E-Mail This Article to a Friend 13 things to do in Boston when you’re stoned Fish, tombstones, Thoreau, and a giant glass globe BY MIKE MILIARD
			What's your favorite?
	Let us know where your favorite place to go while high is! E-mail us at get_stoned[a]phx.com. Also, download a PDF of the illustration here. Print it out, take a toke, and bust out the crayons.

Too many people are all too happy to take their bong hits from the comfort of their couch. Lazing back like opium smokers, a bag of chips at their side, a bottle of sports drink before them, they’re content to while away the day watching reruns of Sanford and Son or bad basic-cable movies. Such indolence only plays into that most insidious stereotype: the feckless pothead as lumpen waste of space. Get up! There’s a world out there, and this city offers innumerable opportunities for pothead recreation. So pack up that one-hitter and hit the streets.

• New England Aquarium (http://www.neaq.org/)

Bathed in blue light, with water water everywhere, teeming with balletic sea creatures, the Aquarium is calming. In our college days, we’d sit forever watching our hermit crab, who lived alone in an algae-green tank and would wave his claw in time to the Europe ’72 version of "Sugar Magnolia." This is sort of like that, but on a larger scale.

In so many ways, Henry David Thoreau was the first hippie. He didn’t like authority. He went off to live in the woods to swim and garden and, like, think about stuff. (But not so far away that he couldn’t drop by Mommy’s place for a hot meal when he needed one.) As far as we know, he didn’t smoke dope. But you do. And his old stomping grounds are a great place to hang out.

• The Mapparium (https://www.marybakereddylibrary.org/project/mapparium/)

To be stoned is to be pensive. And the three-story, walk-through globe at the Mary Baker Eddy Library is just the place to ponder the state of our world. Its luminous stained glass, arching overhead, shows the geopolitical situation as it was in 1935: now-extinct nations, huge swathes in communist red, some corners of the earth still unexplored. It’s a gorgeous reminder of how the earth evolves — and how we do with it.

• Boston Public Garden (http://www.swanboats.com/)

The tranquil placidity of the Public Gardens is made for reflection. Here willows droop forlornly into the lagoon as swans and swan boats circle languidly. Squirrels gambol in leaves and children chase them. George Washington sits soberly astride his steed, admonishing your fuzziness. It’s 75 acres of verdant utopia, smack in the middle of our city. And there are bushes to hide behind.

Getting high while getting high offers some interesting semantic conundrums. It also offers some stunning, panoramic views. The observatory on the 50th floor of the Pru offers a new perspective on everything; smoking up beforehand makes it doubly so. The skywalk is all indoors, though, so don’t expect a secretive toke at the top of the town.

• The Franklin Park Zoo (http://www.zoonewengland.com/)

In our younger days, we used to sneak out back of the parents’ house for a secretive puff or two. Oftentimes, our family dog would look at us quizzically, almost accusatorily, as we smoked. Busted! Of course, we were just being paranoid. Don’t get too nervous when the giraffes look down on you. Butterfly Landing, where you can walk amid 1000 butterflies in free flight sounds way cool too.

• Mount Auburn Cemetery (http://www.mountauburn.org/)

Baked-ness is not always the ideal state of mind in which to ponder mortality. But at gorgeous Mount Auburn, the nation’s first garden cemetery, a rolling 175-acre expanse with nearly 700 varieties of trees and some prime bird-watching spots, you’ll be too busy soaking in life’s beauty to even think about shuffling off this mortal coil.

• Good Time Emporium (http://www.goodtimeemporium.com/index.shtml)

Enter here baked at your own risk. The whiz-bang clangor of neon and screaming kids and big-screen TVs may be too much for your poor heightened senses to bear. Video games, pinball, skeeball, b-ball, batting cages, go-karts, laser tag. New England’s largest indoor amusement center is a veritable stoner playground.

• MFA (http://www.mfa.org/)

Is having a powerful buzz necessary to enjoy great art? Only if you’re a hopeless rube. Does having your visual acuity tweaked just a bit offer a new perspective on the airy insouciance of Joan Miró’s Nuage et Oiseaux (Cloud and Birds) or the motley, jagged angles of Jackson Pollock’s Troubled Queen? We’ll let you decide.

• Newbury Street (http://www.newbury-st.com/)

If you’re an inveterate stoner, chances are you’re pretty down to earth. Here’s a tip: it’s tons of fun to come to Newbury Street, crouch behind a mailbox, and laugh and point at the well-dressed swells striding the sidewalk like it’s a runway in Milan. Call them names and giggle — they won’t notice! Plus, we admit, those horrible, straight-laced snobs are fairly easy on the eyes.

• Mugar Omni Theater (https://www.mos.org/explore/omni)

Few of us will ever have the chance to scale Mount Everest or meander down the treacherous Nile. But in this all-enveloping five-story dome at the Museum of Science, you’ll get the next-best thing. The world’s biggest IMAX projector puts you there: the images larger than life, the sound booming. It’s a trip. Speaking of trips, be careful: the steep seating offers a vertiginous thrill all on its own; a toke or two beforehand might heighten the sensation overmuch. (And mushrooms are definitely not recommended.)

• Game On! (82 Landsdowne Street, Boston)

Being stoned in the basement bar at Fenway’s Game On! is almost superfluous. Whether or not the place is packed before a home game, the innumerable television screens of every shape and size covering every corner of the room — not to mention the deafening sound system — are sheer sensory overload, no matter what the score of the game is. You’ll probably need a beer to calm your nerves. (They’ve got munchies, too.)

• Fenway Midnight Movie Series (http://www.bostonphoenix.com/ple/movies_3/listings/)

Even as a grown adult, there’s still a transgressive frisson in going to the movies at midnight. Like you’re out breaking some imaginary curfew, and won’t be home till way late. At Fenway on Friday and Saturday nights, between September and April, they dust off classic flicks at the stroke of 12. Sour Patch Kids and Jujubes are a must. One caveat: smoke too much and you’ll almost certainly end up falling asleep.

• Walden Pond (https://www.mass.gov/locations/walden-pond-state-reservation)