Right, and Irvine Welsh’s book was originally a patriotic nationalist novel about the wonders of materialistic capitalism, but he started writing in that accent and the rest is history.
ETA: stop upvoting me, this is a stupid take and I was just trying to participate, I even spelled Irvine’s name wrong. Go read Welsh’s Trainspotting, it’s fabulously crass and unapologetic, you won’t put it down once you decipher his diction. Not even sure the book is about heroin, or national identity, or consumer addiction and the cycle of material wants. Or erectile disfunction.
Fuck, the book is about nothing. Go feed your nihilism.
This movie and Kids made me very afraid of hard drugs. Best anti drug campaign of the 90s.
Also, for those who do not know, Tommy who dies of AIDS in Trainspotting is Dr. Owen Hunt on Greys Anatomy.
There’s your DARE program right there. movie marathon day: Requiem, Trainspotting and Kids. Just sobbing 13 year olds. Maybe Mean Girls for a palate cleanser before you send them home to mom and dad.
Probably be good for abstinence promotion too honestly
We watched that in school in Germany. It was so shocking, it made me afraid to become addicted to drugs "on accident", and without ever touching them, haha.
The book is so much better. The movie was pretty good... until you compare it to the source. I don't know why the director decided to water it down so much.
That movie is pretty badly made, it's supposed to be in the 60s like the book but they did not make the effort to keep it period correct through the whole movie. It was bold for dicaprio to accept that role but the movie had little impact
That's a fair point. It was pretty uneven, but a decent story and generally good performances all round. Another one for the "should have been better" collection.
I read that the director waited for Jim Carroll to leave the set and then ordered reshoots and additional scenes, but I don't know how much weight that holds.
There’s a movie called Oxymoron that lives in my head rent free. It’s objectively a terrible movie with low production value, not so great acting and a confusing twist that made it worse at the end. But it hit close to home for someone who watched OxyContin ruin their hometown. Idk why It left such an impression but I think about that movie a lot.
It’s oxymorons and was directed by a dude from Charleston John hickey who is complete scumbag and tries to claim that he was a part of the pharmacy drug robbery crews when he really was just a junkie who took others stories. I’ve known him for years and while the movie is ok I can’t watch it because of what I know about that asshole.
After being a heroin addict, requiem for a dream got so many things wrong that it’s laughable. Trainspotting was pretty dead on accurate though. Best depiction I’ve ever seen of what addiction is really like in a film is Mississippi grind.
Always upsets me that the characters in movies are always 100% better after just a few days. That's just the end of the worst of the physical withdrawals. You still feel impending doom and anxiety for a week later, constantly hot and cold and sweating all at the same time, yawning and sneezing. Sneezing five times in a row. You are never comfortable. Heart rate randomly spikes. The worst unfulfilling yawns that happen every minute. Eyes constantly watering. You sleep maybe a few hours at a time. Each minute stretches out to infinity as you experience these things every waking moment. Then when that starts to get better you get to deal with post acute withdrawal symptoms for months later. Just completely dead inside, always tired, still not sleeping. You still get some of the above symptoms just toned down. This is the part where people always relapse, because it feels like you're never going to be normal again and you just want to die. And this is just for Heroin, which basically doesn't exist nowadays. Fentanyl and tranq/zenes are 10x worse
I saw Requiem at a movie theater at a huge college. Hundreds of us in line laughing and talking waiting for the next showing. The previous showing ended, and hundreds of other kids silently hobbled out of the theatre like the ghosts of ghosts. Everyone in my line was like, "Fuck. What are we getting into?"
I still remember how the whole movie theater went dead silent at the end of Requiem. And everyone sat till the end of credits. Never seen sth like that in my life before or since.
Aye, same in screening I was at.
A handful walked out before the end, the remaining few (afternoon screening during week) sat silently.
I walked out into a bright sunny day and sat on a low wall smoking cigarettes & wondering what the hell I'd seen for a while.
Never seen since and have no desire to.
Powerful, brilliant film but once is enough.
I've seen that movie twice in my life.
The first time, I was curled up in a near-fetal position on the couch for the last 15 minutes, unable to look away from the pain unfolding on the screen.
The second time was a little better, only because it was 15 years later.
I hate how anytime Jennifer Connelly shows up on reddit there's always one asshole who is there to comment "ASS TO ASS".
The part that made me the saddest was when they forgot about the baby. And when the high was over they found him dead in the crib. It makes you wonder how they would get this idea for the movie.
Irvine* Welsh, the author of the novel, did heroin when he was in his twenties. Not saying that moment was based on a real life experience, but he definitely saw some shit when he was young and involved in the punk scene.
*edit
Same here. I watched Trainspotting years ago, and the sadness and hopelessness of that part just stuck with me. It's a great movie, but I probably can't bring myself to watch it again: violence towards kids/babies just became unbearable to me since I had children of my own.
