5 Movies That Will Scare You Sober

Hello, grad students! Now that summer's here, you might have a bit of free time on your hands and not much to do. Perhaps your thoughts have turned to drug abuse as an option to fill the empty hours? Well, we're here to recommend some movies that will preach at you until you're either scared straight, or driven to become a depraved junkie out of pure spite. Either response is just fine with us - and apparently fine with all these movies too.

Trainspotting

This movie is absolutely crawling with reasons not to take heroin. Pretty much everybody's life ends up destroyed except for the lucky few who manage to straighten up and fly right. But at one point, not only does a baby in the care of a junkie die while everybody is too busy partying, but said baby comes back to haunt our protagonist while he's trying to detox in the fits of withdrawal symptoms. Holy poppies, what an unforgettably creepy sequence in what is otherwise not really a horror movie! Also, drugs will make you go snorkeling in the world's most disgusting public toilet to recover your heroin suppositories.

Requiem for a Dream

"Grim" is the only word to describe this movie. If you have to describe it in five words, you'd think a while and then say "grimly grimmest of the grim." Everybody ends up in their own personal living hell forever. Nobody is spared, the plot has no mercy on even the most incidental offender. Sinners in the hands of an angry God, all because they took drugs.

Scarface

True, this movie is glorified beyond all common sense in drug and gangster culture. Nothing we say here will change anyone's mind about that. However, it does belong on this list for the fact that it portrays how much hell drugs cause in this world. Not only do we have this clip of a typical drug deal gone bad, but we have the descent of Tony Montana from the top of the world to the seventh ring of hell, as even his own mother disowns him before everything she had to say about him was basically proven right. All the while, Tony becomes a glittery-eyed coke-sniffing fiend, never figuring out the connection between his favorite nose candy and his problems.

Less Than Zero

Yet another coming of age movie where everybody pretty much has their lives go to hell in a handbasket thanks to various substance abuse. Drugs will make your girlfriend cheat on you, your best bud end up a burnout failure, your dealer hassle you, and force you to become a prostitute to work off your drug debts. Even if you try to escape, bam! Heart attack!

A Scanner Darkly

We just drooled about this movie last time, so we won't rehash it too much. But let us just mention, Philip K. Dick had his own substance abuse issues, and Robert Downey Jr. has certainly needed no introduction here on this topic. Together, they make his portrayal hilariously spot-on. Downey is every pseudo-intellectual dope-head friend you've ever had, tripped out to his own dimensions of the universe while grappling with his rapidly sputtering and failing once-great intellect.