I don’t know, it seemed like Erika Christensen (Michael Douglas’ daughter) went from naive preppy to smacked-out drug whore practically overnight. I don’t think a full character collapse happens quite that quickly.
Hmm, let’s try again, shall we? Link.
I always thought Clean and Sober was pretty realistic.
Aside from the aforementioned “Requiem for a Dream” I can’t think of a movie that accurately depicts drug-use. I can think of one movie “Blow-Up” (from 1966) in which a woman at a party rolls a joint, and I wanted to leap out of my chair and yell “that’s not how you do it!” lol.
Anyway, I think the pot-smoking scenes in “That 70s Show” are pretty accurate. Even though I grew up in the 80s, those scenes pretty accurately reflects my teen years.
Blow.
Dulli’s, “I’m fucking stoned. I’m fucking stoned. I’m fucking really stoned, man. I’m fucking stoned.” while Tuna laughs his ass off is fairly reminiscent of days past.
Mr. T’s (Bobcat’s character), “I can’t feel my face. I mean, I can touch it, but I can’t feel it.”
HAHA! Paul Reubens as Derek Foreal is pure genius. I won’t claim to know anything about Colombia or the international coke trade or the 70s or anything, but the things I do know about are fairly accurately portrayed here.
You either haven’t ever eaten any pot brownies, or you didn’t make them correctly.
Movies that remind me of actual people doing the actual drugs involved:
Boogie Nights, in particular Julianne Moore and Heather Graham snorting lines and telling each other how much they love each other…at mach 12.
Hurly Burly, for the incredibly convoluted and pointless conversations that inevitably take place.
Half Baked, for the exaggerated-for-comedic-effect kernels of truth.
The Big Chill has some reasonable reactions to toking up. (They smoked, right? Or am misremembering that?)
One annoying characteristic of marijuana use in popular media is that nobody ever clears the chamber after taking a bong hit. That’s a party foul.
Dazed And Confused. A great movie, set, I think in '76, showing a bunch of high school kids on the last day of school. Funny situations, poignant moments, and casual drug use throughout, with no “After-School Special” recriminations for the offending users.
Aside from the more comedic moments, a very accurate representation of my high school years.
Travolta’s high in Pulp Fiction is very realistic. And no matter how long I’m clean, the needle sequence just before that still makes my head spin, in a very good way.
Val Kilmer’s performance in *Wonderland * is a really great example of an addict.
Trainspotting was great film. McGregor and Miller were very believable addicts. And I was remarking to my wife the other day how all of us had a Begbie in our lives…a guy who was our “friend”, but who we really hated and were afraid of.
Back when I was a Naughty Girl, that was how I spent every single Friday night. Watching that scene just creeped me right out, for that reason.
It does the same for me.
New potsmokers get all giggly and laughy and wide-eyed “DUDE! I’m totally STONED!” thing goin’ on. Seasoned stoners just get really quiet, still, and will occasionally mutter, “I’m pretty stoned,” while playing San Andreas for six hours straight.
I was going to post exactly the same thing.
Great movie.
You just described 2003 for me, except San Andreas was Vice City and there was a lot of playing ping-pong outside.
Ditto on That '70s Show, two scenes in particular.
Donna didn’t start being part of the Circle until the second (third?) season. Hyde couldn’t be there, and I guess it’s like bridge: you need a fourth. So Donna took over his spot, and kept crowing, “I’ve got the biggest hands in the world!”
Many episodes later, Donna, Laurie and Jackie were all smoking, without the guys. Donna says something. Laurie says something. Donna says something. Laurie says something. Cut to Jackie: view of just the top of her head as she’s doubled over, laughing hysterically. Then at the end of the episode, she chirps, “Let’s do that thing where we all sit in a circle!”
No one’s mentioned Goodfellas. The climactic sequence—the day Henry gets busted for good—is dead on. Everything from Henry’s red-eyed and sweaty appearance, to his micromanaging the dinner, molding meat cakes while checking for the helicopter, to Karen walking into the motel room and mumbling, “Yeah, I need a hit…No thanks. I’ve seen enough helicopters for today, thank you.”
Breakfast Club is already my unfavorite movie, but one reason for that is the way the characters only seem to feel the effects of weed while they’re smoking. Actually, Hughes did film a lot more of that sequence, but for one reason or another, edited it out.
Ellis Dee, yes, they did smoke up in The Big Chill. I particularly love JoBeth Williams talking while she holds in the smoke, and Meg Tilly going from contemplative to giggling hysterically, over a realistic span of time.
As far as Pulp Fiction, someone pointed out to me how Thurman and Travolta’s dancing styles are highly appropriate to their condition.
Also liked the sequence in Half Baked where they categorize the different types of smokers. (Except they left out one type: the person who’s wrapped so tight they need it to keep from snapping.)
Crispin Glover as a speed freak in River’s Edge was scary. Although that probably wasn’t acting, nor even drug-enhanced; he’s just that way.
I Thought the whole night-before bender in Paris sequence from Killing Zoe was pretty realistic. That guy all zooted up and talking about viking movies always makes me laugh for some reason.
In some other realm than this one, perhaps. I’ve never known someone to freebase coke and then “mellow out” like some of the characters in that film did. Coke users tend to be very high strung and energetic in my experience. IMHO (and I did a Pit thread about the film that I’m unable to find at the moment), that film was nearly as great a waste of celluloid as Battlefield Earth.
A film which did show drug experiences that are very realistic (though at times exagerrated) was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I’ve wound up in similar situations as some of the scenes in that film (though not in a good 10 years or so), and some of my friends have trouble watching that film because they find it too realistic. 
Nothing is as big a waste of celluloid as Battlefield Earth.
Isn’t freebase a completely different effect when compared to doing lines?
Seeing Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas mentioned reminds me of the excellent peyote sequence in Young Guns. Never done it, or seen anybody do it, but it looked convincing enough to me.
Only in the speed in which it effects the user. Remember, every drug has a specific mechanism by which it affects the brain. Changing the method of injestion doesn’t change the mechanism, it only changes the speed with which you’re affected by the drug. If you’re freebasing coke (which is really the same thing as smoking crack), you’re going to get hit with the effects sooner and more intensely than if you snorted it. You’re not going to want to fall over and “space out” since that’s not something coke does. Now, if you mixed it with something, like heroin, you might get that kind of effect. Which would mean that you were spending hundreds of dollars to make yourself straight.
Remember the scene where the pretty white girl was being humped by the evil black drug dealer (and apparently, that was Traffic’s point: Drugs are bad because they make pretty white girls have sex with black men. So, don’t do drugs, m’kay?) and he shoots her up with what’s apparently heroin (funny how she went from coke to smack, coke users tend to not like doing smack, and vice versa), immediately her eyes roll back in her head and she flops down on the bed, drooling. Unless you’ve been shot up to near overdose levels, it’s not going to work like that at all. It’s a much slower effect, and you can generally see it spreading over the users body, over a period of a few minutes.
I just wanted to add that Homer Simpson’s experience with insanity peppers was frighteningly like my own experiences with acid. How very strange.
Bringing up Pulp Fiction for the umpteenth time, the overdose scene is also very realistic. This is according to my fiancé who saw his mother OD that way a few times when he was a child.