Alcoholism is a disease, and no other film before Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend portrayed it as such. Like Trainspotting, that was to come along fifty years later, people were up in arms when this film came out, saying that it would encourage people to drink. The desperate journey that Don Birnam goes on throughout this film certainly would not encourage anyone to drink. Yeah, it may feel good for a fleeting moment, but it is a false and transient feeling. It is a feeling that you may crave, but how far are you willing to go get it? In The Lost Weekend, we discover exactly how far Birnam is willing to go to get his fix, resorting to petty theft and selling his typewriter, which, since he's a writer, is essential for him to earn any sort of income. Wilder again makes it clear that he does not want to tell stories of the American Dream but stories of how far this dream can go wrong when human frailty comes into play.