At 8:10 AM on Friday, October 30, 2015, 12-year-old Tiahleigh Palmer was dropped off at the front of her Australian primary school by her foster carer. A few classmates saw her that morning, but when the bell rang at 8:25 AM she wasn't sitting at her desk. Something happened to Tiahleigh in that 15-minute window. Those few sightings were the last times she was seen alive.

Six days later, on Thursday, November 5, three fishermen discovered Tiahleigh's body near a bridge crossing in the Pimpama River, about a 45-minute drive from her school in Waterford West, Queensland. There wasn't, and still isn't, any known cause of death. When Tiahleigh was found her remains were so heavily deteriorated that the post-mortem indicated she could have been dead up to a week.

In early November the story dominated Australian headlines. There were repeated calls from Queensland Police for information and social media bubbled with theories and updates. But updates were few and far between. No one was arrested, and nothing new was uncovered. The story just slowly slipped from the spotlight.

It's now February, three months after Tiahleigh disappeared, and I can't let the story go. The whole thing seems so unbelievably sad and unfair, and generally odd that something like this could occur near my own home. So one weekend, on a whim, I decide to go for a drive and follow her most likely final movements, starting with the school.

As I drive west into Logan, an area just south of Brisbane, the landscape begins to change. I start passing sidewalls with murals of cows and farm animals. I see more hardware stores, trees, a Pet Motel. That's about the point when I hit the sign for Waterford West, a small residential suburb of Logan City. Off-white houses in neat yards, a few convenience stores; the streets are quiet. I start to think about the sort of people who live here.

Tiah, as her friends and family called her, had been a ward of the state since 2011. Her upbringing seems to have been a happy one but not without complications. Her mother, Cyndi Palmer, gave up her daughter as a teenage mom and Tiah was passed from carer to carer.

Julie Pemberton, one of Tiah's previous foster carers, described Tiah to the Daily Mail as "no angel, but no child is." She said Tiah often ran away and seemed proud of the fact she'd been passed up by her previous guardians after only 24 hours. "She was a gorgeous girl, she really was," said Julie. "A wild horse—you might have been able to tame her but could never have broke her. She had a lovely spirit that kid."

But this fact—that Tiah was a wild spirit who regularly ran away—is something that's seriously complicated the investigation.

Tiah's school. All photos by the author

When Tiahleigh went missing, Queensland Police waited six days before going public. This decision has received a lot of criticism, although police have since defended the choice. The Child Protection Act prevents government bodies from naming children in care, and while exceptions can be made in missing persons cases, police officers are generally reluctant to distribute photos of children online. This was the main reason police waited nearly a week before posting a report, which in retrospect wasted those first vital days.

We know that public notification can be highly useful in recovering missing children. In the US, AMBER Alerts have saved 794 children since the program began in 1996. Tragically, in Tiah's case, her body was found only three hours after the media was first notified.

In the wake of her death, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk ordered a review into the way the identities of foster children are protected. It wasn't the first time foster laws had affected criminal investigations. In 2014, three-year-old William Tyrell went missing from his foster carers' home in NSW. Due to privacy laws, his carers were not initially allowed to speak out to the public. His body has not yet been recovered.

A poster outside the school's gates

When I get to Marsden State Elementary School, I stand outside the front gates, where I'm greeted with paper posters of Tiah. "Can you help?" they ask me. It's a weekend and I'm the only one around, so I go to the bus stop and check the timetable. It's plausible Tiah could have got on a bus to her death, but apparently it's one of the few things police have ruled out.

Detective Superintendent Dave Hutchinson, who is in charge of the investigation, told me that gathering evidence about Tiah's disappearance was difficult from the start. "Many of the issues revolved around the memories of the various students," he said. "For example, information was received that Tiah was seen getting on a bus that afternoon. After considerable inquiries, it was determined this occurred on a different day."

"Information was received that Tiah was seen getting on a bus that afternoon."

Despite these problems the detective superintendent told me they've been able to deduce Tiah left of her own accord. "We know that Tiah walked out of the school willingly at about 0820 hours," he said.

The school is strangely quiet, and I walk around looking for someone to talk to, but no one will. Actually, this is a recurring issue over the next few weeks. The investigation of Tiahleigh's death is still open, which means media snooping is frowned upon. That she was a foster child with a difficult family history makes things even more difficult. I drive around Logan thinking that restricting people from talking—and therefore keeping the story out of the news—might be somewhat counterproductive. Still, over and over again I'm met with the same response: "Sorry, I'm not allowed to talk about that."

Tiah, like all kids, liked to hang out at McDonalds

I leave the school and head to the local McDonald's where Tiah was known to hang out. The police department has gathered enough information to be positive that she was planning to cut class that day—and if we're working under the assumption that she encountered a predator, there are two main plausible theories. One is that Tiah was planning to meet someone and that's why she left school. The other is that she was planning to leave school and was abducted. The shopping precinct seems a likely enough setting for either.

It's in a busy area with lots of traffic, a KFC, a 7-Eleven, a Red Rooster, an Aldi, a Subway, and a Dominos. One classmate told police she saw Tiah here on the morning of the disappearance, but CCTV footage has revealed no evidence of this. I decide to keep moving.

The drive out to the Pimpama River, where Tiah's body was found, takes about 40 minutes and I'm forced to take a toll road. I wonder if the toll cameras were checked—could they provide any evidence? In any case, the police officers had told me they could only comment generally on Tiah's movements that morning, so I don't know for sure. I'm on the highway for a while, and when I get off, I reach a desolate stretch of dusty bitumen that leads to the river. One way or another, Tiah was on this road too.

The turnoff to the river

I get out to take some photos of a road sign. As I'm walking back to my car, keys in hand, a vehicle pulls up alongside me. I'm silently freaking out, but it's a construction worker who wants directions. I can't help and he drives off, and I exhale. "Wimp" is a word to describe me, but it's also a creepy road. It's out of the way, empty, and surrounded by bushland. It's also not the closest river to the school, and it is surprisingly close to an infinitely nicer ocean. There's no reason any young girl would come here on her own volition.

Fisherman found her body near this bridge on November 5

I find the place where Tiah's body was recovered. It's just past a recycled water treatment plant on the north side of a grated bridge. Barbed wire lines the bushland and the riverbank. It's not exactly what I'd call beautiful.

I look at the stagnant water where Tiahleigh was found semi-naked. She went to school wearing a uniform, carrying a purple Mambo backpack. Then she ended up in this filthy, barely-moving water, while the backpack and the uniform disappeared. I think about where they are now, and wonder if the fisherman who found Tiahleigh received counseling.

I don't know why people fish here

Currently there are around 20 police investigators on the case, trying to work out whether Tiah's abductor was known to her. They have looked into sex offenders in the area and scoured the 12-year-old's social media accounts and internet logs. However, there is a complication: Tiah did not have a phone or personal computer. All of her online interactions are spread across computers and phones belonging to her friends, foster carers, and her school. Finding out what happened to her is complicated, for a whole series of reasons.

Whatever happened in Waterford West, it led to the tragic death of a 12-year-old girl.

A small memorial for Tiah on the road above the bridge

If you have any further information about her disappearance, please contact Queensland Police or Crime Stoppers at 1300 333 000.

For more Pete Sharp, have a look at Pete Sharp Art.

A vigil for Quintonio Legrier and Bettie Jones in Chicago. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

It takes roughly the same amount of nerve that inspired Donald Trump to repeat the word "pussy" at a campaign rally for a Chicago police officer who shot and killed a college student he was called to save to sue that teenager's estate for $10 million.

But that's what's happening.

"The fact that Bettie Jones, has caused and will continue to cause Officer Rialmo to suffer extreme emotional trauma," according to the claim, which was filed on Friday in Cook County Circuit Court.

Robert Rialmo's suit counters a wrongful death claim filed by LeGrier's father seeking more than $50,000, saying he was forced to go to a police station, where he was detained, while his son lay dying on the day after Christmas. The elder LeGrier's lawsuit also claims neither the officer nor anyone else was being threatened when Rialmo opened fire without warning.

Citing the danger of facing the 19-year-old African-American engineering student, whom he claims was waving a bat at him, Rialmo, who is white, says he is traumatized, suffering injuries of a "pecuniary nature." Jones, a 55-year-old neighbor, was also killed when the officer opened fire.

This suit comes in the wake of a season marked by weeks of protests that blocked retail traffic in downtown Chicago, a city still reeling from revelations of what was essentially a multi-institutional cover-up around the shooting death of another teen, Laquan McDonald. Chicago has lost a police superintendent and withstood calls for its mayor, Rahm Emanuel, to step down. Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez, facing a March Democratic primary against two opponents, incredulously insists she did nothing wrong in the McDonald case.

This universal exercise in tone deafness to the racial and social differences between the lived experience of African-Americans and other marginalized groups is astonishing given the intense national conversation about these issues the past year and a half. One simple example is that, as of press time, Laquan McDonald's name doesn't show up in a search of the Cook County State's Attorney's website. That search box is as empty as the state's attorney's memory and sense of responsibility for a botched investigation and lack of transparency around that Chicago teen's death.

Lost in debates over whether black lives, in fact, matter, is the work that needs to be done is by those who regard themselves as faultless. A study released this month by the journal Psychological Science suggests as much: Much of society is wired to edit out the humanity of black children—which, make no mistake, LeGrier and McDonald were, even if they approached adulthood.

People are more likely to interpret a toy as a weapon after seeing a black face, according to the study, which showed participants images of both black and white children along with adults holding toys.

"It was the alarming rate at which young African-Americans—particularly young black males—are shot and killed by police in the US," that inspired the study, wrote University of Iowa Professor Andrew Todd, the lead author. "Although such incidents have multiple causes, one potential contributor is that young black males are stereotypically associated with violence and criminality."

Would that LeGrier were regarded as what he was: a troubled young man.

One can't help ask what Rialmo was thinking when he signed up to be a policeman, one of the more potentially injurious occupations out there. Would a log cutter be justified in suing if the sound and feel of a falling tree gave him anxiety? Does it make sense for a pilot afraid of landing a plane in the rain justify a lawsuit after being faced with an unexpected downpour? Rialmo wasn't even hurt! Meanwhile, in 2014, more than 4,000 American workers were killed on the job, including falls, electrocutions, and actually being hit by things. Law enforcement has one of the highest rates of injury, according to 2014 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nursing, meat processing, fire protection are some, but not all, jobs where American workers regularly face risks.

Rialmo, who very likely feels badly, apparently senses he is going to need a lot of money to get over the memory of the strong whiff of a swinging baseball bat fly by his head the morning he responded to that domestic disturbance call. (Never mind Rialmo is the only one alleging the teen, who suffered emotional problems, was actually wielding a bat when police arrived at the westside home.)

Meanwhile, in the original December 28 suit filed by LeGrier's father, Antonio, he says his son "never did anything that suggested that he was armed with a weapon immediately before he was shot." In a description reminiscent of the 2014 Cleveland police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, Antonio Legrier said after Quintonio was shot, "the police officer who shot did not do anything to try to provide" his son medical care."