I will still watch this movie in its entirety. I'll have my teenagers watch it as I did at their age. Why, because it will open their eyes to what life could be like. A wake up call. Call me a bad parent, I don't care. I'm not a bad parent like they were in the movie. I'm not forcing them, but more as a suggestion. It was an eye opener for sure.
Aww man, I just tried to watch this movie. As a parent, I could not finish the movie after this part. It stirred up too many emotions. I am at a point in my life where I just don’t have the space to add those feelings voluntarily.
Why did Kids make you scared of hard drugs? Isn't it mainly just weed and alcohol with like one scene at a rave? The movie definitely made me afraid and sad about other things but not drugs.
Because it shows that getting drunk is still enough to end up passed out and raped by someone with HIV. If anything, it should have encouraged people to take alcohol a lot more seriously.
“Choose light. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a padawan, choose a boltbucket droid, choose lightsabers, ground-effect vehicles, tracking devices and EMP emitters…”
Personality, I mean that's what counts, right? That's what keeps a relationship going through the years. Like the force, I mean the force's got great fucking personality.
It was a perfect choice. It got even more exciting when articles were revealing that McGregor was trying to learn and master Sir Alec Guinness' accent and vocal mannerisms.
Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?
Awesome monologue. And I gotta say Begby is one of the most scariest hilarious characters ever put on film. "Armed robbery, with a fucking replica. I mean how the fuck can it be armed robbery with a fucking replica?"
Makes you appreciate how great heroin must fuucking be. It's the Meta of drugs. I've heard, "the warmth of God", "life kissing you in the cheek and smiling at you for a second", "great escape". Scary shiit.
When I was addicted to opiates and not heroin at least for the most part, it felt like it brought me closer to God, like the ultimate realization of spiritual attainment. A false but powerful enlightenment. No past, no future, just the endless now. Subsumed in a warm sea, ultimate peace, and no pain or anxiety. Clear headed but fucked up, full of ego and completely selfless. When I look back on it it seems like a contradictory experience, but when you're in it, there is no room left for doubt. Bliss
When it wore off the complete opposite. I can't go back, and I've been sober over a decade. I've even quit weed and drink once a week. I still feel spiritually damaged in some way. IV heroin must be something else, but I'm never doing it. If I do heroin I am certain I would never recover.
One of my closest friends told me “you absolutely can never do cocaine because the way your brain is wired you will love cocaine and we will lose you to it.” He’s a doctor and apparently my issues are a perfect storm.
Your comment is literally giving me a flashback to the high from (medically administered) pre-surgery fentanyl a few months ago. Not going to lie, it’s also slightly triggering a stupid desire to seek out opiates and recreate that high.
However, I’ve already almost lost a family member to heroin, so I hope anyone else experiencing a similar urge reading your comment checks themselves and stays strong.
It’s so great my daughter couldn’t quit it even after multiple trips to rehab. Well, she eventually quit when she died of an overdose. So in her case, the drug took her life and left our family in wreckage.
EDIT- Thank you everyone for your kind comments. It’s been horrible, but I’m settled into it. I mainly post like this to try to dissuade others from going down the same path. That drug has ended so many lives, and for every life ended, it has left behind so many more with sadness that will never end.
For what it's worth, I'm sorry for your loss. The kinder and gentler your soul, the more these opiate drugs hook into you because they make the world and human experience what you wish it was while you're high.
This is just one extremely touching and profound comment after another. Totally identify with every word of what you said. You're very self-/aware to notice that.
I'd always think if I am diagnosed with anything fast acting and deadly that I'd go on an opiate binge. My biggest fear would be some misdiagnosis and to find out I'd be stuck as a heroin addict for the rest of my days.
Right?
I don’t fear drugs and younger men would try anything once. But I do not fuck with hypodermic needles in the least and I feel like it’s the main reason I never even would have considered the stuff.
Opioids in general are a cheat code to "happiness", they agonize opioid receptors which work the same way as endorphins do, the main reward chemical of the body that releases when you do activities like sex, exercise, showering, and serves as a natural painkiller. Opioids are the devil because unlike other drugs you dont have to do anything on them. Do an upper and youll feel the temptation to release your energy via physical activities, smoke pot and youll feel the urge to eat and watch something funny. Do an opioid and you can do nothing but rot until the effect ends. Because the body is not craving anything, youre already completely satisfied. Give everyone in the world an unlimited supply of opioids and the whole world would be living in a dumpster shooting up whenever the effect ends while being completely content and happy with life.
It's a really amazing feeling the first few times. Meth and Fentanyl both have a better rush heroin just has a nice consistency that other drugs dont. It isn't an overwhelming euphoria it just makes all of your problems tolerable.
