25 Best Movies About Drugs Ever Made

11. Trainspotting

Film4The Drugs: Heroin, ecstasy, amphetamines, alcohol Irvin Welsh's free-wheeling novel about junkies eking out a living in the urban squalor of Edinburgh in the midst of an economic depression might not have seemed like an easily filmable work at the time, but Danny Boyle's adaptation of Trainspotting proved that Welsh's sometimes incomprehensible vernacular style was transferable to the big screen. With its Iggy Pop song playing over the soundtrack and "Choose life" mantra, Trainspotting came to epitomise late-90s cinematic cool - even if this meant that some saw it as a glamorization of heroin, responsible for the introduction of the idea of "heroin chic". Such accusations are exaggerated at best ("heroin chic" predated the movie in the world of fashion, although it's fair to say that perhaps more than a few dim-witted impressionable young people saw it as an excuse to give heroin a go), Trainspotting is as much about the challenge of living life authentically as it is about escaping through drug abuse. Anyone who went to university in Britain at the time of its release can attest to its influence - Trainspotting posters were about as ubiquitous in the late 90s as vomiting drunken freshers.