What happens to Alice when she drinks from the bottle labeled 'DRINK ME'?

When Alice drinks from the bottle labeled “DRINK ME,” she shrinks. The change happens after she enters the hall of doors and finds a tiny doorway leading to a beautiful garden that she cannot reach at her normal height.

The bottle’s contents make Alice small enough to pass through the door, but the transformation creates a new problem: she has left the key on a table that is now too high for her to reach. She then finds a cake labeled “EAT ME,” which makes her grow enormously. Carroll repeatedly uses these changes in size to turn ordinary objects—bottles, cakes, fans, and mushrooms—into obstacles and tools.

A common mix-up comes from later adaptations, which sometimes alter the exact sequence or add additional bottles. In the original 1865 novel, Alice later drinks from another bottle in the White Rabbit’s house and grows so large that she becomes stuck inside. The Caterpillar’s mushroom later gives her more deliberate control over growing and shrinking.