Charlie Chaplin Goes on a Comical Cocaine Bender and Saves the Day in Modern Times (1936) — openculture.com

When you think of drug movies, flicks like Easy Rider, Drugstore Cowboy and pretty much everything by Cheech and Chong might spring to mind. Add to this list Charlie Chaplin’s masterpiece Modern Times. In the movie, Chaplin’s iconic Little Tramp character does a whole lot of blow and ends up a better man for it. You can see a clip above. After getting mistaken for a Communist demonstrator, the Tramp is thrown in the clink. In the prison mess hall, a hulking prisoner sitting next to him refuses to let him have any of the communal bread. Meanwhile, the shifty looking guy on the other side of him dumps a bunch of “nose powder” into a saltshaker before getting hauled away by the prison guards. Chaplin sprinkles liberal amounts of this “salt” on his meal and soon he starts showing all of the telltale symptoms of cocaine use – bugged out eyes, excessive energy and unshakeable self-confidence. He also shows some less common side effects like compulsive twirling and a propensity to jam food in his ear.

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