Presumably Rialmo's lawsuit represents an effort to negate the lawsuit filed by LeGrier's dad, who simply called police early that fateful morning to get his emotionally disturbed son some help. Indeed, Quintonio Legrier, a student at Northern Illinois University, had also called 911—three times—insisting his life had been threatened.

Like his dad, he wanted help.

In the black community, galling behavior that embarrass you, your family, and your community is sometimes described as reflecting a lack of "home training," and Rialmo's suit is a prime example. His nervy claim is the embodiment of an ethos practiced by law enforcement and other public institutions that regard their role in minority communities as being an occupying force rather than a protective one.

LeGrier, McDonald, Ms. Bettie Jones, and the rest are evidence of a long ago social contract written in invisible ink that charges too high a blood price we can no longer afford to pay.

Deborah Douglas is a Chicago-based writer who teaches at Northwestern University. Follow her on Twitter.

Salvatore Perrone. Photo courtesy Brooklyn District Attorney's office

Salvatore Perrone, the man called "Son of Sal" by neighbors and who prosecutors said targeted shopkeepers in Brooklyn, was convicted of three counts of second-degree murder on Wednesday. In 2012, the 67-year-old went on a rampage, killing Mohamed Gebeli, Isaac Kadare, and Rahmatollah Vahidipour in stores they ran in the neighborhoods of Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, and Flatbush, respectively.

In all three killings, which involved a mixture of gunshot and stab wounds, Perrone concealed the bodies with materials from their stores, like clothes and baking dishes. Robbery was not considered a motive after he left $171 in one of his victim's pockets, but there were fears during the initial manhunt that ethnicity was a contributing factor to the crimes.

Ultimately, Perrone was not convicted of a hate crime. Instead, what emerged after his capture and during trial was a portrait of a divorcée who once had ambitions as an apparel maven, suffered from financial problems, and eventually lost sight of his aspirations.

According to property records, Perrone's wife, Maria Salerno, purchased a Staten Island home for the couple in 1985. The two later later divorced, although it's unclear when. Neighbors told the Staten Island Advance that Perrone eventually started dating a woman in Brooklyn and would only come back home to sleep in the house's basement.

Also according to public records, in 2001, Perrone was charged in Pennsylvania on a litany of offenses including stalking, burglary, harassment, and public drunkenness. (He pleaded guilty only to trespassing.) Still, none of those crimes exactly suggested he was capable of three murders. In fact, Perrone, who worked as a mercantile middle-man, peddling his wares from a duffel bag, trademarked his own name in 2007 as part of an attempt to start a clothing line, suggesting he had high hopes for his future. Prosecutors said that at one point he owned a successful store.

Also during the trial, it came out from prosecutors that Perrone, who earlier in his career had hundreds of thousands of dollars in his bank account, was down to only $1.84.

Later that year, on July 6, 2012, he shot his first victim once in the neck inside the store Valentino Fashion in Bay Ridge. Then, on August 2, he shot the second once in the head before slitting his throat inside Amazing 99 Cents Deals in Bensonhurst. Finally, on November 16, 2012, he shot his third victim in the head, face, and chest inside She-She Boutique in Flatbush.

Eventually, someone recognized a photo that police distributed to the media that showed Perrone carrying a duffel bag. When cops searched Perrone's girlfriend's house in Brooklyn, they found that same duffel bag containing a .22-caliber rifle—which was tied to the murders after ballistic analysis—and a knife. Blood stains on the knife and the bag were tied to two of the three victims.

When he was arrested that November, Perrone's three-story home was in a state of disrepair. According to the Staten Island Advance, there was no furniture inside, there were 14 complaints had been lodged against the property, and there was a near-universal loathing of Perrone around the neighborhood. Although one called him "a nasty piece of work," others just said he was odd.

"He's a weird duck," a neighbor told the New York Times in November 2012. "He looked just like Edgar Allan Poe. Black coat, black vest, black shirt, black pants. Every time I saw him, he was wearing all black."

Those same neighbors called him "Son of Sal"—a nod to Daniel Berkowitz, a serial killer who claimed six victims and was known as "Son of Sam" in the 1970s. Like his forebear, Perrone earned a reputation for outbursts in court. On Monday, a judge accused him of using diversion tactics to try and delay the trial once he realized he would be found guilty—which he was two days later.

The crimes committed by Perrone are also reminiscent of those perpetrated by a man named Larme Price in 2003. The 30-year-old confessed to shooting and killing four foreign-born, Brooklyn-based store-owners, and was sentenced to life in prison.

Perrone faces a maximum of 75 years in prison when he's sentenced on March 4.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

The author (left). Photo courtesy of Jasper Ben Reichardt

This article was first published on VICE Alps

When I climbed that tree that summer day 10 years ago, I didn't stop to think that whatever goes up fast, can come down even faster. A certain level of my trust in nature was lost when that branch, which I thought would have held my weight, broke. That accident in 2005 left me partially paralysed.

Interestingly, you don't have to suffer from paraplegia to be in a wheelchair. There are a lot of conditions that can land you in one of those – like Multiple Sclerosis (MS) or Parkinson's disease, for instance.

Complete paraplegia usually means a complete loss of sensation and control below the affected vertebrae. In my case, my spinal cord was ruptured at the height of the fourth thoracic vertebra, which was shattered. What followed was a month in the hospital and five long months of rehabilitation.

If, like me, you get lucky in your misfortune, some sense might come back after two or three months. Slowly. In the meantime, you wallow in the protected environment of the rehabilitation clinic, trying to control your self-pity, while learning how to drive a wheelchair, how to dress yourself without standing up, how to get into bed and to the toilet, how to get up a flight of stairs – a lot of shit that you never wasted time thinking about before, basically. My mother cried when I eventually managed to stand up with some help, three or four months after the accident. I cried when I began functioning sexually around the same time.

But the real rehabilitation begins when you get out of rehab.

Those who I meet for the first time, normally won't ask me what happened to me – or they will only ask after having gotten to know me. That is obviously because nobody wants to make me feel awkward. But I don't want to make you feel awkward either. So just know that it would just be easiest if you all just asked right off the bat. Here is a list of questions I either get asked too often or not often enough:

Questions I Get Asked too Often and Sentences I Don't Want to Hear

"I know an old lady down the street who uses a wheelchair. You must also know her?"

"Have you ever thought about pimping your wheelchair out with a motor?"

"This shaman says that you can activate your self-healing powers with meditation. And faith. Do you believe that?"

"You could attach two jet engines to your wheelchair and then..."

"I bet you could walk perfectly if you tried MDMA."

Questions I Don't Get Asked Often Enough and Sentences I'd Like to Hear

"Can I try using your wheelchair?"

"Can you have sex?"

"Can I get you something from the bar?"

"What exactly is it that doesn't work in your body?"

"My place or yours?"

Some Answers to All Your Burning Questions

The cliché is that sex is difficult. But talking about it seems to be taboo for many. I get a lot of stupid questions, while nobody asks the important ones. I'll gladly answer any questions about my disability. However, the person asking should be able to evaluate the circumstances properly.

For example, it's extremely uncool to interrupt a conversation because you have the burning desire to ask the person in the wheelchair what happened to them. Some assholes in clubs congratulate me for being there: "Wow, the fact that you even go out in your wheelchair... I have to congratulate you, man, because if I were in your shoes, I'd lock myself up at home" – that's the kind of thing they'll say.

Generally, going out at night is a social minefield. You do no want to impose on anyone, do as much as you can on your own and be treated like everyone else. This can't really happen. Often, I am just sat in everyone's way at clubs, bars or house parties. I know it's annoying, but there's nothing I can do.

To me, a wheelchair is like a pair of shoes. It's just a tool that makes my life easier, and that's exactly why being reduced to it is so annoying.

I can do certain things with crutches, but for long distances (more than 500 yards or so) or if I'm drunk – I need a wheelchair. Who can walk when they're drunk, anyway? Obviously, I can't hold or carry anything when I'm on crutches so going about my day-to-day business in a wheelchair is a lot easier. But I'll use my crutches if the design of the place I'm going to allows me to park really close to the entrance. Everything changes when you're on crutches: Suddenly, the opposite sex finds you 10 times more attractive. It's interesting how fast a wheelchair makes people overlook what's important.

Then there are those who seem to think that if you are in a wheelchair you are bound to it. Once, an acquaintance was confused when they saw me standing up, playing foosball. Someone else once claimed I was faking it. I don't think I've ever felt more angry in my life. What kind of an idiot do you have to be to think that anyone would use a wheelchair without needing one. I'm obviously doing it for the extra attention, you asshole, and for amazing comments like this one.

WATCH: Confessions of an Internet Troll

But by far the most frustrating part of it is the pity. Maybe there are people who enjoy it but I'm not one of them. Everyone bound to a wheelchair knows that specific, pitiful smile strangers give you on the street. It's a mixture of feigned pleasure and embarrassing sorrow. As if they are ashamed they are not in a wheelchair themselves. I can assure you, life is not half as bad when you're actually in one. So please, just stop it.

To me, a wheelchair is like a pair of shoes. It's just a tool that makes my life easier, and that's exactly why being reduced to it is so annoying. Sadly, from some of the social experiences I've had in the last ten years, I get the feeling that I'll be defined by my chair whether I like it or not.

Then again, it's easy to blame society. Sometimes, the problem starts in your head. Most people I know have had one or two slightly embarrassing experiences with a person in a wheelchair – and that is okay if it means it gets us closer to just being cool with each other. So I guess, there's only one thing I'd like to ask of you: Please, look beyond the wheelchairs. People in them are as diverse as everyone else.

"One in four of us will experience some kind of mental health problem at some time in our life," reads the Getting Help section of the UK Mental Health Foundation website. And yet talking about issues of mental health is something we inherently struggle with as a society. Worse still, statistics echo just how devastating the result of this incessant and systemic failure to share how we feel really is.

For example, did you know that depression affects 20 to 25 percent of Americans aged 18 and over in a given year? Or that the latest NHS figures show the number of deaths annually among mental health patients in England has risen by over a fifth in the last three years?

Did you know that the same set of figures shows the number of people killing themselves, or attempting to do so, in England has increased by 26 percent year-on-year? That in 2012-2013 that figure was 595; but in 2014-2015 it'd jumped to 751? Did you know that there were 41,149 suicides in 2013 in America – which is a rate of 12.6 per 100,000 people?

That's the equivalent of 113 suicides per day. Or one every 13 minutes.

Did you know this? If you did, great. If you didn't: now you do. Either way, it took me less than five minutes to find this information. You see, many people fear the unknown. One in ten people suffer from anxiety in Britain, which is a condition characterised by many medical professionals as an irrational fear of events that have uncertain outcomes. The spectrum of mental health – like any other illness or condition, as outlined by the statistics above – is not the unknown. So why do we fear it?

"Mental illness is an intensely personal thing that is often vilified by society and the tropes that exist in our media perpetuate misinformation," says Lucy Morris. "Video games aren't innocent of that at all – games have the same accountability as film and books and music to stop spreading misinformation and stigma about mental illness."

