Trainspotting

A psychoanalytic perspective of drug addiction in contemporary society

Abstract

The use of substances considered toxic is an ancient practice found in different peoples and cultures. However, in each civilization or time, drug has a different purpose. In contemporary society, drug use is related to the way of life and the prevailing ideals in the social context, fundamentally characterized by the culture of narcissism and spectacle. From this drug conception in modernity and the assumption that human subjectivity and pathologies are built from articulations of cultural relationships with the subject’s individual history, this article aims to discuss the drug addiction phenomenon in contemporary society through vignettes of the film Trainspotting. To support this argument, the psychoanalytic theory approach is used