Editor’s Note: I suggested to one of my writers that Top 10 Articles are quite successful and that it would be nice to have such a list about movies that feature drug and alcohol abuse.

He was right, of course. And since I take my role as the current resident addict and all around madman here at Ruthless very seriously, I hereby present my list. May it serve as a gentle warning, dear readers, about the perils of addiction. Or, as a guidebook and an inspiration. Your choice. I present, in no particular order, my Top 10 movies about Drugs, Booze, and general insanity.

So, you take the autobiographical paranoid delusional amphetamine-fueled experiences of a well-known science fiction writer in the early seventies. Now, Rotoscope™ the hell out of it. Ask strange, weird, and beautiful people like Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., Winona Ryder, and Woody Harrelson to play the lead roles. Then, take some LSD, mescaline, or psilocybin, sit back, and enjoy.

Probably one of the most well-known movies out there about drugs. Starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro and directed by the genius that is Terry Gilliam, it’s a deep, dark, drug-fueled acid-trip of a movie into the putrefied leftovers of The American Dream, in the foul year of our Lord that was 1971. Based on the novel of the same name by the legendary Hunter S. Thompson, a man who, like myself, actually lived what he wrote.

Choose life. Choose a career. Watch dead babies crawl across the ceiling. Shoot a pit bull in his ass with a Beebe-gun and have fun watching how it mauls his owner. Take a dive into the worst toilet in Scotland. Dress up like James Bond before shooting up with heroin. Start a bar fight by casually tossing a beer glass over your shoulder. Do a dab of speed. Fuck an underage girl. Shit the bed of your girlfriend while being passed out from drinking, and then paint her parents faces and their breakfast table with fresh, warm feces…

Choose life. Choose heroin.

Although some people might insist that Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (a.k.a. Lewis Carroll) must have known about the psychedelic workings of mushrooms; there’s no real evidence suggesting he did. So, what, then? Just a vivid imagination, coupled with some minor untreated psychosis, perhaps? We’ll probably never know. Fact is, it doesn’t really matter, because Mr. Carroll gave us one of the greatest trip reports ever written. 

As for the movie, yes, I do mean the 1951 animated classic, not that later live-action drivel. 

This is some dark, gritty shit — but also a damn good movie. It stars David Thewlis in his breakthrough role as Johnny, a talkative intellectual on the run after raping a woman. He embarks on a nocturnal odyssey through London, encountering all sorts of strange characters, to whom he unloads his chaotic worldviews until they’ve had enough.

The best way to watch this movie, by the way, is like I did: projected twenty feet tall on the side of the public library, as part of some cultural project I can’t quite remember, on a warm summer evening, while smoking a joint or two…

One of the greatest movies about alcoholism ever made. Richard E. Grant plays Withnail, a washed up actor who flees London with his friend for a weekend of quiet contemplation, which then ends in complete and utter disaster. Writer-director Bruce Robinson based the story on his own miserable years as an out-of-work actor in late-1960s London. The character of Withnail is heavily inspired by his real-life roommate, Vivian MacKerrell — a flamboyant, self-destructive drunk with a flair for the theatrical and a talent for spouting bizarre monologues. MacKerrell never became famous himself, but Withnail & I turned his chaotic spirit into a cult legend.

Christiane F. Not as well known, probably, in the US of A as it is in Europe—and that’s a shame, because this movie is brilliant. It tells the raw and very real story of Christiane, a young girl living in Berlin in the early seventies who becomes addicted to heroin. Both the book and the movie caused quite a stir when they came out, exposing for the first time for many people the dark downside of drugs.

Funny story: I actually saw this movie for the first time when I was in school, as part of an anti-drugs project. Not so much the movie itself, but especially all the accompanying information about all sorts of drugs served as a real revelation to me, and I can, to this day, remember thinking, “Wow…! So all this exists? When I grow up, I’m going to try ALL of this…!” And so I did..

“In the end, it’s all nice.”

Requiem For A Dream Horrible, great movie. Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans and Ellen Burstyn all giving stellar performances, showing what happens when addiction destroys everything you hold dear. With a great, haunting soundtrack and some images you’ll have trouble unseeing. You’ll never look at two girls and a double-ended dildo the same way again…

“Most people don’t know how they’re gonna feel from one moment to the next. But a dope fiend has a pretty good idea. All you gotta do is look at the labels on the little bottles.”

Drugstore Cowboy (1989) A very different, but equally effective way of getting high: walk into a pharmacy, have your girlfriend fake a heart attack, and while everyone’s attention—including the pharmacist’s—is on her dramatic collapse, you and your mates rob the place blind.

Watch out for stool softeners, though.

“DMT only lasts for six minutes, but it really seems like an eternity. It releases the same chemical your brain receives when you die. It’s a little like dying would be the ultimate trip.”

Enter The Void (2009) One of the strangest movies on this list, and that’s saying something… It’s about what happens when you smoke some DMT, then get shot and die, and then keep on watching how things unfold through some hovering, first-person-view type of out-of-body experience. Yeah, I know how it sounds. You should try watching it!

I mean that, by the way. You really should.