing down about her crush, Roger, who she's really obsessed with, who then of course, she immediately has like a humiliation about there's like this, right? Or like, what is that the moment that moment of like humiliation

that they have? When I read this, when I was a kid, I was like, I have no clue what Roger is supposed to have done. I guess she's just not going to tell us. And this time I was like, okay, I think he stood her up on a date. That's what I think at this point. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But she immediately writes school as a nightmare. Something that the book does not have enough of that I sort of wish there were more of are these moments that actually feel like real diary entries, which is like, dad's birthday, not much. And then it's my birthday, I'm 15, nothing. I feel like when I did keep a diary, and it was very sporadically as a young person, like I also had a lot of entries that were just like, this day, nothing really happened.

But it's like, sorry, I haven't talked to you in, you know, five months. Oh my God. She has something that's happened since then. Like I feel like it does do a little bit of that like fits and starts that I think feels very real to a diary. Yeah, I think my childhood diaries was mostly apologies to the diary, which in retrospect is very funny and sad. Did you name your diary? Did your diary have a name? I tried to, but it like always felt contrived to me. Like it was when I tried to have an imaginary friend, but I was just like, I'm just holding. Why am I pretending to hold hands with no one? Who am I fooling? I don't buy this. I called my kitty because of the diary van Frank. She called her diary kitty. And then I had a

diary that had a cat on the front. So I was like, I'll call mine kitty, just like Anne Frank, which is, you know, weird. There's also the thing where like this book is part of the kind of the tradition of diary keeping that I feel like girls are often encouraged to keep diaries. And I've never heard of an adolescent boy being told like, keep a journal. It'll give you a place to express your emotions and not blow up at people. And then you'll remember what you were doing at this age. Apparently adolescent boys aren't supposed to remember what they were doing. Like maybe like, could you think of it as like, I don't know, like girls are encouraged to keep diaries and boys are encouraged to like make art or like create literature. Do you know what I mean?

Because like a diary is like not thought of, like it's sort of like a domestic almost like art form or like an informal or like outsider art form where it's like not really thought to be like it's not being written for an audience. Right. It can be art, but you don't have to like have the social capital of that or you don't have to think of yourself that way. Right. No one's ever going to ask you how you're feeling, what's going on inside of you. So you should have some place for that. Like it should be just this weird book we're going to give you. Right. It occurs to me that like a diary is also if you are not expected to need to share your feelings with anybody, then it's like, yeah, the diary becomes the vent. It gives extra power to this book that, yeah,

that it does feel authentic to diary keeping. And I'm, you know, I'm a much more regular journaler now than I was when I was an adolescent. And I think part of its power like still for me comes from that. It's so funny because I keep thinking about how like when I actually kept a diary in a regular way, it was actually a live journal. So it was like public facing, like there was like almost like an audience. I mean, right. And then if you're writing a diary with the expectation that it's for posterity, then it's like not really private either. It totally cuts out the middleman of time. Right. It's not like it's going to be discovered at some point. It's just like, yeah, it's like people are like in real time responding to your thoughts. And

but yeah, anyway, so then they move, which is sort of I think the beginning of like this sort of displacement, right? That Alice, her family, her dad gets like a job somewhere and they decide to move. She's also like obsessed with dieting, which I know we were texting about a little bit, which is like so sad. Like I was not expecting this level of like food obsession and like weight talk. Right. You're like, it's in the 60s, and it's about a teenage girl. So like, could we possibly escape diet talk? No. And I mean, this book goes to some really depressing places. But I think maybe some of the saddest stuff for me is still in the opening pages when we got her talking about dieting and her body. And there's gonna find this passage. She goes on a date

October 26 date and six fries. No, I ate six wonderful delicious mouthwatering delectable heavenly french fries, which is just devastating. The section was really interesting to me because it had this quote, which I think I also texted to you, which I sort of made a note to myself just wrote gay because she's like really obsessed with, you know, how she'd more than wind up sex with Roger. And then she says, I don't ever want to have sex with any other boy in the whole world ever. I swear I'll die a virgin if Roger and I don't get together. I couldn't stand to have any other boy even touch me. I'm not even sure about Robert Roger. Maybe later when I'm older, I'll feel differently. Mother says that as girls get older hormones invade our bloodstream making

our sexual desires greater, I guess I'm just developing slowly. I've heard some pretty wild stories of some of the kids at school, but I'm not them, I mean, and besides sex seems so strange and inconvenient and so awkward. And I was like, huh, interesting. I mean, I feel like, I don't know, like, I guess this sort of like ambivalence about sex or like confusion about sex does feel actually really true to me. I feel like not even for me because like I'm I'm bi so like I and I've always had crushes on like everybody. But a lot of like lesbians I know have said like, yeah, I thought I was like, I didn't know what sex, sexual desire was, because I would like look at boys and be like, eh, you know, or I'd kiss and be like, I guess kissing just feels like nothing,

and then kiss a woman and be like, oh, this is the greatest thing ever. And it's just that they were like kissing the wrong people. I feel like in a culture where women having sexual desire is considered like either dangerous or anomalous, like it feels like that also contributes to how you could just be like, I feel nothing when I kiss men, but like apparently no one else does either. They like it if they're like the blonde lady and it's a wonderful life. She's getting run out of town or whatever. So yeah, it's like, I mean, it reminds me of like the the annual discourse we have around baby, it's cold outside. And the argument that like, actually it's a song about how the woman who is duetting with Dean Martin like

