10 Disney Movie Details Only Grown-Ups Would Notice

It might’ve been largely disproven that Lewis Carroll was off his rocker on opiates when he wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but Disney’s take on the book came out in the 1950s – an era in which Beatniks abounded, hippies were just around the corner and drug use was actually not all that uncommon. So can we really rule out that the movie isn’t one big trip?

Of course, as a kid Alice in Wonderland is simply the stuff of fantasy and magic and wild imagination but as substance-ravaged, timeworn adults it’s hard not to read a little more into it. Take the White Rabbit, for example, always running around with bloodshot eyes – he’s probably on cocaine – or the dormouse whose perpetually sleepy state makes him seem like he’s abusing prescription painkillers.

There’s the Caterpillar forever puffing on his hookah pipe and dispensing cryptic advice like some kind of stereotypical stoner and the Cheshire Cat with his huge eyes and gurning grin not looking too dissimilar from a 1990s rave attendee.

Then we have sweet, innocent Alice taking pretty much anything that’s offered to her – including but by no means limited to cannabis cookies, liquid hallucinogens and magic mushrooms – and basically having the best trip of her life. Now try claiming it’s not all about drugs.