A native New Zealander, Morris is an independent game developer and lecturer in creative technologies at the prestigious Media Design School in Auckland. In 2014, she co-founded the Women in Games NZ initiative, and was named in both MCV Pacific's Top 75 Most Influential Women in Games in 2015 and Develop's 30 Under 30 in 2016. In her precious spare time she organises game jams, one of which she runs by herself that's now in its fourth year of existence: Asylum Jam.

Inspired by Ian Mahar's Kotaku article Nobody Wins When Horror Games Stigmatize Mental Illness, that challenged the themes and sentiment of horror game Outlast, Morris quickly set about planning a game jam that'd take Mahar's ideas one step further. In late October 2013, in time for Halloween, Asylum Jam was born.

Here, the rules for developers were simple: design a horror game without inaccurate stereotypes. That meant no "asylums, psychiatric institutes, medical professionals or violent/antipathic/'insane' patients as settings or triggers", as it aimed to show that video games can be scary without relying on the misinformed trope that issues of mental health are something to be feared.

Lucy Morris

"The first one was actually back when game jams weren't super common, and they weren't on platforms like GameJolt and itch.io," explains Morris. "It was still very much the case that you needed a niche platform to do it. I wasn't really sure how it'd be received but I was pretty blown away by the reception of the first year. The second year was a bit quieter but in the third year it picked up quite a lot again, so I'm constantly astounded each time by how many people take part.

"The amount of people that took part in the third year has ratified the point that obviously even if people aren't as passionate about the cause as I am, they're still willing to make a game that fills the criteria and have a fun weekend."

While directed at Red Barrels' asylum-set Outlast, Mahar's 2013 editorial could have been aimed at any one of the multitude of video games that take place in psychiatric institutions, that set the player against deranged or psychotic or catatonic patients – many of whom are perceived as unwanted or unloved individuals, who've either been left for dead or who've been subjected to crude experimentations at the hands of equally unstable doctors. All of which of course serves to cement the idea that, yeah, maybe mental illness is scary.

Article continues after the video below

Watch VICE's film on one person's way to deal with Asperger's, LARPing Saved My Life

The knock-on effect this gross misconception has on wholesome discourse is disastrous. If games pedal such a warped sense of reality, what chance do we have of ever realising discussions around issues of mental health free of stigma? Asylum Jam hopes to answer this question by showing the world how games can be scary minus stereotypes. That's not to say it's easily done, however, as the 140-plus people that signed up for last year's jam understood first hand.

"I think it is quite difficult to work away from the tropes," admits Morris. "We do get a lot of questions asking about the specifics. For example, we've had questions asking: if you have murder in your game does that immediately make it a mental health-related issue? Or, if we have a cult in the game, does that make it against the jam's rules? A lot of the games that we've had have been very creative and you can explore outside of it, it doesn't necessarily need to catalysed by someone with psychopathic tendencies.

"This level of questioning was actually really good because it meant people were thinking really closely about the jam theme and what we were trying to achieve. We've had a lot of people raising those questions and we've even had people on Tumblr go through the past jam games and they find a game they feel doesn't meet the criteria, they'll make a post about it, being like, 'Hey, this isn't appropriate content for Asylum Jam because of this, this and this.'

'Stagnant Light' is one game born from Asylum Jam

"It's interesting that people actually go through playing the games, stop and think about it, and then try and alert other people to it. This means that they're really thinking about it. I haven't censored any games from the jam, apart from obvious troll games, because I don't believe in censoring any creativity."

Aside from my own belief that video games are the most capable form of artistic media in relaying information, seeing mental health discussed in such civil and sensible context means a lot to me personally. A close family member of mine took his own life a number of years ago in circumstances that perfectly illuminate how ridiculous the warped stiff-upper lip mentality our society insists on perpetuating really is. Morris too lost her stepsister to suicide just prior to the 2014 Asylum Jam, thus has more drive than ever to ensure it returns year after year.

With so many people affected by issues of mental health in varying degrees, then, it's worth asking the question: why is it stigmatised to the extent that is it? In this day and age, why are developers putting out video games that belittle such a relatable and common illness?

And so is 'The Room'

"I guess there's a number of reasons for it," suggests Morris. "A common reason is that people will say what happens in games doesn't affect reality and it doesn't matter what they put in it. Like, they'll use the excuse that, say, Postal is really violent but people who play Postal don't go out and, you know, murder people, right? Second, it is quite difficult to come up with engaging narrative not based on stereotypes and tropes and to come up with something very original is difficult.

"That said, there are games that can approach it in a less stereotypical way and still be enjoyable – I'm not saying that games should never do these things, it's that people should be aware of the design decisions they're making and have a good reason for it, rather than just putting it in the game for no reason at all.

"This is something I teach my students: if you make a decision about including violence, or including mental illness, or including objectification, there should be a really good reason behind it. I'm not suggesting censoring anything, but it's something that should be considered."

On Broadly: Living with My Mother's Mental Illness

Needless to say, this consideration applies to all forms of media but it's especially pertinent to video games. The medium's unique interactive and immersive potential has scope to sculpt opinion and outlook like no other – even more so as we stand on the cusp of virtual reality. The line between reality and virtual interpretations of the world in which we live will inevitably become less obvious in the advent of VR, thus the messages video games choose to send are more important than ever.

In 2015, Asylum Jam partnered with Games for Change Europe and Prescription Pixel, and was hosted by GameJolt. When the jam was live, Morris received between 30 and 40 emails each day and is now considering bringing in a second pair of hands to help organise 2016's event. Running it is tough, she says, but the fact that players and developers are engaging with the subject matter, that they're discussing these sensitive issues in such a constructive manner, makes it entirely worth it.

Asylum Jam 2016 is provisionally scheduled to run in its usual slot towards the end of October/the start of November. However, it's an event that should be celebrated all year round. Last week, BMX performer Dave Mirra – who headlined Crave Entertainment's Dave Mirra BMX Challenge and Acclaim's Freestyle BMX series of video games – died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound aged just 41. Each case of suicide is different from the last, but tragic events such as this serve to galvanise the need for more discussion around mental illness on a much bigger stage on a much wider scale.

In other words, we need more events like Asylum Jam.

More information on Asylum Jam can be found here, as can the games that entered last year's event.

If you or anyone you know has been affected by the issues discussed in this article, the following phone numbers might be handy. I'm also always free for a chat anytime on Twitter.

UK Samaritans: 08457 909090
US National Suicide Prevention Line: 1-800-273-8255

More from VICE Gaming:

How the ZX Spectrum Helped the 1980s Become Video Gaming's Most Creative Decade

Wood You Kindly: A Critical Conversation About 'Firewatch'

'Quantum Break' Looks Like the Superhero Gaming Surprise of 2016

Photo by the author

"You have to know that the hate you face as a woman is much worse than being a male, cis, or trans. It's a different world," Samuel East, a transgender Toronto sex worker, told me over a cup of coffee last month. In his mid-20s, East is relatively new to identifying as male, and he only recently started medically transitioning with testosterone. His life as a sex worker, however, has been long.

While firm stats on trans sex workers in Canada are hard to come by, it's not uncommon to find trans individuals involved in sex work, either independently or for some form of an escort agency. Research shows that trans sex workers face more bigotry and violence than other sex workers, and like all minorities in the field, trans sex workers are subjected to fetishisation in ways that white, straight, cis workers aren't.

While trans women – through celebrities like Caitlyn Jenner or Laverne Cox – have grabbed mainstream attention over the last year, trans men still fall under the radar in many ways. As East tells me, most people aren't even sure what it means to be a trans man. This fact is apparent even in sex work, with East being one of the few female-to-male sex workers in the Greater Toronto Area. To get a better picture of what his reality is like, VICE spoke to him about his life and career.

Some of the names, locations, and incidents in this article have been altered to protect the identities of the sources involved.

VICE: How'd you get started as an escort?
Samuel East: I was pretty young. I grew up in a Covenant House, but I got kicked out for dating chicks. Back then, I was a broke ass 18-year-old – one half of my head was super long and I had one dread. I was this grimy-looking crust punk kid. We were doing that thing where you go to a different temple every night of the week, getting free food and such.

So that's when you got into sex work?
Yeah. At that time, I started as a sugar baby, which totally sucks. get way more time out of you than they should. It's the worst kind of sex work to do, because you're basically devoting 24 hours a day to somebody for $1,000 a month. It only made sense after that to move on to escorting, where I presented female. I became active on review boards about three years ago. Those were under previous work names of mine. The things people say on review boards are absolutely disgusting.

What were some of the early agencies like? The less organised, shadier ones that you worked for in the beginning?
Early jobs actually kept me from transitioning because those kind of agencies border on trafficking. When you think trafficking, you think people kidnapped and taken away and put in a room where they're forced to work, but that's not usually the case. You may consent to be there, but eventually they start sending in people non-stop with no warning. You may see eight guys a day, one after another.

Sometimes I'd get a text right after a client left that would read, "Hey, you have another client in ten minutes." Like, OK, how does that give me enough time to shower, to change the sheets, to prepare myself? It was horrific. Your body takes some wear and tear after hours of doing this. I threw out my hip from doing cowgirl for eight hours a day. On the plus hand, I now have extreme amazon thighs.

What happened to the first agency you were at?
It shut down. It's when the law changed and you couldn't openly advertise your services anymore, and its whole shebang was offering a "menu" with all the options open to clients, and that's the most insulting fucking thing. I still get texts saying, "Hey, what's your menu?" Like, I'm not a fucking restaurant. Who taught you to text people? That's something I get as a male worker – I get to sass people more. It's great, I can actually take some rage out for once.

Where'd you go next?
Well, I didn't go anywhere better. At my first agency, if someone came in and hit you, they wouldn't do anything. The new place was way worse. brought me to Alberta to work, and I was making $1,500 a day. Like, it was the dream, but it was rough. I got absolutely pummeled into the ground one day by a client. Beaten to the point of black bruises all over, and she was in the next room over and didn't do anything. That's an extreme case—she was an actual psychopath. But a lot of the people running these places are dudes who don't care or get it.

OK, so unlike in-calls to your house, these places were micro-brothels of sorts?
Yeah, it was a condo. If you're a sex worker that's ever walked in a condo, you have to think, How many hookers are in these walls right now? They're fucking everywhere. I can point to a bunch of condos in the city and know where different agencies are.

When did you decide to transition?
While I was working for a previous agency, there was a point where I decided I couldn't do it anymore. At the time, my appointment with my endocrinologist was coming up and I was definitely going to do it, so I just snapped. I showed up to work with my chest binder on, a packer, the whole nine yards, and the shit they would say to me based on this. Just absolutely terrible, demeaning stuff.

I knew I was going to lose clients because the appeal for trans men in sex work is just not there. The t-boy renaissance isn't upon us yet. With that said, my clients who do book me now book longer, because there are so few of us in the city.

How have things changed since your transition?
Things have gotten a lot better. I haven't been advertising as much. You're just not reaching out to your clientele – straight guys – as a trans man. If you go on review boards and type in "tranny," you'll see the most disgusting shit. Most people are still not trans friendly. They'll refer to trans women sex workers as men.