has to keep saying no, even if she wants to say yes, because she's not allowed to. And therefore, he's like doing her a solid. And it's like, if you have no way of knowing if you're doing someone a solid or actually just like imprisoning them, then like, there's something wrong with the culture. I feel like also this section really spoke to spoke to something in me because I don't know, like I moved when I was a kid and it was like incredibly traumatic for me. And I remember like the sort of the grief of being dislodged from like my family or my or my friends and my house and my room and like this place where I had been at that point for my whole life was actually quite intense. And you know, obviously not very serious on a scale of potential traumas, but

there was something on this section too that really spoke to me that I was like, yeah, I remember actually being really messed up by moving. She just is like, I hate to think of this new family like running up and down our beautiful front stairs, but their dirty sticky fingers on the walls and their feet all over mother's white carpeting, like those big feelings of being like I'm being sort of displaced from this place that I know for reasons that I can't control, like I'm just being moved because I'm a kid. Well, and I guess it helps that we spend because we're with Alice for eight months before she does a single drug. We're spending time with her as a person. And I feel like this is when she's most convincing. And then when she like goes on

these drugbenders, then like things change. It feels authentic to me to being a teenager, but also to the kind of the human condition in the sense that I still have, you know, more teen injury times than others. And sometimes I feel like I'm not so far away from that teenager feeling of like everything is wonderful or everything is terrible. And I have no ability to find a middle. Now, you're right. It's so funny because you're right. It's like the drug stuff is so stupid and like is so non realistic in any way. But like the other stuff, and presumably because the author, I mean, not to like jump too far ahead, but like the woman, the adult woman who wrote this book, like presumably was a teenager at some point, you know, it's almost certainly.

And so like a lot of these feelings and like maybe those are the details that feel so real where it's like she's just like accessing this actual like part of her own sort of adolescence or youth. I don't know. Maybe these are things that people associate with the feelings of adolescence. But I think that for many people, they never really go away or maybe it's a bigger part of some people's lives than others. But I feel like, you know, we're returning over and over before drugs enter the picture. And then after they do as well to this feeling, our protagonist has that she's just like nothing, right, that she's like a bad friend, even to her diary that she's dragging down her family because her dad has an important job at the university and her mother

seems not like a fun mom. There weren't so many of them at the time, but like pretty proper and has high expectations and her, she has a little brother and a little sister and they immediately make friends. And this feeling of just being like a drain on everyone around you just feels so real. And I feel like, I don't know, the more we're talking about it, the more I'm like, is this secretly a book about depression? Yeah, I mean, like right, like the sort of fixation on her own sort of loneliness and like, yeah, and then like her weight up and down, I mean, which is actually way more interesting than like weird fake drugs. Right. And if a book had come out at the same time that was like Alice is a teenage girl just like you, but she has depression, like would it

have become this legendary scare tactic that everyone read when they were growing up and we're still talking about 50 years later? No. No. Because Nixon wouldn't get behind it for one thing. You can't make like anti-depression, you know, policy. You're like running on like, if I am president, you know, you can't have a war on depression that allows you to incarcerate an entire generation for no reason. Exactly. Like, where does the money go? Where is it coming from? Like, yeah, no one wants to do that. It's a shame because like that would have probably made this book, this book would have been, you know, better in that sense. I would love a presidential war on depression. I think we could really, if we could put our backs into this, we could really

get somewhere. God, I would too. Okay, so let's see. So she goes to her new school. She hates it. Nobody wants to talk to her. She feels like shit. She finds her a friend. She's as claudious and misfitting as I am. But I guess that old book about birds of a feather is true. And one night Gerda came to pick me up for the movies and my folks were everything but rude to her. Imagine my long-suffering sweet-mouthed mother being tempted to utter a slimy phrase about my drab looking nobody friend. Oh, God, it's horrifying. And meanwhile, good for Gerda, who had the sense to stay in this book very briefly and then never return. She's like, I just like earth tones. Yeah, right, exactly. It's like drab is the strong word, I don't know. And then she has this friend

Beth. She makes this friend Beth. Yeah. There is something between them that feels almost something like attraction, or at least that was my vibe, which kind of brought me back to this gay thing. Because once they actually part ways for the summer, she has this tremendous grief about parting from Beth, which I thought was super, super interesting. I want to read that passage because that's one of my favorite parts. Please go ahead. June 23rd. June 23rd. Beth and I have only two more days together. Our parting is almost like looking forward to a death. It seems that I have known her always, for she understands me. I must admit that there were even times when her mother arranged dates for her that I was jealous of the boys. I hope it's not strange for a girl

to feel that way about another girl. Oh, I hope not. Is it possible that I am in love with her? Oh, that's dumb even for me. It's because she is the dearest friend that I have ever had or that I shall ever have. So, gay. And also feels really real. That's another one of those details where I was like, that is absolutely a thought that even I think actually a heterosexual or I guess I should say a person who thinks that they're heterosexual, adult woman, could nostalgically remember, oh, when I had that friend and we were so close in parting from her was like death. And I had these very intense thoughts that she is the dearest friend that I have ever had or will ever have in my whole life. I don't know. I saw this meme the other day that was

