Don't Read This Book? Read This Book? Don't Read This Book?

Go Ask Alice is in the young adult category of books. Here I am, an almost-middle-aged adult, reading it for the first time, and I am traumatized and disturbed. Someone recommended it as reading for teenagers to scare them from using drugs. The book jacket basically says that too. I agree that it might do that, but I am just saddened and upset after finishing it. At first I thought I was reading an actual diary of the anonymous writer, but after I finished the book, I re-read the introduction and it said the book is based on the diary of a 15-year-old girl who has a drug problem. Later I read that the book's authorship is controversial, and that the diary might instead be based on a psychologist's re-telling of the stories of a group of children who have had traumatic and drug-addled backgrounds. I'm still trying to decide if I'm sorry I even read it or not. What kept me reading was that I thought that surely it would have a positive ending. That book led me to such depths of despair that I had never before experienced. At least I have a comedy to watch from Netflix waiting for me. Ugh.