It all started with one drunk night. Actor Jake Johnson, the dude who plays Nick on New Girl but has also been in seemingly shitty, but actually funny movies like No Strings Attached and 21 Jump Street, was playing quarters with his fellow-actor friend Derek Waters. Johnson was wasted and decided to tell Waters a story about Otis Redding.

The next day Waters and his director friend Jeremy Konner (who was Jack Black’s assistant at the time) called up Johnson with the premise for Drunk History: You get belligerently drunk and tell that same Otis Redding story. They’ll film it, get re-enactors to play the historical parts and it will be a viral YouTube success.

Jeremy was right.

In 2008, the show gained an audience on VICE’s very own VBS.tv as Waters and friends drunk-told historical stories like Ben Franklin discovering electricity and the duel of Hamilton and Burr. It was picked up by Funny or Die. I remember back in high school when my best friend showed me the Alexander Hamilton YouTube clip and I thought it was the funniest video to hit the internet since “Daughters.” It was a glorious time in the beginning stages of online comedy when Childish Gambino was still a very funny Donald Glover and no one quite knew how comedy would progress from five-minute YouTube bits. Last year, Drunk History became a full-fledged 30-minute anthology show on Comedy Central teaching little-known history to the masses. Tonight, it begins its second season. 

The rise of Drunk History from YouTube clip to Comedy Central tells us something very remarkable and comforting about American culture. You can attain the riches, fame, and promise of Hollywood by being a little funny, getting very very drunk, and having just a bit of ambition. As the Supreme Court allows religious employers to reign free over the contraceptive rights of their female-employees, at least we have this beautiful and comforting reality—getting drunk and knowing random historical tidbits is still one of the quickest ways to the top. The American dream at its finest.

Ahead of the show’s season two premiere, I sat down with Konner as he ate a burger and fries to talk about getting drunk as a teen and hanging out with Michael Cera, who is apparently perfect at everything. Learn from Konner and never let anyone turn you away from your weirdest, least socially acceptable goals. 

Do you drink while filming?
Jeremy Konner: Derek [Waters, host of Drunk History] will get fucked up. When we did it for the web, I totally would because it felt like camaraderie. I wasn’t wasted, but I was drinking. We were all drinking. You don’t want to drink alone. Then for the first season, we were like yeah everyone will be drinking together it’ll be great. But we had a crew. Then the crew started being like, then we’re all drinking! It was like, wait, cancel this plan. This is a bad idea. It was around that time that you’d just see crewmembers wandering off.

Do you remember the first time you drank?
I remember the first time I got wasted. It was during the summertime. I was about 14, hanging out at my friend’s parent’s house. We went upstairs and he had a handle—that’s what it’s called right?—of vodka and he was like, “Should we try some vodka?” I was like, “Yeah, let’s try it.” I did a shot and I was like, “Oh that’s the worst thing! Oh my god! I’m in so much pain! That was terrible! Ok, one more.” We did it again and I was like “Ah!” but it wasn’t quite as bad. And then the third it was like, “That almost tasted like nothing.” And then the fourth it was like, “Now it’s like water.” At this point I was the smallest kid in my class. I weighed 90 pounds. I was tiny. He told me that in the end I probably had 16 or 17 shots.

And you’re alive to tell the tale.
The last thing I remember was smacking my face on the ground and thinking how great that felt. Being like, “This is the best!”  My friend got sick first and I was telling him that he was a pussy because he was throwing up. Then all of a sudden I woke up and there was vomit everywhere. The entire fucking house was covered in vomit. I was like, Oh my god. He literally grabbed me and was waking me up going, “Dude! My parents are fucking pissed off man! We got to get out of here! We got to do something!” I was like, “What?” I had severe alcohol poisoning and didn’t know it. I told my parents I had the flu because I was puking for three days straight—every hour on the hour. Real alcohol poising! I should’ve absolutely been in a hospital. Then a few days later his parents told my parents and it was a shit show.

Did you get in trouble?
Yeah, but not terrible. Man, did I learn.

And now you have a show called Drunk History.
When you put it that way…

Do you hang out with Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis?
Dude, all day every dayyyyy.

What’s it like?
No. I don’t hang out with Will Ferrell or Zach. We filmed one with Will and he helped us sell the show, but we don’t hang out with them. We do hang out with Michael Cera. He’s pretty great. That’s how we ended up doing the first Drunk History. We called him up and he said yes. Then I was Jack Black’s assistant at the time and he saw the first one. He said, “Hey man, I want to do one of those,” so we devised a second bit. It just went on from there.

