Further Research

Prop Drugs:
How do we create a sense that drug use has actually occurred in our film? Luckily for us, the drug we are using is LSD, which normally comes on sheets of paper. All we had to do was print out a sheet of paper full of weird, 70s psychedelic patterns on it and cut it into smaller doses. in reality they have some sort of character associated with drug culture printed on them, on notorious case of this is the "Pink Elephants" from the film Dumbo. I had done some research into how actors take drugs in film and try to make it look as real as possible. For example if you see a film where the characters are smoking pot, its just a normal cigarette, and in the film Trainspotting; during the scene where Renton (Ewan McGregor) takes an overdose of heroin, they cut between close ups of his face and the needle injecting into a fake arm. Fortunately none of our shots required close ups of needles injecting drugs directly into veins.

Effects of Drugs:
Depending on the drug you take you will get a different effect. In the book,"The Doors of Perception" by Aldous Huxley he takes four tenths of a gram of Mescalin and wrote about what happened. In the book he notes his disappointment that he expected more but got less. He says he thought he would go to some other land but instead saw things moving and hallucinated various shapes rising out of nowhere. This is in fact one of the main things that lead people on to taking more and harder drugs; the fact they expect more so keep going until they're completely addicted to reaching that all time high.
So what about other drugs? I spoke to a police officer about drug culture where I live, (Portsmouth). He told me that Portsmouth has one of the highest amounts of Heroin busts in the UK. Heroin is one of the most harmful and if not the most addictive drug out there. Heroin is basically a glorified painkiller, it heightens the bodies sense of relaxation, sometimes so much so that the body completely relaxes and makes you forget to breath causing death.This is in fact how Ringo will die in our film.
So why do people take drugs? I spoke to two people who take the drug 'MDMA' which essentially is the active drug in ecstasy. This increases the body release of serotonin in the brain creating an overwhelming sense of pleasure, and dramatically changes ones mood and perception. it also causes the bodies temperature and heart rate to rise which can cause you to collapse. One person said it helps them to relax as she suffers from depression and has a hard, stressful time with their family. The other said they just do it because it makes them feel good when they're clubbing. That last one is the same state of mind that the character Ringo will have in the film.