very funny that I laughed out loud where I was like, did you ever have a really weird and close intense friendship that ended in a massive friend breakup or are you straight? But I think there is something just queer about a friend with whom you are so close parting from them is like death. I feel like in the past 10 years, we've seen a fair amount of media that's like friend breakups are real. And it's a big thing. And it's like part of millennial culture to like take friend breakups seriously in a way that seems at least as being positioned as new. And it seems like recognizing intimacy as an important ingredient in friendships or bringing like close friendships into adult life. Like if the alternative is like

relationships where you never have a breakup and where there's never like a traumatic rift or something because like they're just never needed to be you just like stopped jogging together or somebody moved or it petered out feels like I don't know like that like not everything has to end in pain or end but like it feels like if you're not having like emotional intensity around friendship as an adult, then maybe you're not putting intimacy into that. Yeah, I mean, a friend breakup is a pretty devastating thing. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, this is a part of the book where I'm like, yep, this is written from some kind of lived experience. This isn't like you just looked up a name of a drug and then read

an article in life about it. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, so then Alice goes to her grandparents house for the summer has this big separation. She like weeps when she parts from Beth and then goes to her grandparents house and like back to the place where she lived before. So it's like back to the the community where she was like her old school and stuff. And I feel like from context clues, it seems like her family has moved to Utah and that's where the new house is. Right. I think yeah, I think that's that seems correct. But yeah, so she like goes back to her old home and is like staying with her grandparents and then is runs into this girl Jill who had been a girl like a popular girl at her old school

and Jill invites her to an autograph party. I was like, I feel like it's so funny because sometimes I kind of forget when this book is taking place. And then I'm like an autograph party. Oh my god. And she's like, thank heavens, I brought my yearbook. Right. So everyone will be able to sign. She says it won't be the same as theirs. Another pictures will be in it, but then mine won't be in theirs either. So I guess they're going to get together and like sign a bunch of yearbooks, which I was used to doing in a frenzy panic on the last day of school. So it's nice the idea. They have parties where they can like get together and do this. And then this of course is the first introduction into drugs. So the kids make she goes to this party. The kids are doing

coke. No, they're drinking coke. They're drinking Coca-Cola. Wait, really? Oh, god. Oh, wait. You're right. You're right. Okay. So they're drinking. Oh, that's weird that it's lower. Well, but like I'm going to read this passage because I think this is like this whole sequence is very interesting. She says, a little while after we got there, Jill and one of the boys brought out a tray of coke, which you can see where why your mind would go there. Right. And all the kids immediately sprawled out on the floor on cushions or crawled up together on the sofa and chairs. Jill winked at me and said, tonight we're playing button button. Who's got the button? You know, the game we used to play when we were kids, which like, no, Jill, I don't know

because I didn't grow up in the 1940s. But I do know that from like the, I think there was a Twilight Zone episode. And this, this is a story that's been adapted many times. And the concept is like a scary man comes to your house. He has a button. If you press it, a string here will die and you get some amount of money. That's exciting for whatever period we're adapting this in. And then the twist is that he leaves and you're like, who are you going to take the button to next? And he's like, no one you know. Right. Right. Right. So it's like, it's, it's a children's game. And in this case, the button is the Coca Cola with acid in it. Right. And Alice writes, Bill Thompson, who was stretched out next to me left, only it's just too bad that now somebody has to

babysit. I looked up at him and smiled. I didn't want to appear too stupid. Everyone sits there drinks slowly and everyone seemed to be watching everyone else. I kept my eyes on Jill supposing that anything she did, I should do. Suddenly I began to feel something strange inside myself like a storm. I remember that two or three records had played since we had had the drinks and now everyone was beginning to look at me. The palms of my hands were sweating and I could feel droplets of moisture on my scalp at the back of my neck. The room seemed unusually quiet. And as Jill got out to close the window shades completely, I thought they're trying to poison me. Why? Why would they try to poison me? My whole body was tense at every muscle and a

feeling of weird apprehension swept over me, strangled me, suffocated me. When I opened my eyes, I realized that it was just Bill who had hit his arm around my shoulder. Lucky you. Lucky you. He was saying in a slow motion record on the wrong speed voice, but don't worry, I'll babysit you. This will be a good trip. That was amazing. Thank you. So yeah, so then she begins this like visual, like a bunch of visual hallucinations. Basically they've put LSD in the drink, but not everybody got LSD. It's like some of them had it and some of them didn't, right? I have never done a hallucination in my life. I am incredibly afraid of them, which is one thing that I kind of, I think possibly is the fault of this book.