I remember reading one review where a trans woman had bottom surgery, and she started advertising as female – just completely left out the trans bit of the equation. The reason why is that when guys look for a trans woman, they're looking for a cock to go along with it. They dragged her. Stuff like, "He shouldn't be doing that! He's disgusting!"

Do you face transphobia now?
Yeah, I mean, where I work now is very trans friendly, but I've lost all my regulars who used to follow me religiously. I just kind of subtly bounced out.

I've gotten messages from people I used to know saying stuff like, "If clients found out you were trans, they would be disgusted." I'm not that deep into transition. I pretty much look the same. I've had clients now ask me to wear female lingerie, which doesn't make sense because the market for female escorts is oversaturated. A lot of them think I'm a trans woman and get really confused. I'll get, "Yeah, so how big's your dick!" It's not. I don't have one.

I got a call at eight in the morning the other day where a guy asked if I'm a boy or a girl, and kept referring to me as "she." Like, I don't mind if you mess up, but I made it clear. I haven't had coffee yet so I'm gonna get snippy.

You seem like you handle this all very well. How do you maintain business with disrespectful people?
I'm used to it by now. My level for what's shitty has really dropped – the bar can be hobbled over at this point. My whole career has primed me for this point. People can be very degrading. I've seen reviews of young girls who are 18, and it's totally fucked up: "She'll do anything! You can totally use her." It reminded me of my younger self. Seeing that around you all the time desensitises you.

That's why I – it's emotional release. Like, OK, you can be an asshole, but I'm going to hit you relentlessly for an hour and you're going to pay me for it, because you're a sucker. It toughens you in a very rough way.

Based on your experience, how does being a trans man differ from being a trans woman in this business?
get exposed to trans misogyny on a daily basis – trans men just get more and more "butch lesbian" comments, and then all of a sudden, you're a man. Trans men pass almost 100 percent of the time. Testosterone is a very permanent hormone. What it does to you, it can't be changed. A lot of trans women have to go through electrolysis, voice heightening surgeries... there's a lot to it. They get a lot of judgement and misgendering based on that.

A lot of people don't even know what a trans man is. The idea of a woman going to a male body is totally unheard of to most people. Mainstream, there's almost no trans representation out there in the media. That said, you're sort of free when you transition. You do not get the same kind of shit you get as a female when you're a male. You breathe for once.

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

For a while, Kanye West's forays into clothing felt almost as exclusive as the traditional fashion industry he was railing against. The Yeezy line's first two collections were pretty polarising and pricey. Some people just didn't get the high mark up for monochromatic, oversized apparel. They likened it to everything from "future slave gear" to garb worn by Star Wars' "Tusken raiders." Not to mention, the shoes – his most widely coveted offerings – were almost impossible to get unless you were willing to pay three times the retail price.

So, despite West's initial claim that the Yeezy line would eventually be "Zara level," many fans have gotten used to the idea that they would be shut out of the experience. But with today's show for his third collection being hosted in front of thousands of fans (most were not fashion insiders) at New York's Madison Square Garden and streaming at theaters and across computers screens allover the country, it finally felt like West was inching closer towards his lofty goal of democratising fashion.

How did he do it? By using the same strategy many of the great hip-hop entrepreneurs have before him: synergy. Whereas the Wu-Tang Clan and Master P's empires were easily identifiable under the same brand, West's fashion efforts and his discography exist in a dichotomy. One is ubiquitous, the other is mired by blown credit, sneaker-fiend frustration, contradictory rhetoric, and unfulfilled promises. A skeptic could easily conflate an MSG album debut/fashion show with hubris. But, disregarding Ye's "Yeezy's jumped over the Jumpman" boasts, the Madison Square Garden takeover is his first convincing attempt to meld his fashion and musical ambitions into one seamless package.

Models at the Yeezy Season 3 Tidal Livestream at Madison Square Garden in New York. Screenshot by the author

And they haven't just been merged; they've been amplified. At the centre of West's social-media controversies was the question of whether The Life of Pablo née Waves née SWISH was going to be the album West finally tanked. Instead, there's a gospel choir (Kirk Franklin, ladies and gents) and a self-referencing spoken word ("And I love Kanye like Kanye loves Kanye") amidst the experimentation – along with Rihanna and Future thrown in there. So no.

Models at the Yeezy Season 3 Tidal Livestream at Madison Square Garden in New York.Screenshot by the author

The Life of Pablo will be in headphones soon. And Yeezy Season 3 will make it into a few more closets. West once again reiterated his promise that his clothes will be cheaper and more Yeezy Boosts will be in stock than ever before. While tattered sweaters and sandy colour schemes are still at the center of the fashion line's aesthetic, this collection played a bit more with color block patterns. It looks like he's shifting back towards the more colorful aesthetic he wore during the mid-aughts.

Kanye. Screenshot by James Yeh

The whole two hours were what you'd expect from a dude who spent most of his last tour perched on his own man-made mountaintop. It was a spectacle and a smart business venture – he sold heaps of album-themed merchandise that bore a similar aesthetic to the fashion on display. He also brought Ian Connor, Naomi Campbell, and Young Thug out to model. Frank Ocean came out of hiding, Anna Wintour stopped by, and the Kardashians were there in furs with Laker Lamar Odom in tow and looking healthy. West also announced a new video game. It's called Only One and centres around his late mother Donda West making her way through the gates of heaven.

The showcase was another coronation of West, yet he still remained human. After the album was over, he spoke to the crowd through emotional exasperation. "It's something that couldn't have happened without God holding me down..."

A crying model at the Yeezy Season 3 Tidal Livestream at Madison Square Garden in New York. Screenshot by James Yeh

Here was the major cultural event of the day, maybe even the week, and yet somehow the livestream felt like vérité. Season 3 was showcased by an armada of models, who stood in a stoic militancy, not unlike his first show. But the close-up shots felt claustrophobic, almost voyeuristic, as though we the viewers were peeking into their world. Their eyes looked away while the camera focused in on the sleeves of a steely-eyed model looking annoyed at the intrusion or raising their fists in a black power salute. Then you saw the wide-shot reveal the dense, polychromatic Cult of Kanye. It felt like both a paradox, and a microcosm of West's career as a whole. How does his art remain intimate yet so irreproachably distant?

Follow Brian on Twitter.

The road to Fairmount, Indiana, is straight and flanked by corn and power supply lines. This town of 3,000 is where actor and icon James Dean was raised, and it still carries a torch for him, 60 years after Dean's untimely death in a freak car accident at the age of 24.

Fairmount, which is also the home of lazy cartoon cat Garfield, celebrates Dean's life and legacy at the annual James Dean Festival and car show. What drew me to the town again (I've been to the festival before in 2009) was the lookalike contest, but I couldn't find any Jimmy impersonators all day. When I was about to give up and settle in one of the two local bars called Giant (a reference to the last Dean film), I saw the signature red jacket and the neatly coiffed hair that could only mean one thing.

Scott Brimigion, an actor, writer, car salesman, and professional James Dean impersonator, came all the way from California to be part of the contest. He's been at this a long while, and has won this contest before. He was also eager to show me a thick album with hundreds of photos of himself as Dean in New York in the rain, in cars, on motorcycles, wearing leather, in a field, you name it. One night about five years ago, he woke up after a vivid dream and typed it all up. Eventually it turned into a novel called 8 Crosses on 4 Corners about the haunted intersection where James Dean died. He believes to this day that it was Dean himself who instilled the dream in him.

He had been hanging out with Dean's cousin all day and was now getting ready for the contest, which was about to take place in the town square. When we got there, a rock band called James and Dean was playing, featuring two guys named James Elvis and Dean Presley. The whole town was there; someone said this was the busiest the place ever gets. The contest brought out about ten impersonators, though none channeled the distinct mannerisms of Dean like Scott did. At one point, he sat down in a golf cart away from the other contestants and got really quiet. Afterward, he told me he was praying to his recently deceased mother to help him channel Jimmy.

The whole time I spent with Scott, he rarely broke character. It's as if the red jacket and rimmed glasses were magical devices that had imbued him with Dean's spirit. Together, we went to the house where the actor grew up, where the plan was to ask if they'd let us into the great man's old bedroom. I stayed back and let Scott do the talking. He came back a little sad and said we just missed the man of the house. Maybe another time. So we hung out on the farm and took some photos. Scott was wearing the outfit Dean was wearing in Giant. Other fans showed up and Scott posed for a few snaps. A camera crew also arrived – they were making a documentary about Dean and his fans, nicknamed "Deaners."

The contest didn't go as expected. Some guy from Detroit or somewhere won. As Scott went up to the stage I heard people complain that he was too serious. The townsfolk wanted entertainment. Other contestants brought their babies on stage or threw candy in the audience. One guy tried sitting on the judges' laps. Some were simply dressed up as tomboys from the 50s. The guy with the baby won and Scott decided we should go get some beers. He was disappointed and complained that the town was "too political" – one of the judges was apparently an old rival whom he beat in the contest years ago. That didn't help.

His next destination was the place where Dean died on September 30, 1955, an intersection in Cholame, California. He still had his red jacket on when I watched him walk to his car, slightly slouched, with cigarette smoke trailing after him.

All photographs by Reto Sterchi. You can follow his work here.

Joe and Amanda Feilding, another trepanation enthusiast, with Joe's trepanation tool (Photos courtesy of Strange Attraction Press)

"This is the story of how I came to drill a hole in my head to get permanently high."

As far as opening lines to memoirs go, they don't come much more compelling than the first sentence in Joe Mellen's 1970 book, Bore Hole. It tells the story of how he dropped out of the square life in 1963 to become a beatnik, how he took acid in Spain during the psychedelic 60s, before looking for a more profound way to permanently alter his consciousness: auto-trepanation, the act of drilling a hole into your skull.

While this on its own was enough to guarantee Bore Hole cult status, Mellen – who has a fantastically readable and easy style – also managed to capture something of the spirit of the true countercultural 1960s in his writing. This would go some way to explaining why the 500 copies of the book that he originally self-published have long since become sought after artefacts from a vanished age. The book has been given a luxurious reissue by Strange Attractor, and has been doubled in length, bringing Joe's story up to date and making the case for trepanation in the 21st Century, not to mention his persuasive attempt to answer a very fundamental question about human nature: why do we love getting high so much?

Joe Mellen is an incredibly well preserved 76-year-old, and – just in case you were wondering – seems much sharper and more intelligent than the majority of people I meet on a daily basis, regardless of their age or their proclivity for taking LSD. I'm not particularly looking for it, but I do notice a large, finger-tip sized indentation on the top of his head after we've been speaking for about an hour. He later reveals that this is the site of an earlier, only partially successful attempt to trepan with a hand tool. The location of his successful trepanation, carried out with an electric drill in 1970, just a few weeks before he wrote his book, is actually at the top of his forehead in a "third eye", brow chakra position. It is, however, completely unnoticeable and he has to press it with a finger for me to see where it is.

