"If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be messed up"
About this Quote
The subtext is a quiet parody of how we explain substances and behavior. We tend to moralize or medicalize drunkenness, but Hedberg reroutes the conversation through nature. If a common food produced alcohol-like effects, the evidence would be everywhere in the animal kingdom. The joke works because it treats “getting drunk” as a straightforward chemical outcome rather than a social ritual, stripping away our cultural stories about vice and replacing them with a simple ecological thought experiment.
It also plays on scale and expectation. Rabbits are coded as timid, gentle, domestic. “Messed-up” is blunt, contemporary, and human - the slang of a bad night out. The collision of those registers is the laugh: Disney meadow meets grimy bar recap.
Context matters: Hedberg’s persona was the spaced-out philosopher of the mundane, delivering one-liners that felt like overheard brain static. This joke fits that late-90s/early-2000s alternative-comedy sensibility where observational humor wasn’t about complaining but about rewiring reality for a second. The carrot isn’t the point; the delight is watching logic, applied with deadpan sincerity, create a ridiculous world you can’t unsee.
Quote Details
| Topic | Puns & Wordplay |
|---|---|
| Source | Mitch Hedberg — quote listed on Wikiquote: "If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be messed up." |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Hedberg, Mitch. (2026, February 16). If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be messed up. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-carrots-got-you-drunk-rabbits-would-be-20558/
Chicago Style
Hedberg, Mitch. "If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be messed up." FixQuotes. February 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-carrots-got-you-drunk-rabbits-would-be-20558/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be messed up." FixQuotes, 16 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-carrots-got-you-drunk-rabbits-would-be-20558/. Accessed 17 Feb. 2026.







