Cocaine Marijuana Beer — Three eye close-ups labeled cocaine, marijuana, and beer showing effects of each substance

Cocaine Marijuana Beer

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Published August 17, 2026

Cocaine Marijuana Beer is a four-panel image macro that stacks three photos of dilated eyes labeled cocaine, marijuana, and beer, then adds a fourth pair of eyes as the punchline. The format took off on Twitter and Instagram in April 2017 and became a staple of r/dankmemes that spring.

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Overview

Cocaine Marijuana Beer is a four-panel image macro built around a vertical stack of three close-up photos of eyes, each captioned with the drug the subject supposedly took: cocaine, marijuana, and beer3. A fourth panel gets tacked on the bottom with a different pair of eyes and a punchline word, usually something that is not a drug at all2.

The joke works because the first three pictures come from a real 2014 Vice photo essay about how narcotics affect pupil size, so the format looks like a straight-faced infographic until the fourth panel breaks the pattern1. Editors swapped in everything from cartoon characters to news figures, which turned the template into a flexible reaction-image generator on Reddit and Instagram2.

Origin & Background

Platform
Vice (source images) / Twitter (viral spread)
Creator
@cadey_mercury
Date
2017

The source images come from a Vice article published on November 14th, 2014, titled "Here's What Your Eyes Look Like When You Take Different Drugs," which photographed clubgoers in Berlin after they had used various substances1. Vice actually concluded that you cannot reliably identify a drug just by looking at someone's eyes, but the layout of captioned close-ups was memorable enough to circulate on its own2.

The meme itself started on April 11th, 2017, when Twitter user @cadey_mercury5 posted the three Vice photos with a fourth panel photoshopped to read "DICK," captioned "When you get that good dick." That tweet established the four-image template that every later variation followed2.

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How It Spread

The format moved fast. On April 12th, 2017, the Facebook page Universal Troll6 posted a five-panel version that added the man dragged off a United Airlines flight as the punchline, pulling in more than 4,600 reactions and 1,600 shares3.

Creators went back to the four-panel structure within days. On April 15th, the Instagram account @memesformemers7 reposted a version by @mc3smemedream that racked up over 24,000 likes, and on April 18th the meme account @daquan8 shared an edit using a screenshot from Drake and Josh that passed 560,000 likes3. Reddit picked it up on April 20th, when u/OfficialPS posted a Filthy Frank "ravioli" edit to r/dankmemes that scored more than 1,100 points, and u/Xavienth flagged the trend in r/MemeEconomy with a post titled "Effects on Eyes memes on the rise!" that reached over 2,800 points3.

The Daily Dot ran a feature on April 21st, 2017, cataloguing edits that included Karl Marx "on seizing the means of production," Carl Wheezer from Jimmy Neutron on croissants, and a Fairly Oddparents version about the dad character's neighbor Dinkleberg2. Daily Dot also noted the template's family resemblance to the earlier Expanding Pupil meme, which used a similar pseudo-scientific pupil claim as its setup2.

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How to Use This Meme

A typical Cocaine Marijuana Beer edit keeps the three original Vice photos in the same order at the top, cocaine then marijuana then beer, and only swaps the fourth panel2. The punchline eyes are usually pasted in from a cartoon, a movie still, or a news photo, with a one-word label that names whatever the subject is metaphorically "on"3. The joke lands best when the fourth thing is something absurd or emotionally loaded rather than an actual substance2.

Frequently Asked Questions