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"When I take it, I feel like Jesus and the Terminator at the same time."
Eric Stehfest still lives with his mother Liane, his little half-sister Lilly and his stepfather Tilo in a small town in East Germany. He loves his mother dearly and above all, his little sister.
Tilo, on the other hand, can’t wait for Eric to finally move out. Not only on weekends does Eric go dancing in his favorite club or roams around the streets. Max, his best friend, is always at his side – just like Crystal Meth – the drug that makes a lingering emptiness, an omnipresent, subcutaneous fear disappear in Eric. The drug that makes him feel undefeatable.
But there is also another side to Eric: he wants to become an actor – and applied to drama school. They even accept him – but heading to Berlin alone?
Max hates the idea of Eric leaving home and feels betrayed. Only after Eric’s great love Anja, under the condition that he stops using, is willing to go to Berlin with him, Eric starts pursuing his dream.
With Anja he builds a little nest in Berlin and immerses himself in a very special, fascinating, but also strange new world at the drama school. Eric, the boy from provincial backgrounds meets children from good families. And he is under an increasing pressure to meet the requirements of the drama school. In addition, life with Anja is not as he had hoped it would be. When Anja gets pregnant, Eric starts to doubt, if the baby is even his.
After Eric feels personally provoked during an acting exercise and hits a fellow student, he is about to be kicked out of drama school. Eric relapses. Due to the intoxication, Eric does not realize what is really going on around him anymore. He goes on stage drugged up – to the horror of his mentor. He tangles with Tilo until they get into a physical fight. He brings Anja to have an abortion. Unerringly Eric pushes himself further and further into a paranoid psychosis until he tries to kill himself and ends up at a rehab clinic.
Once inside, he realizes that he fucked up big time and that he owes his loved ones more than just an apology. When he finally leaves rehab clean again, he thinks everything will be fine from now on, but the world has continued without him: There is no one waiting for him, everybody moved on with their lives. Especially Anja.
For Eric it means, that it is about all or nothing now. He gets a huge amount of crystal, his stage texts and locks himself up in his apartment. He challenges the drug and life itself – until he finally understands that he must stop consuming for good. Not for the others. For himself.