Trainspotting (film) Trainspotting (film) Trainspotting is a 1996 British black comedy film directed by Danny Boyle and starring Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, Kevin McKidd, Robert Carlyle, and Kelly Macdonald in her acting debut. Based on the novel of the same name by Irvine Welsh, the film was released in the United Kingdom on 23 February 1996. The Academy Award-nominated screenplay by John Hodge follows a group of heroin addicts in an economically depressed area of Edinburgh and their passage through life. Beyond drug addiction, other themes in the film are exploration of the urban poverty and squalor in "culturally
Heroin time was a popular recreational drug, and Bayer wished to find a similar but non-addictive substitute to market. However, contrary to Bayer's advertising as a "non-addictive morphine substitute," heroin would soon have one of the highest rates of addiction among its users. From 1898 through to 1910, diamorphine was marketed under the trademark name Heroin as a non-addictive morphine substitute and cough suppressant. In the 11th edition of "Encyclopædia Britannica" (1910), the article on morphine states: "In the cough of phthisis minute doses [of morphine] are of service, but in this particular disease morphine is frequently better replaced by codeine