This famous excerpt from Disney’s Dumbo (1941) is arguably one of the first psychedelic scenes ever.
The relations between Disney and psychedelics are not clear. According to Peter Stafford’s “Psychedelic Encyclopedia” the chief visualist for Disney’s Fantasia (1940) participated in the mescaline experiments conducted in Germany by Kurt Beringer in the 1920’s. Artist Paul Laffoley claims that Disney himself experimented with Mescaline “On a regular basis” during his stay in Germany in the 1930’s. Many other theories regarding the relations between Disney and psychedelics exist, and you can find out about some of them here in this fascinating article.
In this particular scene, Dumbo drinks from a bucket and slowly begins hallucinating. He sees pink elephants which appear before him out of thin air, and start dancing and singing (This sequence starts around the 3rd minute). By the fifth minute Dumbo’s fantasy world becomes increasingly psychedelic as the pink elephants change shape and colors. It seems the bucket has been spiked.
The Daily Psychedelic Video 