It can't have helped you to not be afraid of them, I gotta say. But I'm really quite sure that the fear of it comes from this, because it is such a horrifying idea that someone could just give you a drink that then has LSD in it and then suddenly you could be having this experience happen to you and not realize what's happening, which seems like a nightmare. And just the way that she writes about it feels, it's silly, but also there's some pretty moments where I'm like, oh, that's kind of nice actually. Or it's interesting to imagine, I'm like, has this woman ever done drugs? Probably not. This is probably how I would have described doing drugs if you would just, having never

have done it. Yeah. And knowing that this was written by someone, not a teenager who was doing so in an explicit anti-drugs capacity, it's funny to think about being like, I hate drugs and I hate them so much, I have to sit around imagining what it's like to be on drugs for like a lot of time, a lot of space in this book ends up going to that. There's a description that I love and like, I haven't had this specific feeling, but I can see myself having it. She says, my senses were so up that I could hear someone breathing in the house next door, and I could smell someone miles away making orange and red and green ribbed jello. Yes. That's more evidence that this is Utah, by the way.

It is weird also because it's so pleasant, like the way it's described is actually quite lovely. That's the thing. She's been so miserable. You're like, well, God, like good for you. Like, honestly, I can't imagine something more pleasant than smelling someone's jello baking from miles away. That actually sounds like beautiful and transcendent. And I'm like, God, like, yeah, I want that for her. Yeah. And then, yeah, and they basically, at some point, I guess, when she comes down, she's like, what happened? And they're like, oh, 10 of the 14 bottles had LSD in them and just no one knew who would get it, which again, it like really, really freaks me out. The idea that that would be a thing that someone would do.

I don't know. This is an interesting one because I feel like we didn't grow up in the heyday of like urban legends about LSD by any means, but I feel like I definitely grew up hearing that it would hearing about flashbacks as something people believed in and hearing that it could get stuck in your hair. Oh, the thing I remember about LSD, the urban legend that I heard was if you took LSD some number of times, I think the number was like six, you were legally insane. I think I did hear that. And like, maybe I heard it from Dare, you know? That's very possible. But I feel like a person told me and I feel like there was like, it was like, flashbacks would happen at any moment at any time. And also, yeah, if you took LSD some

number of times, you were legally insane. And I was like, wow, why did anyone do that? And I remember in Dare, they were going over the different drugs and I was like, okay, cocaine, yeah, I get why that's bad, meth, I get why that's bad, et cetera, et cetera, I get it, I get it, possible death, all right, don't want that. And then there were like hallucinations. You can't really probably die from them, but you'll see things that aren't happening. So that's bad, right? And I was like, is it like, I remember actually putting my hand up during a like anti drug lecture, and I think fifth grade, and asking the person like, why is it bad? Like, why is LSD bad? I don't get it. And if I had finished this book, I would have gotten an

argument for why it's bad. But yeah, I think it's interesting to me that something that people seem to have been incredibly concerned about in the 60s was the idea that they would get dosed with LSD and that hippies were trying to give everyone LSD all the time. And I think, you know, yeah, that definitely did happen. Especially if you got something that anything that you weren't expecting or something that was extremely strong or something like that would be horrible. But it's very interesting that like in this moment, when America was entertaining this massive fear of a hallucinogen or a psychedelic, although I think what happened with that? Have we like started saying psychedelic instead of hallucinogen because hallucinogen has become negative?

I think so. Yeah, I think so. Okay. So a hallucinogen at the time and a psychedelic in today's language, but that we were conflating the idea of either seeing things that weren't there or seeing things that are there that you can't normally see. But we can't talk about that as an individual concept. We have to talk about it always like connected to the idea of someone forcing you to do that. It's really interesting. Is this like because we're afraid that the hippies are showing us like the soul of America and it's uncomfortable? Where it's this idea that like, you can be out of control at any moment, right? Like it's like

that like even if you take it once like in the future at some point, like there's like a risk that it'll come back to you or there's a risk someone could dose without you meaning to. And right, that like makes a thing that is actually not that scary, scary. Especially because, you know, after it was initially synthesized from the beginning and certainly now it's people have always talked about have always recognized that LSD has potential for treating trauma and for making scary things less scary. And so it feels, yeah, just so so really tragic, I guess, more than anything, just deeply tragic that we we had this science that allowed us to deal with the trauma that feels like such a big part of our national character.

And we then were like, you know, it will be really traumatic. Any exposure to the substance that could potentially allow us to treat trauma. Yeah, or like depression or something speaking of. Yeah, right. All of it. All the good stuff. Just yeah. The idea of like that this drug is gonna like stick its fingers in the spaghetti of your brain. Like I get it that that's scary and like going on a trip is scary. Like Carmen, if you want to trip with somebody, I'll do it with you like anytime and I'm not gonna push you. I'm not I am not a pusher. You're not just gonna hand me a Coca Cola. I will. Yeah, I will have you over to my house and I'll be like button, button, Carmen.

