The diary format of Go Ask Alice highlights the drug and sex focused culture of the late 1960s. The baby-boomers of the 1960s had easier access to drugs and birth control and an unpopular war in Vietnam divided society along generational lines between the powerful establishment of old, white men and the younger counterculture.
Alice diary reflects her experiences and feelings as she feels caught between both philosophies. She has traditional dreams such as marriage, but she also resents the society that makes it so easy for minors to obtain illicit drugs. She documents her drug experimentation, but she mentions very little of the other cultural phenomena such as the music makers like the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and others. The war is barely acknowledged, and the political rallies seem more a means of giving people an excuse to get stoned rather than making a statement.
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