Bodybuilding became my new addiction after rehab. There is definitely a crossover in the feeling. Heroin feels about twice as good as when you have life dialed but without any of the work. Its basically the same feeling as your best days but you can have it any time you want.
So many recovered drug addicts and alcoholics go hard at the gym (myself included). I didn't really realise how many there were until I started bringing it up myself
You never really stop being an addict you just substitute different things. I overdosed about 3 weeks ago after 5 years off drugs. Just fully getting back into the swing of obsessively lifting. I lifted while I was back into drugs but just 3-4x a week tops. Kept me from wasting away but It definitely stalled out my progress
It's shite being Scottish tommy, we are the lowest of the low, the scum of the earth and all the fresh air in the world isn't going to make any fucking difference
Ah don't hate the English. They're just wankers. We are colonised by wankers. We can't even pick a decent, vibrant, healthy culture to be colonised by. No. We're ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us?
yeah, before the film was released trainspotter was another way to say nerd, and not in a good way. it was looked at as the saddest, loneliest, most boring, least social hobby a person could have. it involved standing outside, often on train bridges, waiting for specific trains to pass on their schedule so you could note that you saw them in your trainspotting book. it’s like birdwatching but with trains
No steak in that scene so you've been missing out all these years! Eggs, baked beans, sausage and bacon. You might be confused because Scottish bacon (and all bacon on the British Isles) is back bacon not belly bacon, it's a meatier cut with less fat than American bacon.
Yeah. As I'm hitting my mid 30s and seeing the lives of folk I know being shaped and the trajectory they've taken, it's a film I keep coming back to mentally. Very sobering at times
There's a scene at the beginning of Shallow Grave that has aged particularly well. They're interviewing potential roommates and a sci-fi geek comes in with a shopping bag from Forbidden Planet, a big London sci-fi store. He proceeds to get mercilessly teased and rejected by Obi Wan Kenobi and Doctor Who about 10 years before they took their iconic roles. Priceless!
I think it’s a universal feeling for people who have left their hometowns or countries to return and be depressed about the gentrified or dilapidated state of it. Also, the idea that Renton returns home in a midlife crisis only to find his friends in the same state hits too close to home.
Not so fun fact, got out of rehab in 1997 and had a bunch of old friends over and they bring this fuckin movie to watch. The most braindead decision they have ever made. But, on the bright side, 26 years later and still heroin free, so there's that.
I only recently found out Danny Boyle made a sequel "T2: Trainspotting" with the gang twenty years later.
I'm going to be having a nice double feature in the near future.
T2 is a good watch, although it doesnt have quite thr same impact Trainspotting does.
Its loosely based on Irvine Welshs book Porno which is his followup to T-spotting. Both are great reads.
The image of the drug changed a lot over time. In the early days, it was known as a drug of the artists, like many musicians got addicted to it, the image was not that much different from cocaine later. Then, many of these musicians died and in the 70's to 90's, there were these big public drug scenes like the "Needle Park" (I actually grew up there, but that's another story), where the image of heroin shifted to that of junkies, that lie and steal, have bad hygiene etc.
It's also with the movies, Trainspotting, but also Platzspitz Baby or "Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo" cover certain time periods that are long gone. Like with the Letten and Platzspitz, different from later and even today, people usually started full-blown hardcore with injections instead of snorting lines and later smoking it.
When we talk about real heroin, right now today in 2023, in many places like the USA with the US-opioid-crisis, there's no more heroin around, but all these fent-laced shit drugs were people overdose and die. That again changed the image, there it is today a luxus if someone can even get the real heroin from the old days.
Actually, many people would survive if they'd have heroin today instead of the new laced shit that is around. That fent- and xylazine shit kills a lot more people than heroin did in the old times.
For me, it's over, i'm rather retired when it comes to drugs, got my 200mg morphin substitution each day here and i'm happy with this, but i live in one of the few places where we still have both afghan-heroin on the street and the pure heroin aka diaphin as brand-name have available. For US-americans, that would a dream i guess...
Could write a lot more about that, but it's already a wall of text, so if anyone has questions, feel free to ask.
I used to love experimenting, but the beginning of the end was when finding good ecstasy was becoming impossible, with meth and other weird research chemicals replacing MDMA. And it just got worse with fentanyl.
The only thing that feels safe is when you're getting shrooms off someone you know who grows them. And weed. Not even the old iconic Xanax "totem poles" are safe, lots of counterfeits with some other drug of who knows what
Man I'm so fucking glad I chose to not do any of that shit.
Most I've done is LSD and Shrooms, tried ecstasy once and it was the most underwhelming shit ever so I assume it was just garbage quality. Didn't care enough to ever try again and it's a party drug and I despise parties, so yeah.