Specifically, mushrooms for me are like have been such a positive space in my life and have created a space where the like exhausting and sometimes all but impossible experience of being inside my own brain has been able to subside for a little bit and just the you know, this is a this is a whole other topic but ego death is much better than actual death. It's a fun one. And so the idea that we couldn't talk about that we had to think of it as like psychedelics are a tool that someone is going to use to commit violence against you and that's how we're going to think about them or they will cause you to do violence against yourself. I don't know. The more I think about it, the more that feels connected to the idea that like

self insight is the enemy here, which I think was not helping us at the time. I mean, it also feels important narratively speaking that like according to the way this book is structured, LSD is like the so-called, oh god, what's the word? Is it the gateway drug? Yes, the gateway drug. Thank you. It's like the introduction drug. Sorry, I had COVID a few weeks ago and my brain is like mush, but the anti-posting, the gateway drug, right? Which is like I was like LSD is a gateway drug is like what a curious idea because like pretty soon after this she's taking torpedoes, which what the fuck is that and speed and like shooting things into her arm. And I'm like, wait, yeah, how do you go from LSD to shooting shit into your arm in one summer that feels

like. I have this in front of me. She does acid for the first time accidentally on July 10th and then she injects speed into her arm 10 days later on the 20th. She's popping benes by the fall. She's gotten into sleeping pills. She's just an equal opportunity. You know, she's just trying it all. It's like if she was like, if it was just about like this depressed girl started doing LSD and it actually felt amazing, like I would be like, yeah, that totally makes sense. But like, you know, the progression of drugs in this book is like very strange. And I think it's notable that like this actually harmless sort of mind-expanding drug that can like help with depression, you know, whatever, or like class of drugs that like that's the gateway drug into like

the things that will ultimately like kill her. And also that people who do drugs want you to do drugs that like if it's not just that like, you know, people get dosed sometimes or like it's, it's a known thing because no, anybody who likes LSD, like they don't, they kind of like taking LSD, but they really like giving LSD to everybody else. And it's like, does that, does it not occur to anyone that any of this is in short supply for some of these 15 year olds? Yeah, they're not just like handing it out. You know, it just, it just doesn't make any sense. This is actually another reason that I do think that this book was more influential on me than I remembered. Because when I was in high school, I wrote a short story that I submitted to our

literary magazine anonymously about a girl who dies at a party after doing drugs. And there was a detail in the story, which I have never forgotten. And I truly do not know where I got it from. She goes to the party and remembers seeing barrels of ecstasy, wow, unit of measurement. Well, did it take place like in Wyoming on like the ecstasy, you know, the like oil fields where it just comes bursting out of the ground like in giant? You know, clearly I had no idea. And like, I remember like sitting it on this like magazine meeting, again, nobody knew it was my story. And someone very gently breaking the silence by saying, does ecstasy come in barrels? It does when you buy it at Costco.

Yeah, no, my fear of drugs is like a concept that has that existed for most of my life. And even into now in some ways, like I think came from this this book, which is sort of horrifying to imagine. That's why we do book clubs. We just got to comb through the whole thing, figure out how we got here. Even the speed section has some really good like, she says, no wonder it's called speed. I could hardly control myself. In fact, I couldn't have if I had wanted to and I didn't want to. I danced like I'd never dreamed possible for introverted, mousy little me. I felt great, free, abandoned, a different, improved, perfected specimen of a different, improved, perfected species. It was wild. It was beautiful. It really was. Yeah. And then immediately her

grandfather has a heart attack. As if in retaliation. I know. I know. I know. I know. God, I also just like feel like as a teenager, like whenever I did something even slightly bad, and it was slight, and something bad happened kind of soon afterward, I absolutely believed that it was my fault that I had done it. Oh, yeah. Do some crack, break your mother's back. Yes, like exactly. Yes. Oh, I want to point out something that is interestingly going to be a light motif, which is that after Gramps's heart attack, she's thinking about death and she writes, I wonder if there really is a life after death. Oh, I do hope there is, but that isn't the part that really worries me. Actually, I know that our souls will go back up to God. But when I think

about our bodies being buried in the dark, cold ground and being eaten by worms and rotting, I can hardly stand the thought. I think I'd rather be cremated. Yes, I would. I definitely would. I'm going to ask mom and dad and the kids as soon as I get home to be sure to have me cremated when I die. They will. They're a sweet and wonderful and good family and I love them and I'm lucky to have them. It's, yeah. Just laying some groundwork for how the story is going to unfold. Right, right, right. I believe we call that foreshadowing. I believe it's what they call that in English class. I wonder if when it's this overt, it's like forecoloring as hard as you can with the crayon or something. But again, think about also like if you're reading this as a teenager, like then really,

you know, going back and being like, holy crap, she knew it. She knew on some level. Yeah, like Laura Palmer. So then a few days later, she has sex with God, not Roger. Who is it? Richie. Oh, Bill. Bill from the acid party. Bill from the acid party. Yeah. So they have sex and she's kind of like, well, I never thought I could have sex with anybody except for Roger. But she has sex with him on acid, which like, I had to go ask somebody who has done acid. I was like, I feel like you've said to me that it's very hard to have sex on acid. And this person confirmed for me that it is in fact,

very hard to have sex on acid. Oh, really? If you have a penis or just generally? No, no, no, no. Just like that like sex is not, I mean, so this is just one person's perspective. But like, I was like, oh, that's so interesting that like she loses her virginity while being on acid, which sounds really wild, though she kind of describes it as like, sort of beautiful. I don't know what your feelings are on this sort of moment of the book. Right. Well, my first thought is that we're being shown by the author that basically once you let one virtue fall, there's going to be a domino effect and then you're going to like have to do every drug and then you will also have sex. Yeah, that I the gateway drug idea. And also,