The difference between an autobiography and a memoir is that the former is the story of someone's life, whereas the latter just deals with one specific aspect of their history. What memoirs tend to do, in the broadest sense, is to describe a journey. And Joe's journey didn't begin with his first spliff or tab of acid, but with him throwing off the square life that his establishment parents had planned out for him. He has a clear, RP accent, which isn't surprising given both his upbringing and education (he went to both Eton and Oxford). He had a glittering future in his father's firm of stockbrokers all lined up. In fact, he was just a few weeks away from his final post-graduate accountancy exams when he decided to jack it all in. (No doubt helped by the fact that he had just read Aldous Huxley for the first time and In Search of the Miraculous by PD Ouspensky.)

But as soon as he dropped out and started smoking weed, the rest of the pieces started falling quickly into place.

VICE: Were you part of the beatnik generation?
Joe Mellen: Yes, that's what it was pre-acid. But then, during the mid-60s, one began to hear about acid. In 64 I was staying in Torremolinos in Spain. There was a small clique of dope smokers there who listened to jazz. I met this guy Allan Cisco who had been turned on to mescaline by Timothy Leary in Acapulco. He told me about tripping on the beach and wrestling with an octopus in the waves. He had two trips left – and they were big trips, 850mg each. I took one and had this incredible trip. I thought it was amazing; heaven on Earth.

Joe, Amanda Feilding and Bart Huges

Can you tell me about meeting Bart Huges, the Dutchman who introduced you to both LSD and the concept of trepanation?
I was in Ibiza in 65 and everyone on the scene was talking about acid, but only a few had taken it. I overheard two guys talking about "the future for acid". It turned out that one of them was Bart. I'd heard about this guy who had drilled a hole in his own head, and I thought, 'Well, he must be a nutcase!' It turned out he was just on his way back to Amsterdam, where he had made some acid. He and his friend started off synthesising mescaline and then moved on to LSD... and it was really good acid.

He asked if I wanted to try some, and when I went over to his apartment he had a big brown paper bag with sugar lumps, and another containing lemons. He told me that I should dip the sugar cube in lemon juice and take them together. The trip was really wonderful.

Was it the full works? Time distortion, hallucinations...
Well, this is the beauty of it. If you don't take the sugar you'll certainly get hallucinations, and you can let it go as far as you want and then take the sugar and bring it back. The funny thing was, I thought I was hallucinating when I got back to my apartment. It looked like the pipes had sprung a leak and like my bedroom was flooded, but I thought I was tripping. Of course, when I woke up the next day, the bedroom was knee deep in water and it was real, so I hadn't been hallucinating at all.

The next day I went back round to see Bart and he gave me a type written page which was an open letter to a professor of psychiatry in Amsterdam. This scientist had asked Bart to be his assistant before he started taking acid and talking about it in public. In the open letter he described the mechanism that he had discovered. Basically it said acid was a vasoconstrictor; the scientist had been carrying out experiments into how acid could be used to slow down bleeding during childbirth, as well as a treatment for respiratory complaints and problems with blood circulation, but he hadn't made any connection to the idea of LSD and expanded consciousness. But this scientist wasn't a genius. He was a good chemist. Bart was a genius. He had a very good memory for everything he had ever learned.

Where does taking sugar lumps come into this?
Consciousness is a product of brain metabolism, which is the oxidation of glucose. Glucose is the only source of energy for the brain. That is the only way the brain works: by burning glucose. So as the oxidation of glucose increases, more and more cells reach that level of consciousness. So suddenly your consciousness is expanded.

In my little book, Bore Hole, there is a big idea, and the big idea is that humans have a problem. The problem is the sealing of the skull, which happens when we are fully grown . Before that, the skull is in separate plates and there is some give. Think of the brain as a pudding: it can expand and pulsate, but once the skull has completely sealed round it, it can no longer do that. The pulsation is suppressed and the blood passes through without pulsating. And this is why all of us want to get high. We want to get back to that youthful state of being where we have more spontaneity and more creativity and more life. This is what we miss. It's paradise lost.

The cover of 'Bore Hole'

This brings me onto trepanation. So there is a historical and a pre-historical precedent for drilling a hole in your head, isn't there?
Yes. It's the oldest operation in the world and it has been done on every continent. They found trepanned skulls in Inca tombs in Peru: 14 skulls all in a row with trepanation holes. This was probably part of the initiation into a priest caste. I suppose the most obvious reason for doing it was to help people who suffered from head wounds. In battle a warrior could get an axe wound to the head, which in turn could lead to splinters of bone pressing down onto the brain. So you would want to remove the piece of bone. But today trepanation is still used in Kenya. The Gusii and Kuria tribes do it with very primitive instruments. It's a very simple procedure. In surgery it would be carried out by the nurse, not the surgeon.

I'm not a particularly squeamish person, but I did find parts of the book difficult to read. Do you understand the revulsion or discomfort the subject can cause in some people?
Yeah, of course I do. It's very understandable. When I first heard about it I thought, 'This is ridiculous!' And the idea that someone would do it to themselves was absurd. But you get used to ideas eventually, don't you?

Tell me about your first attempt.
I was living back in London and it was 1967. At that time I was broke and I certainly couldn't afford an electric drill, so I bought a hand trepan from a surgical instrument shop. It's a bit like a corkscrew, really, but with a ring of teeth at the bottom. It has a point in the middle, which makes an impression on the skull, and then you turn it until the teeth cut into the skull. It's slightly narrower at the bottom than it is at the top so it pulls the circular piece of skull out once you're through with it when you pull it out. It was difficult. It was like trying to uncork a bottle of wine from the inside. The trepan was blunt and I couldn't get any purchase on my own skull. I was tripping on acid. I thought that it was the only way I could get through doing it, but it didn't work...

I have to say, those bits in the book are hard to read... and the fact that you had two more attempts. Trepanning; it's not for everyone, is it?
Well, I think it should be for everyone. The simplest thing is this: the human being needs more blood in its brain. And this isn't a great high; it's just restoring you to that youthful level of vitality. This vitality that you lose when you hit adulthood. But it could just be done with an injection at birth. You could inject the cells round the fontanelle so it never seals. It would be very simple.

READ ON MOTHERBOARD: I Tried Getting 'High' on Drugless Psychedelic Alternatives in the Suburbs

When did you try for the second time?
Maybe a year later, and I used the same method with the hand trepan. I did remove some skull, but I was unsure as to whether it had gone all the way through or not, as it had gone in at an angle. At first I thought I'd gone through as there was kind of a schlurping sound as I took the trepan out and what sounded like bubbles. I think I went through a tiny bit, but I don't think it was enough.

Can you tell me about your third, successful attempt to trepan?
Yes. This was in 1970. I injected a local anaesthetic into the skin, muscle and membrane above the skull. I ended up with what looked like a pigeon's egg, quite a little lump. I cut through that with a scalpel. The local anesthetic has a lot of adrenaline in it, which is a vasoconstrictor, so minimises the bleeding. I wasn't high this time. With the hand trepan it took a lot of muscle, but the final time I was using an electric drill with a 6mm bit and that was a lot more straightforward. Unfortunately, the drill cable broke, so I had to stop, wrap a towel round my head and take the drill to Mr Lea, a man who had a flat in the basement of my building. He was brilliant, he could fix anything. He didn't ask me what I was doing. So he repaired the drill and then I got back on with it. It's really obvious when you get all the way through the skull. Quite a lot of blood comes out and the drill bit goes in by an inch. I bandaged it all up. It took two or three days for the skin to heal over the hole. I didn't need any analgesia and there were no complications; I was very, very careful to sterilise everything. The main danger is infection. I didn't even get a headache. It took half an hour all in all, including clearing up afterwards.

I was feeling great because I'd done it, but then I noticed after about an hour I started to feel a lightness, like a weight had been lifted off me. And then it grew a bit more and a bit more and it ended up being more than I expected. I did it in the evening and went to bed at 11PM feeling good, and I could still feel it when I woke up the next morning. And then I realised, 'This is it. It's done.'

I've got a mate who wants to get it done – what should he do?
I wish I knew. I heard there's a guy doing it in Mexico for $2,000 (£1,400) and you can get it done in Ecuador and Egypt. There are doctors who will take your money. But we're talking a lot of money here. Bart always thought there should be an automat, a little booth where you go and put your penny in the slot, and zzzzzzzzt!

WATCH: 'Getting High on HIV Medication'

If people are going to do it themselves, what do you advise?
I don't advise people to do it themselves. I really don't. I had lessons from Bart and I'm not going to tell other people to do it to themselves. Really, there needs to be some sort of legal and social change in this country for it to happen. I just wish that someone would do some research into drugs that get you high and their properties as vasoconstrictors.

What are the benefits of getting high?
The ego is a mechanism for directing the blood in the brain where it's needed. It constricts the arteries in some parts to increase the blood flow to other parts. But the part of the brain that dominates everything is the speech system. We depend on the speech system for survival and it dominates brain activity. It does this by monopolising the supply of blood. The speech centres – which deal with talking, writing, reading and listening – were the last to develop in our evolution, and they're in the cerebral cortex, far away from the heart. To ensure constant blood supply to the speech centres, the ego represses function in other parts of the brain.

People get obsessed with the word chains they use for their identity, and it may be that these word chains identify people as a Christian, a Muslim or a Jew, or whatever. So your particular word chains become very important to you, obviously. And you can resist or even attack other people who have different ideas, whereas there is actually enough room for everyone to have plenty of ideas. This is the beauty of getting high. When you get high you transcend the ego, you get above the ego. When you are high you can see people operating on this level and you can see where you have been operating on this level also. You are given an objective view, as opposed to a subjective view. And that is the great beauty and great value of getting high. I think everyone should get high and I think that Vladimir Putin should drop acid.

Joe Mellen's Bore Hole is out now on Strange Attractor.

More on VICE:

We Asked An Expert if One Pill Can Have Lasting Effects on the Brain

What Happens to Your Body and Brain When You Combine Different Drugs

We Asked a Philosopher Whether It's OK to Take Drugs

Screencap via YouTube

Yesterday, February 11th, rapping human man of no little reputation Kanye West revealed not only his new album, The Life of Pablo, and a "Yeezy Season 3" fashion line at a special live event at New York's Madison Square Garden, but also a video game. A new video game, quite unlike anything we've played before that's been in any way related to Chi-Town's Hero, namely Kanye Quest 3030 and, my favourite, Kanye Zone.

Only One is the game's name, and the trailer, which can be seen at 2:04 in the video below, doesn't reveal a great deal about how it'll play.

But we can work some things out, based on what's been said, and the little we've seen of Only One.

The game's about his mum. When Donda West died in 2007, it hit her son hard. She'd nurtured his nascent talent by paying for recording time when he was in his early teens, and ultimately backed his dropping out of college to concentrate on a music career: "Some career goals don't require college." At MSG, Kanye revealed Only One by saying, "I worked on a video game and I wanted to show y'all... the idea of my mom travelling through the gates of heaven."

