While a bottle of rye whiskey is the ubiquitous tonic in the Wild West, some cowpokes need their pick-me-ups a bit stronger. Traces of hard drug use were pretty scarce in Westerns before the late '60s, when filmmakers were still under the censorship controls of the Hayes Code. Of course, that's not to say that offenders don't pop up in Westerns from time to time, as they do in...

Don't Come Knocking (2005)
Playwright Sam Shepard wrote this neo-Western, and stars in it as a has-been Western actor with a collection of addictions and regrets. After fleeing a shoot in Monument Valley, he does what any on-the-outs cowpoke might do: Heads to the local saloon (casino) and hits the hard stuff (cocaine). Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "Line 'em up, barkeep" -- now doesn't it?

Tombstone (1993)
Tombstone's Mattie (Dana Wheeler-Nicholson) is a former prostitute -- before she married feared lawman Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell). Despite turning over a new leaf, she, too, is caught in the tide of addiction. Her drug of choice: Laudanum (opium powder mixed with alcohol, a hardcore cocktail indeed). The history books say she died from the stuff, and so onscreen it provides a convenient excuse for Earp to pair up with actress Josephine Marcus (Dana Delany). 

Young Guns (1988)
In the Brat Pack update of the Billy the Kid story, Lou Diamond Phillips's prepares his regulators a peyote brew while they're on the lam. Good idea? Eh, not really. But it does prompt one of the more amusing scenes in the movie as Kiefer Sutherland mumbles something about butterflies while repeatedly touching his hands, and Dermot Mulroney vomits his lunch over a cliff.

The Shootist (1976)
Fear not, the title doesn't refer to the Duke jabbing a syringe into his arm inside an abandoned-barn-turned-heroin-den. As cancer-stricken gunslinger John Bernard Books, John Wayne dips into a vial of laudanum to quell the pain. Of course he could put himself out of his misery through an overdose, but he chooses to go out in a blaze of glory.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
Opium clouds seem to fog up the lens in Robert Altman's murky, revisionist Western. It surely gets the better of brothel owner Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie), who in her off-hours escapes the brothel she's established with McCabe (Warren Beatty) to hit the opium den. In a movie rich with counterculture influences and anti-establishment rancour, Christie opium's habit seems a clear reflection of the habits of the times.

Compañeros (1970)
As far as sex, drugs, and violence go, Spaghetti Westerns are always pushing the envelope. In Sergio Corbucci's Compañeros, we're treated to not only a Marxist plotline, but a loopy appearance by certified Western lunatic Jack Palance. And guess what? He does drugs. Here he plays a psychotic, one-handed killer who has a love affair for Mary Jane, and a pet falcon named Marsha... a bird that ate his missing hand. As the trailer warns, "Compañeros blow everything... including your mind."

Coogan's Bluff (1968)
In this modern Western, Clint Eastwood plays Sheriff Walt Coogan, an Arizona lawman who's traveled all the way to New York City to collect a killer named Ringerman. Made several years before Dirty Harry, you can see Eastwood already seething with anti-hippie resentment as he encounters the criminal tripping on acid at Bellevue Hospital. The culture clash only continues as Eastwood chases Ringerman across the Big Apple's drug culture, hitting haunts with names like The Pigeon-Toed Orange Peel.

For a Few Dollars More (1965)
There's a drug that turns ordinary men into hardened killers. Maybe you've heard of it? It's called marijuana. And Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Western offers a cautionary tale in its evils that every parent should see with his or her child. As Lee Van Cleef and Clint Eastwood track down a murdering, raping, and spliff-puffing sociopath named Indio, we're reminded of all true horrors that accompany the dreaded demon weed.