Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh is an irreverent and uncompromising portrait of the heroin subculture in Edinburgh. The narrative cycles through a number of different users, pushers, scam-artists, and general hooligans, though it focuses on a core group of five addicts. The novel is essentially the vision of a group of young men who have chosen to drop out of polite society in search of brief, luminous chemical joy.