Curious Alice — The 1971 Anti-Drug Movie Based on Alice in Wonderland That Made Drugs Look Like Fun — openculture.com

The Reagan presidency was probably the golden age of anti-drug messaging. America’s school kids were told that a brain was like an egg and drugs were like a frying pan. The First Lady told America’s school kids simply to “Just Say No.” The message was stupefyingly simple. Drugs, like Communism and taxes, are bad. During the early 1970s, however, that anti-drug message was much more confused. Take for example Curious Alice, a visually stunning, deeply odd movie about the perils of drug abuse that makes the stuff look like a lot of fun. Created by the National Institute of Mental Health in 1971, the film shows young Alice reading Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland in a sunny dappled meadow before nodding off. She soon finds herself plunging down the rabbit hole and in a wonderland … of drugs. The King of Hearts is hawking heroin. The Mad Hatter is tripping balls on LSD. The hookah-smoking Caterpillar is stoned out of his gourd. The Dormouse is in a barbiturate-induced stupor and the March Hare, who looks like the Trix Bunny’s ne’er-do-well brother, is a fidgeting tweaker. “You oughta have some pep pills! Uppers!” he exclaims. “Amphetamines! Speed! You feel super good.”

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