I’m interested in the portrayal of substance use in the media. Usually the news media vilifies them. Movies and TV shows often get it so wrong that it makes me wonder if the writers ever did the drugs they are showing. That or the drug experience is exaggerated to be comical or cautionary.
Here we list various examples of how drugs are portrayed and a level-headed revelation on how accurate those portrayals are. Have an example you’d like our opinion on? Let us know!
Movies
The Breakfast Club
The coughing and the giggling, that’s spot on to many of my weed experiences. However, I’ve never once felt the impulse to do cartwheels or jump off walls after smoking up. Erin usually just falls asleep, or at the very least melts into a puddle. Andrew Clark (Emilio Estevez) might have done a line of cocaine rather than smoked a jay, but everyone reacts differently.
Fantasia
This doesn’t portray LSD use…. But damn if this doesn’t make a lot more sense once you’ve listened to classical music while on LSD. These artists were tripping balls when they came up with these scenes! And that first intro performance basically spells it out, except “narrator” never says, “Take a tab of LSD.”
EDIT: I stand by everything I said here, but I discovered Fantasia came out in 1940, and Albert Hofmann’s infamous Bicycle Day (April 19) discovery of LSD didn’t occur until 1943. Not to say these artists hadn’t experienced some other form of psychedelic, but it wasn’t LSD.
The Girl Next Door
A high school kid gets slipped some ecstasy and sent to a scholarship meet-and-greet, where he can’t help but grin, dance, and pet people. Unless given a HUGE dose of E, this is unrealistic. Set and setting play a big part in how someone reacts to drugs like MDMA. Being on a normal dose in that environment would have helped him nail that small talk. Even when Erin and I are having a Molly night alone together, we aren’t just uncontrollably petting each other. We’re very intentionally petting each other.
Have a Good Trip
This Netflix documentary features a variety of celebrities sharing their experiences on psychedelics. Given that these are true trip reports, we cannot criticize the authenticity of the substances represented. We found the stories enjoyable. The animations and reenactments were great. The running parody of the anti-drug propaganda was funny…and not all that over the top. It was barely a parody! Tripping advice is sprinkled in, but it’s not enough to be valuable. Also some old anti-drug “educational” clips are intersperse in the story, and the information they relate in as scientific fact is no disputed in the commentary, which seems to give these credence as truth when they are not.
Overall, five out of five stars, highly recommend. I would watch or listen to hours more of these interviews. We both feel this is an important piece to help reduce the social stigma around psychedelics.
Knocked Up
Seth Rogan and Paul Rudd take shrooms and go to Cirque du Soleil. That seems like a freak-out waiting to happen…and it does. Giving chairs personalities and wanting to be on one chair over another (“Oh this is a better energy.”), that’s totally a thing that would happen on shrooms.
Magic Mike XXL
The Kings of Tampa take Molly and get their creative juices flowing. This is the most accurate depiction of any substance I’ve ever seen in any movie or show.
Note the rapid chatter. BDR’s clenched jaw as he rubs his cheeks. Mike’s reassurances. Everyone immediately jumping in with positivity and support for his idea. Ken being all sweaty and sucking on a lollipop. Tito’s legs shaking as he sits in the background smoking a joint.
And at no time were they completely wasted, out of it, or just petting each other. Their roll continues across several scenes, even through the comedown stages, and it’s all pretty accurate.
Kind of makes you think these actors might have done Molly at some point in their lives…. But I guess it was just good notes from the director, who probably brought on a consultant for this scene…. Right…a consultant. Shit, it would probably be cheaper to buy a dose of MDMA for each of them and record the scene with them actually rolling.
Mall Rats
Most Jay and Silent Bob movies seem to have the cannabis part down pretty solidly. However, the contestants for the game show being so high that they are just rolling on the ground seems a little over-blown.
Sisters
I loved it when John Cena showed up with his bag of drugs. I paused/replayed it several times to hear the full list. Most of it is legit, as near as I can tell. I don’t recall if the audience ever knows exactly what all the partiers end up taking, but we enjoyed that this middle-age crowd decided to get wild. I also loved his safe word (though, let me be clear, that is a terrible safe word!).
TV Shows
Mad Men
In the episode “Far Away Places,” Roger Sterling and is wife Jane take LSD with a group of Jane’s friends. The hosting couple are psychiatrists, and the husband remains sober in order to trip-sit the rest of the group. Each person has a piece of paper on them that lists their name, address, and a request for help because they have taken LSD. Presumably this is a safety precaution in case anyone wanders off and starts having a bad trip.
Although some of what happens during the trip does not jibe with our experiences (the stereotypical little green man, for example), the outcome seemed very realistic and in line with some of our own experiences. Roger comes out of the trip realizing that his relationship with Jane is over. They had this beautiful experience together in order to say goodbye. The fact that Jane did not have this same realization highlights how an acid trip can often be very individual and introspective.
New Amsterdam
The psychiatrist in this show uses MDMA with a PTSD patient. The patient had memory gaps in his experience of being in a building that was bombed. The doctor uses MDMA to help guide him through the experience with less fear, and the patient is able to remember something that gives him closure on the experience. This portrayal gives me hope that the use of MDMA in a therapeutic setting is becoming more socially accepted.
Sens8
I go into more detail about why you need to watch this show on the Kinky Sex in the Media page (the sex is awesome in this show!). That said, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the scene in which Riley finds her father and a couple buddies smoking weed before they are about to go on stage and perform a classical concert, a kind of ritual they developed over the years of performing together. She gives them MDMA to try instead. The show does a good job of revealing how into the experience the musicians are. And yes, they are able to perform while on ecstasy, which I find very believable particular for professionals.
From my experiences, I think it more likely for people to be focused while on a low/normal dose MDMA rather than distracted or randomly petting people. On high doses, it can be harder to keep a train of though or conversation going. But for someone who is highly proficient and has the practiced muscle memory, playing a piano might flow without effort.
Veronica Mars
In the new season of Veronica Mars, Veronica is out partying with friends and one of them offers some E. The result? They drink more and party harder and just generally have an awesome time and a terrible hangover the next day. That aligns with our experiences.
The West Wing
At the end of the fourth season of the West Wing, Zoey Bartlet gets drugged by her boyfriend. Jean-Paul has been trying to get her to do ecstasy with him so he slips some into her drink while they are at a bar with friends. It all goes to shit, however, because his drug dealer sold him GHB, not ecstasy, as part of a convoluted plot to drug and kidnap Zoey. It’s an amazing sequence with Massive Attack’s Angel playing in the background throughout. This could be an accurate depiction of how a GHB dosing could go, but given what I know about GHB and MDMA, I don’t think it is realistic to think this could have fallen out the way it does in the show.