So it's more specifically about his mum being dead. And ascending to heaven, which either does or doesn't exist depending on that feeling inside your chest. You know the one. It's there, or it's not. Kanye feels it, and he's super proud of Only One, announcing to the MSG crowd once the trailer had ended: "That's not easy to do, man. Y'all be acting like that shit is regular." Kanye is right: making video games is not easy.

Not that we know just how much of his own time Kanye committed to Only One. Obviously.

But we do know that Kanye had a hard time convincing games-making people to take his idea seriously. He continued, as reported by Kotaku: "I go out and meet with everybody in San Fran, and they'll diss the fuck out of me. And I'll be like, 'I wanna make a game,' and they'll be like, 'FUCK YOU.' That was hard to do, bro!"

On Noisey: Watch Kanye West Freestyle on Tim Westwood's Show in 2004

Imagine being that someone at a games studio, or maybe several people at several studios, responsible for telling Kanye West to take his game idea and stick it up his arse. Except, he stays away from that area all together, of course. He's really not into buttholes.

We've known he's been making a game for a while, so colour us completely unsurprised by this whole thing. VICE was on top of Kanye's plans in the interactive entertainment field a year ago, when we wrote that his video game "might just be amazing". We also said, back in February 2015, that his heavenly game could well share some qualities with Ignition Tokyo's 2011 action release, El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron. And you have to say that the visuals of the trailer aren't so far away from that older game's awesome looks. Then again, Only One also looks a little like Robot Unicorn Attack 2. Doesn't it?

A screenshot from 'Robot Unicorn Attack 2'

Only One shares its title with a song Kanye recorded with Paul McCartney in 2014. Said track is both a tribute to his late mother, sung from her perspective, and to his daughter, North. You can see its Spike Jonze-directed video here, if you like. The song only peaked at 28 in the UK, but went top ten in Indonesia, Belgium and New Zealand.

It's absolutely not going to be anything like his wife's game, Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. Not that any of us are going to rule out microtransactions – only the foolish would ever dare – but whereas Kim's millions-making freemium app is all about rising up the social strata of a select group of haves in the Hollywood Hills, ultimately becoming a celebrity themselves (and ruining lives in the process), Only One appears a lot more personal. When Kanye said, at MGS, "Man, this shit was hard to do," there's no theatre in his voice, no showmanship. He absolutely believes in what he's had a hand in creating, here.

We have no idea what the game's coming out for. Smartphones and tablets? PC and PlayStation? Perhaps it's a Nintendo NX exclusive? There's no point in guessing what you'll be able to play Only One on. We also have no idea when it's out – that trailer might be all that exists of the game, right now. Kanye has been making an album, after all. Fingers, pies, several, in them.

But it's going to be another endless runner, isn't it. You know what we're talking about. Flappy Bird. Temple Run. Canabalt. Alto's Adventure. Jetpack Joyride. All visually unique, all the same basic experience: keep on going until you can't. And if it proves that we can't ever get Donda to heaven, well, that's going to be a disappointment. It won't upset us as much as seeing Kanye tweet some dumb shit like, oh I don't know, "BILL COSBY INNOCENT" (and all the exclamation marks). But it'll be a bummer. Unless it's not an endless runner, and actually something totally awesome, in which case: no, Yeezy, that's still a fucking stupid thing to write on the internet.

Read more gaming articles on VICE here, and follow us on Twitter at @VICEGaming

Jeremy Hunt's junior doctors contract, which would see doctors work until 10PM without overtime and make Saturday part of the normal working week, was opposed by two unprecedented days of strike action. Ninety percent of them have said they would consider quitting if the health secretary pushed through the contract through.

Apparently none of this phased Hunt. Yesterday, he said he would unilaterally impose the contract without further negotiation.

In protest, junior doctors spent yesterday evening outside the Department of Health, protesting the decision and declaring that the fight isn't over, even if Hunt reckons it is. Cars honked in support as an angry crowd chanted "One, two, three, four, we know what your contract's for. Five, six, seven, eight, tearing up the welfare state" and "Hey, ho, Jeremy Hunt has got to go!"

Someone was holding an Australian flag, possibly signalling their intention to emigrate if the contract goes through. Among the speakers was a hospital support worker who urged doctors not to do that. "Support workers, cleaners and most nurses can't move to Australia," they said. "Your patients can't be treated by you in Australia. Stay here and fight."

@CBethell_photo

A wedding ceremony in 'Skyrim' (screencap via YouTube)

It's impossible to ignore modern dating etiquette. Look at today's newspapers, websites and magazines and you'll find article after article codifying dating with specific rules and rituals. These may refer to who should be the first to initiate contact, how you should behave on a date, or what you should wear. Most of these guidelines have been repeated frequently enough that they've become conventional wisdom, ingrained into our culture in film, music, and television.

Yet there's still one medium that remains unaffected by these laws: video games. They fail to recognise these customs, instead favouring design over logic. As a result of this, games continue to provide us with a simpler collection of instructions, usually entirely unrepresentative of the complexities of real-world interactions.

In these virtual worlds, you can often date whoever you like, even a different species if you so desire. Nurturing a budding romance is also significantly easier, being initiated by button presses and skill levels rather than your appearance or personality. This incredible freedom from the very real world of dating, and everything that follows, is one of the medium's biggest strengths; but it has also given gaming a peculiar reputation when it comes to representing relationships.

A screenshot from 'Hatoful Boyfriend'

Released internationally in 2014, Hatoful Boyfriend is a title that clearly dismisses real world logic for its own specific set of rules. Putting you in control of the only human attending a prestigious school for birds, it humorously proposes a fictional reality where romantic love is actively encouraged across different species.

Hatoful Boyfriend's strange premise was one of its unique selling points, and played a huge part in its marketing and promotion. Through its absurd story and witty dialogue, it supplies players with a welcome respite from their own hectic love lives, revelling in the freedom afforded to it by the gaming format.

Article continues after the video below

Watch the confessions of an internet troll

It's not the only video game to do this either. The dating sim Jurassic Heart grants players the rare opportunity to become involved with a T-Rex, while Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect let you flirt (and more) with aliens aplenty. All of these titles clearly take artistic licence to entertain and amuse their audience, and contribute to the idea that video games are anomalous when depicting relationships.

Interspecies relationships aren't the only cause for the medium's odd reputation in the field of love. Courting is also a more streamlined process in video games, providing ridiculous consequences. By memorising the correct replies to conversational topics, you'll be able to fast track your romance to reach key milestones quicker than what's possible in real life. While it's commonplace for partners to wait several years before moving in together, marrying, or having children, it's possible to achieve all of this in the space of a few hours on The Sims 4. Simply spamming the right combination of buttons and pestering the same person repeatedly is the key to accomplishing this. Put simply, the more you harass a stranger the more endeared to you they become. While this is a choice that was made to benefit the overall design of the game, it's included at the expense of any kind of dating accuracy.

Cait from 'Fallout 4' (via Reddit)

Courting is also simplified in other games, such as Fallout 4. Here the idea of repeating an action to attract a love interest reoccurs. Playing as the sole survivor, it's possible to cultivate relationships with a whole host of companions, including a ghoul, a synth and a tough-as-nails pit-fighter. Each character has their own particular set of likes and dislikes that influence how they react to your actions in game, depending on their individual personalities. By engaging these interests, you can strengthen your relationships and form more meaningful connections with these characters. This essentially means that, if the character you're interested in enjoys violence and crime, you can appear more attractive to them by decapitating enemies and looting. The chem-addicted brawler, Cait, can be romanced in this manner. For every raider you dispatch, your relationship with her will only blossom further. Equally, it's possible to impress her by breaking into locked properties, walking around naked, and swigging excessive amounts of alcohol.

It's worth acknowledging that repetition isn't the only key to successful video game relationships. Another popular method of guaranteeing a non-playable character's (NPC) affections, employed throughout a range of titles, is using quest items. These enforce the belief that love can be bought simply by having the correct materials in your inventory. Story of Seasons, an unassuming farming sim for the 3DS, adheres to this gameplay principle. Players can woo a potential love interest by randomly presenting them with an egg everyday, a gesture that would likely arouse confusion if you tried it for real with your latest crush. And that's not all. Later on, you're tasked with acquiring a rare blue feather that's necessary for a marriage proposal. This acts as an engagement ring of sorts, albeit filtered through the fantasy setting.

On Broadly: Does Withholding Sex Make Your Partner Want You More?

Getting hitched in 'The Sims 4'

Other games that include similar mechanics are the Rune Factory series and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. In the latter, the Amulet of Mara functions the same as Story of Seasons' blue feather, as it's used to instigate a relationship between an NPC and the protagonist. Simply by activating the Amulet of Mara, you will unlock new dialogue choices that will lead to an engagement and eventually marriage. Again, this streamlines the experience of being in a relationship and reinforces the belief that love is attainable through material means. If you were to try something like this outside of the game, you'd likely be met with a blank stare, as opposed to any sense of adoration.

By now you should've realised that video games present us with fictional worlds where dating etiquette is simplified to benefit design. On account of this, they readily supply us with bizarre situations and scenarios that ignore logic in order to give us an accessible and pleasurable escape. Whether it's having a diverse range of suitors, starting a family overnight, or flirting through the use of violence, video games continually provide us with an amusing alternative to the romance we may or may not experience in our everyday lives. Or, in other words, please don't murder someone to impress that guy or girl you fancy, who comes into the shop most Friday afternoons. Blood on the hands isn't a hot look.

@jackgyarwood

More from VICE Gaming:

This Is Everything We Think We Know About Kanye West's Video Game

'Quantum Break' Looks Like the Superhero Gaming Surprise of 2016

We've Used Video Games to Predict the Next President of the United States

Illustration by Ella Strickland de Souza

If you say kangaroo enough times, it stops being a furry animal with a pouch and becomes a sound. The 'ang' disconnects from the 'gar' and the shapes your mouth makes are foreign territory. It starts to feel impossible that you've ever said kangaroo in your life before this point. Semantic satiation is the study of repetition – the psychological phenomenon in which the echoing of a word causes it to lose all meaning. There are plenty of curious studies that prove the power of the word or the loss of that power. Language is weird and slippery, but its capability never to be underestimated.

I can't remember the first time someone said it in front of me. But it happens a lot and always in the same tone: "I'm having a total panic attack about it" or "X and Y happened and I went mental, I had an actual panic attack." To take that at face value, it's quite an odd thing to claim a medical episode when you're describing a mild to moderately stressful everyday incident. Why would you say you're experiencing overwhelming and disabling anxiety, feeling like you're being choked to death or having a heart attack, wanting to collapse under the desk, when you're not? If I overhear this in public, I scowl and want to say "Really? Did you really find yourself paralysed in a cubicle wondering whether this will be the time you're going to die, puke or shit yourself – maybe all three?" If I see it online, where it often manifests, I want to quote the tweet and show the mutation of language for what it is. This is just one example relevant to me and my own mental health, but it's undeniably part of a wider discourse we've carried over into 2016. You'll be familiar with it. It's "I'm so OCD"; "he's completely bipolar"; "so depressed right now".

When people say they're having a panic attack when they're just stressed, it points to either a total disconnect between language and meaning or a troubling symptom of self-diagnosis culture, or both.

