Drugs on film

For the Writers Guild of America, West, Dennis Faye talks to pharmacology professor Dr Cynthia Kuhn about the portrayal of drug and alcohol use in the movies.

There are two things I see that I don’t think are realistic. The way people drink alcohol and remain completely coherent. And it varies in both directions, but typically it’s people slamming shots and shots and shots and shots past the point at which an adult would be unconscious.

The other thing that they get wrong...is when people are very anxious and they fumble with the bottle of pills and they can’t get the top off and they drop them and then they take one, and they’re still anxious two minutes later they take another one. I don’t know if anyone actually does that.