I think this very, this idea very present in American sex and drug education that I think we see in a lot of conservative Christian culture that like things are either sinful or not, and you are either fallen or not. And that like once you do kind of one big taboo, then just like everything's fair game. If you have premarital sex, then like, you might as well do something that actually harms somebody because it's all the same. Which is like obviously objectively ridiculous. But in the course of the entry, there's something about this part that calls to me like the form of the diary. Like just because it's okay, like the nature of a diary would like, okay, so like a thing that happens earlier in this book that feels

really real is where she like has some really short entries and some entries where she's like, sorry, I've been gone for a long time. And that feels like true to the form of the diary of the form of the book. But in this section, it's weird because it's like she sort of is like talking about how amazing it was, like making love to Bill. She says all my life, I thought the first time I had sex with someone, it would be something special, maybe even painful. But it turned out to be just part of the brilliant freaky way out forever pattern. Which like, I'm loving love. And then suddenly she's like, wait, what if I'm pregnant? I mean, in the course of this one entry, she is like flipping out that she could be pregnant. And then she's thinking about having

an abortion, like, you know, like another girl in her school, and she's like, please, I don't want to be pregnant. I hate this place. I need to leave. I need to call my mom. I need to get out. Like she's kind of freaking out by the end of it. Yeah, I love that she starts at totally exultant. And by the end, she's like absolutely terrified. And yeah, yeah, that does feel like, like an exaggerated version of part of the experience of diary writing, where you like start off kind of where part of it is to process your feelings, you know, and let things bubble up and halfway through, you're like, oh, fuck, oh, fuck. Right, right.

Wait a minute. I didn't thought of this implication. But yeah, I think she's having this like, incredibly stressful summer. And like, it's going to get so much worse. But like, like the drugs are, you know, within the world of the story, having a negative effect in some ways. But also, it seems like her guilt over the drugs, I would argue, was harming her more. Oh, yeah, of course, of course. And guess this thing that she can never tell her parents. And like, they never know the full extent of what she's been through for presumably until this book is public. Right. If it's for real, I'm like written by an actual teenager,

can you imagine the parent just like picking up the book and being like, oh my god, my daughter's diary. Yeah. But yeah, so she goes home. And, or no, no, wait, does she go home? No, no, no, then Roger comes by. Yeah, first love or her first crush. Which is also typical, like you finally bang someone else and then fucking Roger comes over. Right. This book has moments of realness. It's fair. Yeah. And she's like, oh my god, I can't believe that like I just did this. And like,

what if he finds out like, oh my god, I just had sex with another boy and now, you know, Roger is here. And then he basically tells her like, I really like you and I'm going to be going to military school and hear all my goals and dreams. And then they kiss. Then he kissed me. And it was what I had always dreamed it would be since I was in kindergarten. Other boys have kissed me, but it wasn't the same at all. This was fondness and liking and desire and regard and admiration and affection and tenderness and attachment and yearning. It was the most wonderful thing that has ever happened in my life. And then she's like, oh, no, but what if he finds out about Bill? She's like, if I were Catholic, I could do like penance

to pay for what I've done. But how will he ever forgive me? And the entry ends. Oh, terrors, horrors, endless torment. I just love so much. Right. My heart just like bleeds for this girl. Like I know she's not real, but she's also very real, right? And I feel like this is why this book has the legs that it does. One is just like, it's fun to be scared. It's fun for adults to scare kids of things that they think they should be scared of. And also just that this is the despondency and the feeling of what it does to you to have such powerlessness as a teenager, I think. This just feels so true. I mean, I did not have sex as a teenager and I did not do anything even remotely like any of this

as a teen. But I do feel like there was even stuff that I did that was so minor. I remember this sensation of feeling so deeply alone and being like no one could ever understand if I explained to them the complexity of what is going on. What is going on is actually quite basic and quite simple and quite just like, I mean complicated because you're 15 or 16 or whatever and you're like, oh my god, this is the end of my life. But the perspective, I don't know, I guess it's just I'm like the perspective of being an adult. But yeah, I don't know. Yeah. And even in adulthood, I feel like that still plagues us. And it's one of the reasons why for everything that it's done, I feel like some of the good the internet generally has brought

us is like a way for people to realize that other people feel the way they feel and do the things they do. And I think that Instagram is genuinely bad for us. But I think it's also playing on a basic human weakness that's always been with us, which is to presume that other people have some kind of a whole coherent self and life and that we are the only ones who's like an undercooked cobbler that has fallen on the floor. Yeah, yeah. So then she spends the next like a while freaking out that she could be pregnant, which by the way, if she is, she's fucked because she can't get an abortion legally. This is before legal abortions. And as we're having this conversation, it might be after that in this country. So something to think about. Right. No, no, no. So right,

she would have been absolutely fucked. And she's so upset about it that she takes drugs to like compensate for the stress of like worrying like she's taking sleeping pills that she steals from her grandfather. I'm sure it'll calm down the baby. And she like on all her parents and her grandparents are kind of just like, what's wrong? Like, is it do you fight with your boyfriend? Like, what's going on? And she's just like, she's like, I'm worried, you know, in her brain, she's like, I'm worried I'm pregnant and I'm taking like a million drugs to like calm me down. And she like runs out of the drugs and then she was a doctor and he gives her more drugs. And then her period starts. And then she's like, Oh, thank what a wonderful, beautiful, happy day.

