Darren Aronofsky's film Requiem for a Dream follows the lives of 4
             people, lost and isolated in their own worlds into the descending spiral of
             drug addiction. At first, their desire for the drug is a based on a desire
             to escape from the doldrums of everyday life. An elderly widow uses
             prescription pain killers in order to clam her nerves, but soon the
             psychokinetic effects are the focus of her desire, and she slips into a
             fantasy dream world. A pair of young lovers and their friend starts the
             journey seeking a bit of fun, which turns into a desire for power, and then
             an addiction to the ability to escape the devolving conditions of their
             lives into the drug induced dream. Unlike feel good endings of most of
             today's modern films, individual vignettes conclude the film, showing each
             of the four lived helplessly shipwrecked, somewhere in between reality and
             The effects of powerful drugs such as heroin, or cocaine on the lives
             of their users lead to self destruction. The powerful chemical interaction
             between the drugs and the normal neurological activity in the brain render
             the user unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy. The result of
             long term use is the tragic loss of an individual.
             In 1863 a German merchant named Friedrich Bayer (1825-76) set up a
             factory in Elberfeld to exploit new chemical procedures for making dyes
             from coal tar. German coal-tar dye manufacture expanded rapidly, but when
             price conventions and raw material availability deteriorated, the Bayer
             Company invested in scientific research to diversify its product range. In
             1888, a new substance synthesized by Bayer chemists became the company's
             Synthetic medicines were something new. In the early years of the
             nineteenth century, medicines had been prepared using crude natural
             materials like opium, the dried milky substance derived from poppy seeds. A
             young German pharmacist called ...