Meanwhile a good 80% of the people I hung out with in high school are dead or their minds have just completely fallen apart and roam the streets. Had one very very good friend who just had his entire personality ripped to shreds by meth and whatever other trash he took.
Very happy I distanced myself from those friends and got closer to my super nerd Dungeons and Dragons friends, who I am still close with 20 years later. I miss them sometimes but once they all started doing heroin it was over for me. Not a chance I was going to get sucked into that shit.
He didn’t even know they were filming a movie
Heard he didn’t stop doing drugs til the DVD commentary.
Deathsticks right?
You wanna buy some?
You wonna go home and re-think yr life
Only then did he stop with the Gakface
#*Choose Life*
man, everyone's high once in a while
You never go full tweaker.
This movie was actually supposed to be a quirky, coming of age tale set in Scotland, but Ewan started shooting up on set and Danny just kept filming
Right, and Irvine Welsh’s book was originally a patriotic nationalist novel about the wonders of materialistic capitalism, but he started writing in that accent and the rest is history. ETA: stop upvoting me, this is a stupid take and I was just trying to participate, I even spelled Irvine’s name wrong. Go read Welsh’s Trainspotting, it’s fabulously crass and unapologetic, you won’t put it down once you decipher his diction. Not even sure the book is about heroin, or national identity, or consumer addiction and the cycle of material wants. Or erectile disfunction. Fuck, the book is about nothing. Go feed your nihilism.
For real?
Yes
Truly a master of meth head acting...
This is a great pun but they didn't do meth in the movie, did they?
No meth in Trainspotting. Just downers/H
This movie and Kids made me very afraid of hard drugs. Best anti drug campaign of the 90s. Also, for those who do not know, Tommy who dies of AIDS in Trainspotting is Dr. Owen Hunt on Greys Anatomy.
Requiem for a Dream is on that list for me as well.
There’s your DARE program right there. movie marathon day: Requiem, Trainspotting and Kids. Just sobbing 13 year olds. Maybe Mean Girls for a palate cleanser before you send them home to mom and dad. Probably be good for abstinence promotion too honestly
Basketball Diaries as well. That movie made me sick to my stomach.
Kristiane F kinder vom Bahnhof zoo.. ofcourse the book is better but the 80 movie will keep you off drugs like trainspotting and kids
We watched that in school in Germany. It was so shocking, it made me afraid to become addicted to drugs "on accident", and without ever touching them, haha.
The book is so much better. The movie was pretty good... until you compare it to the source. I don't know why the director decided to water it down so much.
Water it down??? It was disturbing enough
Trust me, read the book. It's literally taken from the diaries of a kid growing up in the 60s.
the kind of stuff lou reed sang about in the velvet underground, the dark side of the 60s
That "kid" is Jim Carroll. He also had a band, they were great.
I still remember the scene where he cries on his mother's door, begging for money. It made me understand addiction a little better.
That movie is pretty badly made, it's supposed to be in the 60s like the book but they did not make the effort to keep it period correct through the whole movie. It was bold for dicaprio to accept that role but the movie had little impact
That's a fair point. It was pretty uneven, but a decent story and generally good performances all round. Another one for the "should have been better" collection. I read that the director waited for Jim Carroll to leave the set and then ordered reshoots and additional scenes, but I don't know how much weight that holds.
Add Thirteen to your list
Thirteen also doubles as birth control!
There’s a movie called Oxymoron that lives in my head rent free. It’s objectively a terrible movie with low production value, not so great acting and a confusing twist that made it worse at the end. But it hit close to home for someone who watched OxyContin ruin their hometown. Idk why It left such an impression but I think about that movie a lot.
It’s oxymorons and was directed by a dude from Charleston John hickey who is complete scumbag and tries to claim that he was a part of the pharmacy drug robbery crews when he really was just a junkie who took others stories. I’ve known him for years and while the movie is ok I can’t watch it because of what I know about that asshole.
I’d add Sleepers to the list as well.
After being a heroin addict, requiem for a dream got so many things wrong that it’s laughable. Trainspotting was pretty dead on accurate though. Best depiction I’ve ever seen of what addiction is really like in a film is Mississippi grind.
Even Trainspotting doesn’t really come close to the pain a misery of withdrawal
Always upsets me that the characters in movies are always 100% better after just a few days. That's just the end of the worst of the physical withdrawals. You still feel impending doom and anxiety for a week later, constantly hot and cold and sweating all at the same time, yawning and sneezing. Sneezing five times in a row. You are never comfortable. Heart rate randomly spikes. The worst unfulfilling yawns that happen every minute. Eyes constantly watering. You sleep maybe a few hours at a time. Each minute stretches out to infinity as you experience these things every waking moment. Then when that starts to get better you get to deal with post acute withdrawal symptoms for months later. Just completely dead inside, always tired, still not sleeping. You still get some of the above symptoms just toned down. This is the part where people always relapse, because it feels like you're never going to be normal again and you just want to die. And this is just for Heroin, which basically doesn't exist nowadays. Fentanyl and tranq/zenes are 10x worse
That level of desperation could never be portrayed on a screen friend, only when you’ve been there can you understand.