My period started. I was never so happy for anything in my life. Now I can throw away my sleeping pills and tranquilizers. And I can be me again. Oh, wow. Then Beth comes home, her beloved Beth and she's like, she's hardly the same person. Like it's like they've already experienced this like weird breakup, which is really quite sad. Yeah. And Beth has a boyfriend now. So, you know, she met at camp. And then also like next paragraph, it's like, Beth has a boyfriend, I met a girl named Chris. And it's like, okay, moving on, moving on to Chris, who's a hippie. Yeah. Yeah. And then they iron their hair, which I've also have only ever like read about in books. Like I was like, I know that's the thing that people did. My mom did that when she was a teenager.

Oh, God. Yeah. I don't think she recommends it. It's so funny because this also includes like, she basically says like, I look like a hippie. I guess her mom and dad want to talk to her. And she says, I could tell them a thing or two, because I imagine that sex without drugs isn't even the same thing as the mad forever wonder of it when you're really way out there. Anyway, I seem to be doing less and less right. I'm getting so that no matter what I do, I can't please the establishment. I love how like it reminds me of and just like that, the Sex and the City sequel series were like, I'm convinced they had a whiteboard covered in words from right now that they wanted to work

into the script. So they were like, LinkedIn, Uber, Tinder. Do you think establishment was one of those words on this, on this board? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I feel like they was, she gets out a little chalkboard, the mystery lady who wrote this of like things that a hippie would say and kind of threw them in a random. Totally. And then the next, the next entry also has this like, I keep them just like going through my own highlights, but like, it's like both true and also feels so in the nose that it's so ridiculous. But she says, if only parents would listen, if only they would let us talk instead of forever and eternally and continuously harping and preaching and nagging and correcting and yacking, yacking, yacking, but they won't listen.

They simply won't or can't or don't want to listen. And we kids keep winding up back in the same old frustrating, lost, lonely corner with no one to relate to either verbally or physically. I mean, that's not, not true, but it's weird to just like say it like that. Well, yeah. And it's like, it's a, it's like, there are these clumsy moments where you're like, is this the theme? Is the theme that parents need to listen? Right. And then that goes away. And you're like, I guess that's not the theme. Right, right. Though I can imagine like a parent, like listening to this, like, or like reading this book, you know, I guess to understand the youth or whatever. And like this sort of speaking to them in some way, like, ah, the kids, they're

just, they feel like we don't listen to them. That's interesting, you know, like maybe that's relevant. Kind of a recurring problem happens every generation, I feel like. Right. And then Roger. So like, she's sort of, I guess, like seeing Roger, but he's going to his military school and he's like, I'm just going to go. Yeah, I guess it's like, he's implying like we're just going to be in this like long distance relationship, but we're going to be really far apart from each other. And she's like, I'll wait for you. But of course, is that's going to be really hard. It's hard for anybody. And it's hard for a 16 year old or 50 or 15 year old at this point. And then she is hanging out with Chris and does more drugs. And this is also just like, I feel

like also there's like slang in here that I do not understand. This heart will pep you up, like tranquilizer, slow you down. So she gives her some kind of drug, like an upper that will like counteract all the downers and tranquilizers and sleeping pills. It's a little red thing. So I don't know if that's a Benny, because they talk about Benny's later, but like, yeah, yeah, she's into speed now it's fall. So it's time for speed. I think that a lot of teenagers at this point like need to take something that could fall into the speed bucket because they are being given too much homework to do. So give kids less homework. That's what I think. Right. Okay, let's September 26. Take

it away. And so next entry, September 26. Last night was the night, friend. I finally smoked pot, and it was even greater than I expected. And then she describes pot. And I'm just like, many people have commented on this, it's kind of a notorious thing about this book that like she tries apparently, she does, she tries heroin later, she hasn't tried heroin yet. But she's tried almost every drug I think this author can think of. And then she goes on to pot. And then spot. Yeah, I don't think I've been that relaxed in my whole entire life. It was really beautiful. And they walk around on a sheepskin. And then like, apparently based on the order of events, like, this is the last kind of domino that needs to fall before she becomes an actual drug

dealer. It's like, once you do pot, you're in the system. Then you're selling droves to children in elementary school. Yes. Also, it's funny to me, it just occurs to me, we are recording this on 420. So this feels appropriate. Yes. I did that on purpose. Oh, you did? But yeah, the description of the sheepskin rug and then like eating a salted peanut and oh, and I referenced to the Great Salt Lake. So she was coming from Utah also. So then I picked up a salted peanut, and noticed that nothing had ever tasted so salty before. It felt like being a child again, and trying to swim in the Great Salt Lake. Also, I should say, someone has been to the Great Salt Lake, it is disgusting. Do people swim in the Great Salt Lake? I was like, do people swim in it? That sounds

scary. Okay. This is my experience with the Great Salt Lake, which is physically, which is visually beautiful. Like, obviously, it's gorgeous to look at as you've driven past it. You've seen it. But like, the only life in this lake that's so salty are brine shrimp that like die in droves, like on the shore. So it just smells like death. And I remember like getting to this beach and getting out of the car. And it smelled just like the worst rotting seafood. I mean, just the disgusting. Like the dumpster behind a red lobster. Truly, yes. Truly awful. And then I thought there was black sand. But as I moved closer, it turned to be the flies that were on top of the brine, of the dead brine shrimp. And so when you move close to it, all the flies like lifted off and

