Author: Charles Frank

15 Best Movies About Addiction and Alcoholism

Watching movies, like reading books, following blogs and listening to podcasts are essential tools in the journey to sobriety. Movies about alcohol addiction tend to deal with the subject very well and show a good understanding of the problem. While the movies may be at times stereotypical, they are honest and do accurately show the upheaval and havoc that drinking to excess can have on the life of the drinker and those around them. Notable for being a great 1960s movie that looks at addiction, Days of Wine and Roses is all about alcohol, and the problems that can come with getting hooked on drinking. As his life slowly spirals completely out of control, Darryl eventually finds his way to a 12-step program, and the movie makes an impressive, and unusual, commitment to following that process through.

Day Intensive Coaching

This film rated R for pervasive profanity, domestic abuse, including sexual violence and substance abuse. Beth Heke (Rena Owens) husband played by Temuera Morrison is a violent alcoholic. Many other characters are addicted to either alcohol or drugs, but the impression is not of a dissolute society but a broken one.

Flight (

The film compellingly goes into the abuse she suffered from her husband during blackouts. Recovery, relapse, and suicide make this about as bleak and realistic as a movie featuring substance abuse disorders can be. You always knew it would not end well as the start of the movie shows Whip recovering from a drunken night and subsequent hangover by imbibing more booze and a shot of cocaine before heading onto the fateful plane. As the story deepens so do his lies, drunkenness, disillusion and addiction.

Sober Hour

He continues to cross paths with drug users he once ran around with and finds himself haunted by his old habits. One day, two men try to rob Bob for drugs and one of them shoots him during the scuffle. The incident leads Bob to believe that he has paid his debts for his past, but that it will always be present within him. Bob, his wife Dianne (Kelly Lynch), and their friends rob pharmacies to support their drug use. Before CinemaBlend, he was the managing editor for Suggest.com and Gossipcop.com, covering celebrity news and debunking false gossip.

It’s almost like peaking behind the curtain of one if you’ve never been. In a dramatic role, the late Richard Lewis is brilliant as a man struggling to stay sober after he leaves the meeting as Spalding Grey, Parker Posey, Faye Dunaway, and others tell their gritty stories in the meeting he stormed out of. Based on the true story of model Gia Carangi, Angelina Jolie disappears into the role of the protagonist who, despite seemingly having it all, succumbs to addiction, AIDS, and death in the 1980s. Gia is redeemed at the very end, as she finally sobers up, but alas, it’s too late. There are plenty of movies that show the “before” but only a few that get into the dirty side of addiction. These movies don’t always have happy endings, either, but they can all serve as powerful examples of what sobriety and recovery can and should be.

Beautiful Boy (

He is forced to coach the local youth baseball team and spend eight weeks in the only recovery program in town.
He tries, he really does but all too often he is back to puking down the loo and passing out among empty bottles littered around him on the floor.
Unlike some films, alcoholism and the road to sobriety aren’t glamorized or made to look easy.
If you are specifically looking for a “recovery” movie, this may not be the right choice.

With some wonderful performances from the lead actors, this is a must-see. The toll addiction takes on family members is viscerally felt in Ben Is Back, starring Julia Roberts as a mother desperately trying to get her son clean. Roberts’ performance is heartbreaking and wonderful as she does all she can for her son who was hooked on pills at a young age and can’t kick the habit. 2012’s Flight starring Denzel Washington as Whip Whitaker, a pilot lost in addiction starkly shows how insidious the disease can be. Facing the loss of his job, license, and even his freedom, the disease still won’t give up its grip.

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Finally Cory admits he can’t stop drinking and begins to take his recovery seriously through faith based meetings and the love and support of his family and his team of little leaguers. Alice (Meg Ryan) and Michael (Andy Garcia) seem to have the perfect life and love, a beautiful house, great careers and gorgeous children. But this idyllic lifestyle is shattered as Alice’s ever increasing dependency on alcohol and resulting erratic behaviour causes more and more problems at home, at work and with the children.

Flight

But there was also The Basketball Diaries, which is up there among DiCaprio’s best performances, the agony of heroin addiction pounding through the screen. It’s hard to dodge the bullets of addiction drama clichés, but Robert Zemeckis’s grounded character study is professional, sympathetic, and engrossing from start to finish. Some people can’t even get out of bed when they’re hungover, while others can fly planes. In Flight, Whip Whitaker (played by Denzel Washington) doesn’t just function—he saves 96 lives in an airplane crash despite flying drunk.

It’s a surrendering tale of grief and trauma, both for the user and the loved ones around them, and it highlights how far a parent’s love can travel. Gwen starts engaging with the community of recovery and looks at her life now and in the past, as she wrestles with flashbacks of her mother’s fatal overdose when she and Lily were kids. Betty Thomas’ 2000 film “28 Days” follows Gwen Cummings (Sandra Bullock), a newspaper journalist entering rehab for an alcohol addiction. Gwen decides to go to rehab to avoid jail time after drunkenly stealing a limousine during her sister Lily’s (Elizabeth Perkins) wedding. Darius Marder’s 2019 drama “Sound of Metal” is one of the greatest on-screen depictions of how a recovering drug addict can flirt with relapsing after undergoing an extreme personal trauma. Ruben (Riz Ahmed) is a drummer in a metal band with his girlfriend Lou (Olivia Cooke).

Ultimately, Johnny is forced to choose between walking away from the only home he knows, or making a choice to stay and do better. Glimmers of hope comes with Milland’s agreeing that he needs to takes steps toward recovery, and also in his plan to write a book about his experiences. HBO just dropped the trailer for the second season of its acclaimed teen drama Euphoria. It’s been a long wait between seasons—though there have been a couple of specials in the meantime, but the last regular-series episode aired over two years ago. The show deals with frankly (very frankly) with multiple aspects of modern life among a cast of characters in their late teens (at least at the outset), lead by Zendaya as Rue Bennett, who is already working through recovery at 17. It’s a painful reality for many addicts and their loved ones, and “Beautiful Boy” is one of the most emotional depictions of how addiction can complicate family dynamics.