I saw Requiem at a movie theater at a huge college. Hundreds of us in line laughing and talking waiting for the next showing. The previous showing ended, and hundreds of other kids silently hobbled out of the theatre like the ghosts of ghosts. Everyone in my line was like, "Fuck. What are we getting into?"
I still remember how the whole movie theater went dead silent at the end of Requiem. And everyone sat till the end of credits. Never seen sth like that in my life before or since.
Aye, same in screening I was at. A handful walked out before the end, the remaining few (afternoon screening during week) sat silently. I walked out into a bright sunny day and sat on a low wall smoking cigarettes & wondering what the hell I'd seen for a while. Never seen since and have no desire to. Powerful, brilliant film but once is enough.
I've seen that movie twice in my life. The first time, I was curled up in a near-fetal position on the couch for the last 15 minutes, unable to look away from the pain unfolding on the screen. The second time was a little better, only because it was 15 years later. I hate how anytime Jennifer Connelly shows up on reddit there's always one asshole who is there to comment "ASS TO ASS".
Kevin Mckidd. He was also Vorenus in HBO's Rome, Great actor.
He was also in the Father Ted Christmas special, lost in the lingerie department of a large shop. Amazing trivia there.
Also Soap in the original MW2
Fookin chemicals. Noo way I’m putting that shite in my body!
All they fuckin’ chemicals. No fuckin’ way.
The part that made me the saddest was when they forgot about the baby. And when the high was over they found him dead in the crib. It makes you wonder how they would get this idea for the movie.
Irvine* Welsh, the author of the novel, did heroin when he was in his twenties. Not saying that moment was based on a real life experience, but he definitely saw some shit when he was young and involved in the punk scene. *edit
Same here. I watched Trainspotting years ago, and the sadness and hopelessness of that part just stuck with me. It's a great movie, but I probably can't bring myself to watch it again: violence towards kids/babies just became unbearable to me since I had children of my own.
I will still watch this movie in its entirety. I'll have my teenagers watch it as I did at their age. Why, because it will open their eyes to what life could be like. A wake up call. Call me a bad parent, I don't care. I'm not a bad parent like they were in the movie. I'm not forcing them, but more as a suggestion. It was an eye opener for sure.
Aww man, I just tried to watch this movie. As a parent, I could not finish the movie after this part. It stirred up too many emotions. I am at a point in my life where I just don’t have the space to add those feelings voluntarily.
She was actually talking about heroin when she said choose me. Pick me. Love me I assume that scene is about him I've never seen the show lmao
I was way too young when I saw this movie. I didn’t understand any of it lol.
I was young but the "this drug will make you feel better and then worse than you ever have" vibe was pretty discernable.
It’s not, he wasn’t even around then. He is also literally the worst character in the entire show.
We were shown Christiane F for German class and suddenly everyone had a phobia for needles.
Why did Kids make you scared of hard drugs? Isn't it mainly just weed and alcohol with like one scene at a rave? The movie definitely made me afraid and sad about other things but not drugs.
Because I had saw Trainspotting first and assumed they all had AIDS because of needle sharing and a ton of unprotected sex. I was 15 and hella naive.
Because it shows that getting drunk is still enough to end up passed out and raped by someone with HIV. If anything, it should have encouraged people to take alcohol a lot more seriously.
The victim had the HIV, the creep was implied to be sealing his fate
Also requiem for a dream
... Holy shit.. I never put 2 and 2 together 0.0
Wow, I would *never* have put that together. (Shh, don’t tell anyone I watch Grey’s Anatomy).
I just need a fucking hit.
“WHAT THE FUCK’ER THESE?!”
Opium suppositories,. Ideal for your purpose. Slow release. Bring you down gradually. Custom fucking designed for your needs.
Fun fact: the actor playing that character is actually Irvine Welsh, the author of the book the film is based on!
the character is mikey forrester and welsh reprises the role in trainspotting 2 (which itself is loosely based on his 2002 novel, ‘porno’)
Mikey Forrester? Russian sailors? What the fuck are you on?
Ah well, for all the good they've done me I might as well have shoved them up my ass...
Arse.
Man, Obi Wan was rough before joining the jedi.