like chased after you were like, you were like a goddess of death or something. And it was horrifying. Anyway, I don't know if people swim in the Great Salt Lake. Maybe they do. Maybe there's a part that's less gross. But this is like one of the smaller mysteries I think we can solve along the way. Yeah. But like, I don't know, I think you've just written like a small horror movie. Paragraphed. I would watch it. Yeah. And even this section, I don't know, like the peanut is saltier. My liver and my spleen and my intestines were corroded with salt. I longed to taste a fresh peach or strawberry and then to have the flavor and sweetness and delectableness of them consume me also. It was great. And I began to laugh in a totally mad way. It's just,

oh, God, I love it so much. It's so meticulous and so great. Like whenever this kid is not on drugs, she's like down on herself. She's incredibly self conscious. Like even when she's feeling happy or hopeful, it's like very based on the approval of others. And it's like only when she's tripping or on the pot that she seems to actually have a sense of self and just being enjoying herself. And I feel like that's one of the things about this book that makes it weird and also makes it stick. Yeah. So then she's given some joints to smoke when she's alone. So then she's deeply in love. So then she is sort of having this thing with Richie and Chris, her friend is in love with Ted, who's Richie's roommate. And they're all

dealing drugs. And there's this kind of interesting thing that's happening in here where she's basically like they sort of convince her and Chris like, well, you're selling to drugs to kids who would otherwise have access to drugs. So it's not like you're doing anything bad. Like you're selling it to like high schoolers who like are already going to get it anyway. Like she's trying to have sex with Richie. He only wants to have sex while they're on drugs. And then she wants to have sex not on drugs. And he's like, you're oversexed. And then it turns out it turns out that Richie and I've already forgotten his name, Ted, Richie and Ted are gay lovers and Chris and her walk into their apartment to find them having

sex. And then it gets super homophobic for like five seconds. Yes. You know, and then of course, she's like really mad. She's like, man, he had me like dealing drugs at some point he has her doing drugs to like then elementary school kids, which I'm like, what? Right. Use your head. How much disposable income does a nine year old have? Like what maybe this is why your business isn't working. There are certainly kids who would unfortunately have access to drugs at nine, but like it's not because they're like buying it from a local dealer. Like it's me, you know, it's like way going to be way sadder and more specific than that. You know, she's like, I'm so ashamed. I can't believe I've been selling to 11 and 12 year olds and even nine and 10 year olds.

I'm a disgrace to myself and my family and to everybody. I'm as bad as that son of a bitch, Richie. So then her and Chris get this idea. They decide that they are going to go to San Francisco to start over and like make sort of begin like a new life together. And it'll be like easy because you know, they're going to be like away from like this sort of all these drug people they've been knowing and they can just sort of start fresh. Yeah, they'll be away from other temptations in San Francisco. Yeah, in San Francisco. And then they leave, they go to someone they sort of, they say they backtrack to Salt Lake City. They've stolen money from Richie and Ted and also told the report him to the police. So they're afraid that like they'll come after them.

So they kind of like do some, do some weird movements to like kind of throw Richie off their track. And then she says goodbye to your home, goodbye, good family, sort of saying goodbye in her diary to her family. And she's like, I hate being a high school dropout, but I dare not even write for my transcripts knowing that you might follow them and Richie might follow them. You're very sacred to me. And then they go to San Francisco. And I wonder what will happen to our girls. And then everything's fine. And then she's like, I'm a lesbian and then everything is fine. Oh my God, let's just, I mean, we have to finish the book. But like, if you, the audience want to leave now, we can say like, yeah, and that's the end. And then she and Chris had a great time and

they kissed each other tenderly at Golden Gate Park, the end and a book goodbye. The end. And now they go to Dyke March every year. And everybody knows them and looks for them and is like so charmed by them as a couple. It's like an old Dyke couple. And they have a little shop called Button Button. Yeah, that's our Go Ask Alice fan fiction. Yeah. But if you want the other story, we will be back with part two and- We will be. Yes, things are going to escalate.

Yes. How do you feel kind of at the conclusion of this, I guess, the end of the beginning? Yeah, I like feel for her. Yeah. I mean, I feel like this is why this book has endured, you know, because kids, adolescents, like we find friends in books and I feel like Alice, despite being like someone created very cynically in many ways, like it has become like Anne of Green Gables or Jane Eyre at this point. Like she has been beloved by many people for many, many years. And I don't know, she's important to me too. I guess like I want,

I really want stuff to work out for her. I don't think it's going to in the book though, but it can for, I don't know, for the part of her that is us. We got that foreshadowing so we know. Yeah. It was very subtle. Thank you so much for joining us for part one of this very educational story. We can't wait to see you in part two. And if you want to learn about more stories that totally really happened, we have a nice bonus episode on Patreon about the Blair Witch Project with Chelsea Webersmith. Or you could spend your money on a nice crunchy. It's up to you.

Thank you so much to Carmen Marie Machado for coming to talk to me about this wonderfully real fake book. And thank you as always to Carolyn Kendrick, who produces this show and makes it sound great. Thanks again. See you next time. you