Why has this slipped into speech in the first place? It's part of our growing of language of catastrophe. Whether it's the media, ads or public service announcements, everyone is demanding our attention, and in order to grasp it, the sell becomes exaggerated. In Britain, we've absorbed America's insistence on hyperbole. We totally love or hate something and nothing in between. In case someone doesn't know you're being sincere, repeat "genuinely", "seriously" or "literally", and that'll work. The stakes rise on social media between average young person to person: we'll go kill themselves, hate our lives, fuck 'everything'. Of course, brands and businesses regurgitate our drama and Mondays are a cause for faux-depression memes that insist we're all in this together, so we stay in and watch their shows and deserve to eat our dark feelings with their junk. We're a generation of oversharers, and why else are emotions there but to be shared?

There's nothing inherently wrong in it. But when people say they're having a panic attack when they're just stressed, or "OCD" because they like cleaning, it points to either a total disconnect between language and meaning or a troubling symptom of self-diagnosis culture. Or, more worryingly, both. Naturally, anyone should be able to describe their own feelings and moods on their own terms. But at what cost and to whom?

Dr Zsofia Demjen is a linguist who studies the intersections of language, mind and and health. She explained why this trend matters. "Using bipolar or schizo or essentially technical words to describe mundane or everyday experiences, means the original technical meaning of the term becomes diluted and it becomes more strongly associated with these simpler or more fleeting experiences. It normalises illness. The potential problem is that 'I'm depressed' now means 'I'm sad'. Then how does someone who actually has depression describe their illness or how they feel? How can they differentiate the much more complex, much more intense thing they have from this thing everyone always claims ownership of?"

David Hartery, 25, has bipolar disorder and it pisses him off when 'bipolar' is wrongly used. "It's always to do with changeability or indecision, or even if they are talking about mood swings, it's always making light of it. Bipolar's quite a hard thing to live with so I think it's annoying and spreads a false idea of what bipolar is, which is harmful." Doug Thompson, who has OCD, finds this adoption of language similarly reductive. "Saying something or someone has OCD is on a level with 'you're being silly' for me. I guess I associate it with being childish. And I'm sat silently thinking, 'you dun know' whenever anyone uses it to effectively say they're just a neat freak."

It's not about taking over language and deciding who can say what. It's about having a word to express to people who don't understand, what is affecting us. Many find being diagnosed and given a term for their illness empowering; they can go online and research their illness, the science, the facts, they can hang onto that word when they're having a bad patch. Within the mental health community, the word has immense power. Satiating these words will eventually make them meaningless to everyone.

@hannahrosewens

More from VICE:

Being Mindful of the Language Surrounding Mental Health Isn't 'PC Gone Mad' – It's Basic Humanity

Why Mental Health Disorders Emerge In Your Early Twenties

Inside Britain's Mental Health Crisis

(Photo by Luke Forsythe)

I remember in 2014 when the online magazine Brixton Buzz ran an April Fools story that Brixton was soon to be re-named East Clapham, and for a brief, sad moment I really believed it might be true. Such is the pace of gentrification in the area that nothing seems out of the realms of possibility, what with the redevelopment of the railway arches and the rising cost of rent.

All of which has been noticed by local creative and social enterprise The Champion Agency, which has decided to capture the unique diversity of Brixton before it gets washed away and homogenised. Called Great Brixton, it is a collection of images from local residents and photographers capturing headline events as well as everyday life. It's a not-for-profit book that gives £1.00 of every sale to the Brixton Fund micro grant scheme, and is backed by local initiatives like the Black Cultural Archives, Brixton Bugle, Brixton Buzz, Brixton Pound and The Brixton Society.

I spoke to Champion's creative director Scott Leonard to get a bit more insight into the book.

(Photo by Phil Dolman)

VICE: What was the idea behind the project and book?
Scott Leonard: Brixton is one of the most vibrant communities in the UK and is changing fast. We decided we might not be able to change the change, but we can document it before it changes beyond recognition. We invited everyone to join us in telling the story of Brixton and what makes it so special, and thousands of images later we had a book's worth of memories.

You mention that buildings are "listed and protected but that you think cultures should be too". How do you think that should happen?
Some cultures get housed in great buildings such as museums and art galleries, while other cultures are sadly allowed to be demolished. We owe future generations to preserve all of the examples of culture we possibly can, to help them build even greater diverse cultures where difference is celebrated and embraced. Quoting Champion's recent blog article by Charles Olafare, the big question is: "Who's up for the Chief Cultural Officer's job?"

How and why do you think Brixton has changed recently?
Brixton is now a tourist destination. Not long ago it was a dangerous place. It once represented a powerful cultural melting pot, but today that culture is melting. We're embracing the future by documenting its past. Two copies of Great Brixton will be preserved in the British Library forever.

How do you think the book might help keep the spirit of Brixton alive?
We hope the book creates more dialogue between those new to its culture and those embracing the new culture of the area. We recently got an email from a stranger that read:

"Dear Madam/Sir, I am writing to tell you how much I love this book. I recognise many people in the photos. In particular, Sam on page 185. Unfortunately he passed away last year. He wasn't alone, he lived with his stepdaughter. His funeral was at West Norwood cemetery and his ashes were scattered in the Garden of Remembrance.

All the best,

Maggie O'Connor"

Collectively, the final 273 images created their own community, captured by those who lived those moments for people like Maggie to enjoy – keeping the community of Brixton alive.

Thanks, Scott.

Great Brixton is available here.

@williamwasteman

See more photos below:

Michael Jordan playing with the Brixton Topcats in 1985 (Photo by Amon Brown)

(Photo by Dashti Jahfar)

(Photo by Richard Nield)

(Photo by Scott Leonard)

A screenshot from 'Revolution 60'

Brianna Wu is a Boston-based video game developer who you might have heard of. She was one of a handful of women in the games industry, alongside fellow game-maker Zoë Quinn and journalist Leigh Alexander, who became targets for online abuse around the time of G*m*rg*t*, aka That Unfortunate Event That's Well And Truly Dead Now (but let's not say its name, just in case).

Wu's company, Giant Spacekat, put out the iOS adventure game Revolution 60 in 2014, to a generally positive reception. The sci-fi title was praised for its ambitious merging of gameplay styles and strong female characters, voice acting and animation. The small studio has since been working on bringing Revolution 60 to PC and Mac, with Wu posting regular updates on its progress to Twitter.

Alas, there's still a hangover lingering from that whole You-Know-What that went down in the second half of 2014, and Wu gets more than her share of shit from strangers on the internet. You know the kind: strangers who love nothing more than to attempt to dent her confidence by either calling Revolution 60 a load of sweaty balls, or tweeting something way more personal in her direction. Usually, the right thing to do is just block these idiots and get on with your life. But earlier on today, February 12th, Wu decided to school one particular troll, with both barrels.

Twitter user "Gelatin0us" – followers, three – tweeted to Wu: "we're using he term 'game dev' very loosely here I see. Your game looks like something that would've been shitcanned on the ps1"... and what came back his (or her, but mostly likely his) way was just glorious.

I'm in a cold rehearsal room in central London with a man I've never met. On his instruction, I close my eyes, open my mind and, with the aid of some vague guidance, am transported to my mum's living room, eight years ago.

The bangs and warbling from neighbouring rehearsal rooms disappear and I feel the heat from the open fire in my old family home. I am totally at peace.The man sitting opposite me, coaxing me into this state, is hypnotherapist coach Ed Winslet, chaperone for my first ever "hypno-singing" session – a course that promises to improve your singing voice through the use of hypnosis.

In the UK, hypnotherapy is a booming business. It used to be that hypnosis was a mystical, exoteric exercise that only really appeared in vaudeville or travelling circuses. However, hypnosis as hypnotherapy began to emerge in Victorian times, and by the late 20th century had become a widely-accepted treatment for a number of maladies, spawning NHS programmes, bestselling books and celebrity endorsements. If practitioners are to be believed, you can quit smoking, lose weight, time travel to past lives, have mind-blowing orgasms, get smarter, cure your phobias, get rich, enlarge your boobs and heal all sorts of physical ailments, purely with the power of your mind.

There are, of course, some things to consider before handing your brain over to a stranger. On the NHS website, the safety guidelines regarding hypnotherapy state that it can be offered by "non-professionals with little training", because, in the UK, you don't legally have to join any organisation or receive any specific training to call yourself a hypnotherapist. This means that, without research, people with, say, a serious mental health issue could end up seeking help from somebody who earned their hypnosis stripes at Blackpool stag-dos.

Dr Emma Short, a chartered psychologist and senior lecturer at Bedford University, explains the potential dangers of getting yourself into that kind of situation: "Some of the more extreme phenomena that can emerge in a client during hypnosis are recovered traumatic memory and violent abreaction, which require a very skilled response and access to appropriate referral routes should there be a serious concern for the safety of the individual," she says. "Without careful clinical assessment before proceeding and preparation before treatment, hypnotherapy should not be used, as there are certainly some circumstances where hypnotherapy would be extremely unhelpful."

Similarly, Professor John Gruzelier, a professorial research fellow at Goldsmiths University, wrote of the potential dangers in his essay "The Unwanted Effects of Hypnosis", in which he links hypnosis to chronic psychopathology, seizure, stupor and spontaneous dissociative episodes.

I put this to Californian hypnotherapist Kerry Gaynor, whose quit-smoking method (The Kerry Gaynor Method) has been endorsed by all your favourite celebrities. "That's nonsense," he says. "It's a non-threatening experience. In fact, it's a natural state – it poses no danger to anybody. It's a very useful tool for achieving goals."

(Illustration by Josh McKenna)

British's TV hypnotherapist, Paul McKenna was taken to court in 1998 for allegedly giving somebody schizophrenia following a session. He was eventually cleared of all charges. Since then, his books – such as the optimistically-titled I Can Make You Thin, I Can Make You Rich and I Can Make You Happy – have become international best-sellers. In one of the episodes of his I Can Change Your Life TV series, Paul cures a man who has suffered from hysterical blindness (a neurological disorder common around the time of WWI) for eight years following a head injury, making him see again. But can hypnotherapy really be that miraculous?

"I have been working with clients prior to surgery, and I've got them coming out of surgery having no post-operative pain," says Kerry Gaynor. "I don't think medical science can explain that. It's the kind of thing I'd never have believed was possible, but now I'm out here doing it!"

TRENDING ON NOISEY: Why Do We Hate Coldplay?

Before going to the hypno-singing session I got in touch with a few former hypnotherapy patients to gauge how effective it had been for them.

"I left feeling relaxed, but no more than you'd get from a meditation session or a flotation tank or whatever. I was back to normal soon after," said 25-year-old Joe, who had attended sessions for his anxiety problems. "I'm sure it works on some people, but then again so do placebos. I think for it to have an effect you need someone who's more open to the experience."

Ronnie, 29, told me that despite it feeling "quite erotic" and leaving him "buzzing with self confidence" it didn't cure his anxiety. "It certainly didn't work for me. I've found cognitive behaviour therapy much more useful," he said.