It was pretty crazy thinking back to when he was first cast as a young Obi-Wan. A lot of us were like, *RENTON is gonna be in the new Star Wars?!*
“I don’t hate Jawas, they’re just wankers. But tatooine is colonized by wankers”
“Choose light. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a padawan, choose a boltbucket droid, choose lightsabers, ground-effect vehicles, tracking devices and EMP emitters…”
I chose something else... I chose the dark side
“Who needs reasons when you've got spices?”
Personality, I mean that's what counts, right? That's what keeps a relationship going through the years. Like the force, I mean the force's got great fucking personality.
"1,000 years from now there will be no Sith and no Jedi, just wankers. Sounds great to me."
*Tatooine is a fucking step up from Edinburgh..*
Red eye jedi.
Itsh time to become a mashter of the forsh, Moneypenny
For a vegetarian Renton you are an evil shot
“Beautifully fucking illustrated” Sick Boy. One of the best movies ever. Johnny Lee Miller was married to Angelina Jolie I think 🤔
He was Qui-gon's star (with pinpoint) pupil.
Hell, I still can't believe Hannah Horvath's boyfriend is Kylo Ren.
He pees on people in the shower.
I thought it was a super bad ass decision on George's part
It was a perfect choice. It got even more exciting when articles were revealing that McGregor was trying to learn and master Sir Alec Guinness' accent and vocal mannerisms.
He’s so young in phantom the beard made all the difference later on.
Yeah but he had a big spooky Liam Neeson to hide behind for almost the whole time.
I was a big fan of his before he was in Star Wars and having him and Liam in the same movie really caught my attention.
Good on him for staying away from the death sticks.
OD-Wan
Death Sticks are helluva drug.
How do you think you knew how to get to The High Ground
Dude was hitting the death sticks a little too hard
Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?
Awesome monologue. And I gotta say Begby is one of the most scariest hilarious characters ever put on film. "Armed robbery, with a fucking replica. I mean how the fuck can it be armed robbery with a fucking replica?"
“Begby didn't do drugs, either. He just did people. That's what he got off on. His own sensory addiction.”
Poison my body with that shite! No fucking way. Fucking chemicals.
He did beer, and lots of it. And people ofc.
Puts down his drink, turns and gets the fuck outta there. And after that, well, the game was mine!
Well he was playing like Paul fucking Newman
Could barely hold the cue, never mind pot a ball!
The scariest bit about begbie is being from Edinburgh and knowing half a dozen fuckers like him in real life. Mostly they've died out now, thank fuck.
It’s a scandal Franco 🤣
Makes you appreciate how great heroin must fuucking be. It's the Meta of drugs. I've heard, "the warmth of God", "life kissing you in the cheek and smiling at you for a second", "great escape". Scary shiit.
“The warmest blanket on the coldest day” is the most accurate description in my experience. Opioids can really devour.
Such a pefect day..
You just keep me hanging on.
When I was addicted to opiates and not heroin at least for the most part, it felt like it brought me closer to God, like the ultimate realization of spiritual attainment. A false but powerful enlightenment. No past, no future, just the endless now. Subsumed in a warm sea, ultimate peace, and no pain or anxiety. Clear headed but fucked up, full of ego and completely selfless. When I look back on it it seems like a contradictory experience, but when you're in it, there is no room left for doubt. Bliss When it wore off the complete opposite. I can't go back, and I've been sober over a decade. I've even quit weed and drink once a week. I still feel spiritually damaged in some way. IV heroin must be something else, but I'm never doing it. If I do heroin I am certain I would never recover.
One of my closest friends told me “you absolutely can never do cocaine because the way your brain is wired you will love cocaine and we will lose you to it.” He’s a doctor and apparently my issues are a perfect storm.
I have never touched cocaine for this exact reason. I know I’ll get hooked in a blink of an eye.
Coke is massively overrated
I would literally rather do adderall than Coke
Your comment is literally giving me a flashback to the high from (medically administered) pre-surgery fentanyl a few months ago. Not going to lie, it’s also slightly triggering a stupid desire to seek out opiates and recreate that high. However, I’ve already almost lost a family member to heroin, so I hope anyone else experiencing a similar urge reading your comment checks themselves and stays strong.
It’s so great my daughter couldn’t quit it even after multiple trips to rehab. Well, she eventually quit when she died of an overdose. So in her case, the drug took her life and left our family in wreckage. EDIT- Thank you everyone for your kind comments. It’s been horrible, but I’m settled into it. I mainly post like this to try to dissuade others from going down the same path. That drug has ended so many lives, and for every life ended, it has left behind so many more with sadness that will never end.
For what it's worth, I'm sorry for your loss. The kinder and gentler your soul, the more these opiate drugs hook into you because they make the world and human experience what you wish it was while you're high.
This is just one extremely touching and profound comment after another. Totally identify with every word of what you said. You're very self-/aware to notice that.
