10 Great Films About Addiction
8. Trainspotting (1996)
No list about great addiction films would be complete without Trainspotting, Danny Boyle's dark tragicomedy about a dysfunctional gaggle of Edinburgh heroin addicts.
With a cast led by an hilariously tragic Ewan McGregor and a terrifying-beyond-measure Robert Carlyle, Trainspotting opens with one of cinema's most iconic monologues and only doubles down from there, offering up a bleak, funny, cruel and heartbreaking look at addiction, friendship and brutal pitfalls of the drug trade.
Trainspotting is a black comedy of the highest order, but it's also ugly, frank and open, refusing to sugarcoat the dark side of drug addiction or how it can change people for the worse.
The best part about Trainspotting, though, is that it's one of the very few modern films in existence that has a sequel (2017's T2) which is almost as good as its cult classic predecessor.