However, 25-year-old Rose went to a hypnotherapist following a "down-turn" in her mental health as a teenager. She was put on a lot of medication and sent to several therapies, but nothing worked, "I went to see this hypno guy three times. He told me that at no point would I be in a trance and I would be self-aware throughout the process," Rose explained. "Instead, it was about relaxation. He made me analyse myself from an angle I'd never considered before. He objectified my disorder, which meant I could take a hold of it and really look at it. Hypnotherapy didn't cure me, but it made me understand myself a lot more. With logic reinstated I could communicate better with doctors and I was diagnosed with extreme food intolerances, which were causing my mental health problems."

The author in a trance

Being "open" to the treatment is something hypnotherapists often insist upon, and it seems to be crucial to its effectiveness. I approach my hypno-singing session with a totally open mind and a genuine desire to come out singing like Prince. Each time I'm out of the trance I follow the notes up the piano with my voice, and to my delight I reach higher notes and with more ease.

"Like traditional hypnotherapy, the experience is different from person to person," my hypno-singing coach Ed explains to me. "You are tapping into a higher level of your imagination and creativity."

That seems to be a key factor with hypnotherapy: everyone has different experiences. Apart from Kerry Gaynor – who insists his results with smokers were repeatable and that he'd happily prove them under scientific conditions – hypnotherapy hasn't had the same results on any of the people I speak to.

READ ON BROADLY: Why Are Women Trying to Hypnotise Themselves During Childbirth?

The lack of qualification needed to become a hypnotherapist adds to the confusion that shrouds the practice. Because of this, Dr Emma Short says, "There are still wide variations in the degree of skill, experience and, just as importantly, accountability among hypnotherapists."

Understandably, this deters some people. Despite providing it as a treatment, the NHS website claims that the evidence supporting hypnotherapy "isn't strong enough to make any recommendations for clinical practice". However, regardless of its mysterious nature, it does have real-life positive effects on many, even if it's just the power of psychosomatic placebo. "Hypnotherapy can be extremely helpful to some people. We don't know why it works or how exactly it affects the brain," says Dr Short, "but it does create the opportunity for people to focus clearly on their goals for change."

As my hypno-singing session approaches its end, my singing voice is better than it has ever been. Range-wise I can hit a high A note, which I never could before. I also have a newfound ease and can hold notes for longer. Granted, it could be down to the vocal coaching that Ed gave me in between my hypnosis trances, but I've had vocal coaching lessons before and have never seen such a change.

I have a natural scepticism of hypnotherapy, but I can't really contest the improvement in my singing voice, my heightened awareness of tonality and the thousands of positive testimonies online for hundreds of hypnotherapists. The effectiveness of hypnotherapy seems to be a combination of confidence building, clear focus on personal goals for change and the ability to work with, and unlock, the unknown powers of the human brain. With this in mind, perhaps the most incredible about hypnotherapy isn't the actual hypnotherapy at all; it's us.

@Jak_TH

More on VICE:

I Went to Hypnosis Therapy to Try to Get in Touch with My Past Lives

Dominated by a Goddess: Hypnodommes and the Aural World of Erotic Hypnosis

I Got a Tattoo While Being Hypnotised in Amsterdam

On Thursday afternoon, Kanye West popped a "wheelie on the zeitgeist" with his Madison Square Garden event that doubled as both a fashion show for his Yeezy Season 3 collection and a listening party for his new album, The Life of Pablo. The spectacle was broadcast into movie theaters and streamed on computers across the globe—but photographer Tyler Mitchell was actually on the ground, behind the barricades with Yeezy himself, snapping up intimate photos of the man during one of the crowning moments of his already storied career.

The event was extremely special because it marked the first time West was able to fully integrate his musical and fashion visions into one single experience for his fans, breaking down the perceived boundaries of popular music and high-end clothing.

Below, check out Tyler's pictures from the night, which find West beaming with joy as he kicks it with everyone from Virgil Abloh to Young Thug and the Yeezy Season 3 models.

You can view more of Tyler's work on his website.

Beneath London's Somerset House, on the north bank of the Thames, a whole bunch of gene-splicing "science" is going on. A small studio by the name of Sensible Object is making a game where animals you know are combined with others you'll have seen in books, on the TV, maybe even for real, to produce creatures, beasts, sometimes fabulous ones, that are either straight out of your dreams, or likely to send you to sleep fearing nightmares. And it's not exactly your normal game, either, existing both on a screen and a table, at the same time.

This is Fabulous Beasts, and after 30 minutes in its company, playing two rounds beside its lead designer George Buckenham, I can confirm that it is, indeed, just the most fun you can legally have with your hands, a modern tablet device, and a bunch of pretend animals.

The dry description of Fabulous Beasts, to quote from its own online press kit, "is a game of strategy and balance in which you build a tower of animals on your tabletop, then help them evolve in a connected digital world on iOS and Android tablets and smartphones". But George gets me rather more excited when he simply says, "We're playing as gods."

But the land that we gods first look out over is devoid of life. On the screen – "it'll work on any smartphone or tablet – I've had it running on my Android phone," George says – there's a "world", land, sea and air, but nothing swimming, breathing, grazing, living. "We're trying to build a world full of fabulous beasts," George continues. "We need to fill this landscape, that you see on the tablet, with incredible creatures, and we do that by putting pieces on the tower, and hoping that don't fall over."

Some beasts, here, as they appear in the app

The "tower" in question is a pressure-sensitive platform connected to the game's app via Bluetooth, upon which you place the 24 physical pieces, or Artefacts, attempting to stack them up until no more remain loose on the table. The pieces aren't all animals – there are migrate pieces, cross pieces, pieces that provide perks to certain beasts, and also "miracle" pieces. Each not only serves a purpose as a palpable block to balance so very carefully on top of another, but also affects what's happening on the screen. So, I make my first move.

"You start by putting a beast on," George instructs. "You scan the piece against the tower, thus registering it with the app, and then you put the piece on the platform. Take that bear. It can go anywhere you want. And there you go: you now have a bear in the world."

Here are some people having a great time

I do indeed: one happy bear, with a "fabulous" score of six attached to it. The more fabulous your beasts in the game become, the higher your overall score; and the higher your score, the better your game. And to get the very highest score, you have to level up your world's array of fauna by mixing species. This is achieved by placing a cross piece on the tower – any two animals beneath it will have their traits stirred together, resulting in a new animal of incredibly fabulous potential. Before I pick up a cross piece, I nudge an eagle into place, beside my bear.

"There's a nice thing where the height of the eagle is about the same as the bear, so they're pretty intimate," George says, and he's right – it looks like the flat cross piece will sit perfectly horizontally on top of the two animal blocks. "So now there are two creatures in the world. Take a cross piece –you'll see what it does when you put it on. It forms a fresh platform to put new pieces on, but it also crossbreeds two existing creatures in the world. Which means we now have an Airbeareagle in the world. And he's so fabulous, that the other animals become jealous, and their scores drop."

Article continues after the video below

Check out VICE's film on "the real" Better Call Saul

Both my eagle and bear are pissed that this new freak of nature has shown up in their airspace. And the more animals you introduce to the world – via the blocks, the mixtures of beasts, and by using skinny migrate pieces that bring a creature into the picture from beyond your collection of Artefacts (the first I see is a seagull, for example) – the more that you need to balance the jealousy raging amongst the less-fabulous species, which you do by adding element blocks. Green means land, and gives the four-legged creatures a boost of confidence; dark blue corresponds to the sea, and light blue the air; and orange, fire, provides all the beasts with a pick-me-up points surge.

"The smaller creatures are obviously less fabulous – a warthog is less fabulous than a bear," George explains. There's an octopus here, too, and it's not exactly in the same league as the shark. The toucan isn't up there with an eagle – to begin with, at least, but cross it with another of the teetering critters and it can become so much more. All of this mad science boosts your score, which you can tot up by playing solo or any number of friends. And having someone by your side becomes ever so helpful when you bring the miracle pieces into play.

This is what the screen looks like, when your beasts are crowding it up

"Because we're gods, we can add miracle pieces," George tells me, picking up a thin, curved piece of plastic and asking me to hook it onto my now-delicately-poised pile. "We can use them, and one will double our score, a second will quadruple it. But while they're in play, the screen will challenge us. So one piece is the miracle of distraction (the curved one), and will give us something to do on the screen as we're playing with the pieces. The screen will show a series of moons that we have to eclipse by tapping on them. The other is a timing piece, the miracle of haste, so you get a ticking clock in the background."

I bring the distraction piece into the game and am immediately torn between making sure I'm keeping my tower in check and clearing the moons on the screen – if I fail to tap them, I lose my score bonus. I'm tapping, and placing, and hoping, and then it all comes apart: my beasts fall from their platform, and a countdown begins on the screen. Five, four, three, fucked it.

"The endgame is either we manage to get all the pieces on, at which point our score doubles, and we can all feel very pleased with ourselves," George says, now helping me pick helpless plastic animals up from the floor. "Or, a piece or more falls off, at which point we have five seconds to put everything back. It doesn't matter what order it's in, but everything has to go back on. So when everything falls off, it's pretty much game over."

On VICE Sports: A History of Heels in Wrestling and Beyond

Look at how pretty it is (this is just your very basic set, as special editions are available, too)

I play another round, score higher, and find myself well and truly locked into Fabulous Beasts' loop of piece positioning, screen checking, scanning and tapping. I could sit here all afternoon and keep playing. I'm laughing, a lot, and it's not just because I'm utterly useless at making a small bird balance on top of a shark's snout – it's because, clearly, this game is the work of geniuses. You'll start playing it and think, yeah, whatever, it's like Skylanders without the shooting and stuff, or just Jenga gone rogue with a laboratory full of mutagens. But two, maybe three minutes in, that cycle of tangible risk and virtual reward has got its claws in deep, and the deviousness of this seemingly simple game becomes clear. And it's not just for me – while I can easily see myself playing this with friends and booze, kids are going to absolutely love it, too.

And yes, I know: saying that something is "fun for all the family" usually means the activity in question is boring as sin. But trust me: anyone can, and should, play Fabulous Beasts, and they'll have an absolute whale of a time doing so. Not that there's a whale in the game. An oversight, that, but one that you can fix – Sensible Object will release a "maker" edition of the game, with a set of tags that players can affix to anything they like at home. Want to stack your grandma's precious china for a one-off, never to be repeated game? Go for it. Or, try piling up real-life pets, sticking tags to their collars and eyelids. That's a great idea, and you can have it for free. Though, and this is just a suggestion, do steer clear of inviting actual bears around for a game. That idea, not so good.

Fabulous Beasts should be available in real-world stores and at online retailers this side of Christmas 2016. The game is currently on Kickstarter, if you want to back it now, or simply learn more about a genuinely fascinating merging of virtual and physical play.

@MikeDiver

More from VICE Gaming:

We've Used Video Games to Predict the Next President of the United States

There Definitely Won't Be a New Assassin's Creed Game in 2016

The Brilliant 'XCOM 2' Turns Time Itself Against Its Players