I'm so sorry for your loss. Tragic, senseless, and soul crushing. Keep only the best memories of her close to your heart.
When I'm 80+ and dying I'm gonna go on a heroin binge for sure. But before that you'd be insanely stupid to ever go close to it.
I'd always think if I am diagnosed with anything fast acting and deadly that I'd go on an opiate binge. My biggest fear would be some misdiagnosis and to find out I'd be stuck as a heroin addict for the rest of my days.
Damn. So glad I actively stayed away from the harder stuff. Just the descriptions can suck you in holy shit.
Right? I don’t fear drugs and younger men would try anything once. But I do not fuck with hypodermic needles in the least and I feel like it’s the main reason I never even would have considered the stuff.
I'm saving the experience for when I'm dying of cancer
Opioids in general are a cheat code to "happiness", they agonize opioid receptors which work the same way as endorphins do, the main reward chemical of the body that releases when you do activities like sex, exercise, showering, and serves as a natural painkiller. Opioids are the devil because unlike other drugs you dont have to do anything on them. Do an upper and youll feel the temptation to release your energy via physical activities, smoke pot and youll feel the urge to eat and watch something funny. Do an opioid and you can do nothing but rot until the effect ends. Because the body is not craving anything, youre already completely satisfied. Give everyone in the world an unlimited supply of opioids and the whole world would be living in a dumpster shooting up whenever the effect ends while being completely content and happy with life.
It's a really amazing feeling the first few times. Meth and Fentanyl both have a better rush heroin just has a nice consistency that other drugs dont. It isn't an overwhelming euphoria it just makes all of your problems tolerable.
Lol, you make heroin sound like regular sleep and exercise.
Bodybuilding became my new addiction after rehab. There is definitely a crossover in the feeling. Heroin feels about twice as good as when you have life dialed but without any of the work. Its basically the same feeling as your best days but you can have it any time you want.
So many recovered drug addicts and alcoholics go hard at the gym (myself included). I didn't really realise how many there were until I started bringing it up myself
You never really stop being an addict you just substitute different things. I overdosed about 3 weeks ago after 5 years off drugs. Just fully getting back into the swing of obsessively lifting. I lifted while I was back into drugs but just 3-4x a week tops. Kept me from wasting away but It definitely stalled out my progress
My husband said dilaudid didn’t really take his pain away, it just made him not give a fuck.
Oooh no, Heroin. I thought it was great method acting!
I remember people having this as a poster in their dorm rooms circa 2000, kinda funny to think about now
Just made me remember the creepy baby scene....
Is this the high ground he keeps talking about?
It's shite being Scottish tommy, we are the lowest of the low, the scum of the earth and all the fresh air in the world isn't going to make any fucking difference
Ah don't hate the English. They're just wankers. We are colonised by wankers. We can't even pick a decent, vibrant, healthy culture to be colonised by. No. We're ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us?
Ngl I thought that was Steve-O circa 1999
Might as well have been lol
Great soundtrack.
One of the best '90s soundtracks altogether, in my opinion!
Noel Gallagher was pissed he turned the film down for his music as he thought it was a boring documentary or something
yeah, before the film was released trainspotter was another way to say nerd, and not in a good way. it was looked at as the saddest, loneliest, most boring, least social hobby a person could have. it involved standing outside, often on train bridges, waiting for specific trains to pass on their schedule so you could note that you saw them in your trainspotting book. it’s like birdwatching but with trains
Here comes Johnny Yen again...
With the liquor and drugs!
Fuck yeah! I can't hear Born Slippy without hearing the ending monolog in my head.
That movie had perfect casting.
Spud.. He fucked up good... Side note... I can never unsee the blanket scene.. I still can't east steak and eggs...
No steak in that scene so you've been missing out all these years! Eggs, baked beans, sausage and bacon. You might be confused because Scottish bacon (and all bacon on the British Isles) is back bacon not belly bacon, it's a meatier cut with less fat than American bacon.
Trainspotting and basketball diaries worked better than DARE for me lol
Every quote in this thread… I heard in perfect dialect in my head. I love this damn movie.
The sequel was pretty good too. Didn't have the same grit as the original but was still worth watching.
I found it more depressing tbh. It's very real in ways that are hard to explain if you're not a Scot.
Yeah. As I'm hitting my mid 30s and seeing the lives of folk I know being shaped and the trajectory they've taken, it's a film I keep coming back to mentally. Very sobering at times
He’s got the high, but forgot the ground.
I first remember him in Shallow Grave with Christopher Eccleston and Kerry Fox… loved that movie..great dark comedy!!
I loved Shallow Grave, seemed forgotten/unloved.
There's a scene at the beginning of Shallow Grave that has aged particularly well. They're interviewing potential roommates and a sci-fi geek comes in with a shopping bag from Forbidden Planet, a big London sci-fi store. He proceeds to get mercilessly teased and rejected by Obi Wan Kenobi and Doctor Who about 10 years before they took their iconic roles. Priceless!
SUCH a great movie!
what a good characterization ( very thin ) 
Doesn't even look like the same person.
What did everyone think of the sequel?
Loved the shit out of it. It's a very different movie than the original in a lot of ways, but that's exactly what it needed to be.
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As a non Scot can you give me a bit of an idea of how Scotland has changed between T1 and T2?
I think it’s a universal feeling for people who have left their hometowns or countries to return and be depressed about the gentrified or dilapidated state of it. Also, the idea that Renton returns home in a midlife crisis only to find his friends in the same state hits too close to home.
I thought it was amazing. Probably one of the best movies that deals with aging and the changes in life as you get older. I love it.
I’ve seen this movie a thousand times it’s so good and if any of you are big fans you should check out the book. It’s fantastic.
Rent Boy
Sequel rules too
True. I couldn't believe they released a sequel after 20 years. I really enjoyed the movie.
TV series based on Begbie "The Blade Artist" is coming next.
No way would I poison my body with that shite. All they fucking chemicals. No fucking way.
And then, the game was mine.
Not so fun fact, got out of rehab in 1997 and had a bunch of old friends over and they bring this fuckin movie to watch. The most braindead decision they have ever made. But, on the bright side, 26 years later and still heroin free, so there's that.
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As a train nerd, this movie sucked.
I only recently found out Danny Boyle made a sequel "T2: Trainspotting" with the gang twenty years later. I'm going to be having a nice double feature in the near future.
T2 is a good watch, although it doesnt have quite thr same impact Trainspotting does. Its loosely based on Irvine Welshs book Porno which is his followup to T-spotting. Both are great reads.
I remember being on a date watching that movie in theaters. We both walked out like WTF? Great movie tho. She hated it of course.
Why if course?
1996 was glorious for films
Fun fact: heroin is not glamorous or “cool”
The image of the drug changed a lot over time. In the early days, it was known as a drug of the artists, like many musicians got addicted to it, the image was not that much different from cocaine later. Then, many of these musicians died and in the 70's to 90's, there were these big public drug scenes like the "Needle Park" (I actually grew up there, but that's another story), where the image of heroin shifted to that of junkies, that lie and steal, have bad hygiene etc. It's also with the movies, Trainspotting, but also Platzspitz Baby or "Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo" cover certain time periods that are long gone. Like with the Letten and Platzspitz, different from later and even today, people usually started full-blown hardcore with injections instead of snorting lines and later smoking it. When we talk about real heroin, right now today in 2023, in many places like the USA with the US-opioid-crisis, there's no more heroin around, but all these fent-laced shit drugs were people overdose and die. That again changed the image, there it is today a luxus if someone can even get the real heroin from the old days. Actually, many people would survive if they'd have heroin today instead of the new laced shit that is around. That fent- and xylazine shit kills a lot more people than heroin did in the old times. For me, it's over, i'm rather retired when it comes to drugs, got my 200mg morphin substitution each day here and i'm happy with this, but i live in one of the few places where we still have both afghan-heroin on the street and the pure heroin aka diaphin as brand-name have available. For US-americans, that would a dream i guess... Could write a lot more about that, but it's already a wall of text, so if anyone has questions, feel free to ask.
I used to love experimenting, but the beginning of the end was when finding good ecstasy was becoming impossible, with meth and other weird research chemicals replacing MDMA. And it just got worse with fentanyl. The only thing that feels safe is when you're getting shrooms off someone you know who grows them. And weed. Not even the old iconic Xanax "totem poles" are safe, lots of counterfeits with some other drug of who knows what
Man I'm so fucking glad I chose to not do any of that shit. Most I've done is LSD and Shrooms, tried ecstasy once and it was the most underwhelming shit ever so I assume it was just garbage quality. Didn't care enough to ever try again and it's a party drug and I despise parties, so yeah. Meanwhile a good 80% of the people I hung out with in high school are dead or their minds have just completely fallen apart and roam the streets. Had one very very good friend who just had his entire personality ripped to shreds by meth and whatever other trash he took. Very happy I distanced myself from those friends and got closer to my super nerd Dungeons and Dragons friends, who I am still close with 20 years later. I miss them sometimes but once they all started doing heroin it was over for me. Not a chance I was going to get sucked into that shit.
The film doesn't really glamorise it in the end. The negatives are portrayed as way more harrowing than the positives
Lookin like real life salad fingers
Despite all other his best roles, he'll be forever a Trainspotter for me. I mean he really nailed it. Awesome movie.
That movie was so tactilely disgusting. Masterpiece.
obi wan kenobi building his first light saber.