So people call you up and ask to be on the show?
Yeah, people approached us. I definitely hang out with the people who get drunk more than the re-enactors, but some of the re-enactors are good friends.

Any funny stories from set?
Where do I start? Winona Ryder is a pretty amazing character. First of all, we were having lunch with her and John Lithgow and Chris Parnell. Everybody’s in their outfits and wigs and John Lithgow was like “You know, Winona here passed the bar.” I was like, “What?!” Winona was like, “It’s just in California.” I was like “You passed the bar? When?” She was like, “Oh I just did it a few months ago. I just decided to pass the bar, so I studied.” She didn’t go to law school. She just studied and took it and passed it. Now she can practice law in California. She’s a super genius.

What about Michael Cera?
He’s too nice—too good of a guy. Everything he does is great. As a comedian, every time he makes a joke, you’re like, That’s the best version of that joke. That is perfect. I like him a lot.

How do you pick the historical moments?
The best version of Drunk History is when the person comes to us with a story and that’s seriously the story they already tell when they’re fucking drunk. Like, you go to a party and they’re like, “Oh let me tell you about fucking… you know this shit?” Those are always the best. Now, there are things that we’ve found over the years because we have to make so many. I found this amazing news article from like six years ago about this girl who refused to sit on the back of the bus like nine months before Rosa Parks. She was arrested and the person who helped her out with her case was the head secretary of the NAACP—Rosa Parks. They were already trying to start a bus boycott, but I just love the idea that it was this teenage girl who was the first person to really do it and we don’t know who that is. We’ve never talked about it. I read that and I was like holy shit, this is perfect.

Anything else?
There’s a bunch of really cool stories. We did this story about a gay guy from Russia who fucking came and led the American military through war and literally wrote the book on military tactics that we used for 150 years. The leader of the American army was a fucking homosexual! Nobody talks about that shit.

Watch drunk history tonight on Comedy Central at 10 PM EST/9 PM CT

Follow Lauren on Twitter

Photos by Megan Koester

Ron Funches is perhaps the most delightful comedian working today, and he always steals the show no matter where he appears—be it on NBC's Undateable, Comedy Central's @Midnight, or Kroll Show. His warmth envelops you in a comedy bear-hug, his mind a Wonka-esque chocolate factory for which we all have a golden ticket. I caught up with him since he's performing this Wednesday with VICE Los Angeles writers in Silver Lake, but I didn't want to ask him the same old comedian origin story questions. Instead, I decided to try to get to know him better by asking him a big question, and the biggest question I could think of was: What happens when you die?

VICE: So let’s just go for it, right away. Big question: What do you think happens when you die?
Ron Funches: I don’t know. I mean, that’s probably the easiest answer.

Right?
Interview over.

Thank you for your time.
I don’t know. Who knows for sure? What do you mean, like, is there an afterlife, or…?

Everybody’s been told stuff. Let’s start with this: of all the theories you’ve heard, which is the one that you hope is true?
Laughter. Of all the theories that I’ve heard… the one I hope is true is that this is more like the dream of life, or the test of life, and that our real lives are still ahead and we haven’t lived them yet. We’ve just kind of learned and grown and proven to ourselves that we’re capable enough and open enough to move to another level. Less about ending or dying, and more metamorphoses.

Right, so the circular idea of it, like you’ve got to get this one right and then move onto the next one. You go from Charmander to Charizard.
Yeah, exactly. That’s what I hope it is. I hope I get to become a better Pokemon, but I still want to stay cute like my original form. That’s what I hated about the evolved Pokemon. They got ugly.

They got more powerful, but with that power, they got scary. That’s what Pokemon teaches: power corrupts. Which of the theories have you heard that you’re like, Oh man, I hope that does not happen.
Well, probably the traditional Christian one, like, I made too many bad decisions and didn’t repent and then I go to hell. If that’s true, then that’s probably where I’m going. But I don’t think that’s true. I’m not really worried about it.

Have you ever had religion pounded into you?
Yeah, I mean, I went to Catholic school for the first eight grades.

Oh man. What was that like?
It was just weird in the fact that you had to go to church all the time. But it was just a weird mix of it also being an inner-city school, so it was like, trying to get everyone to be super calm and churchy but then everyone was also smoking weed and having fights and stuff. It was just a weird mix, and mostly, it introduced me to religion young enough to be like, “I don’t know if this is right.” I mean, I don’t feel like I should dislike someone just because they’re gay, or that I should have to pray for them to change. That never rang true for me, even as a child, when you’d think I’d be more susceptible. But I was just like, “That doesn’t seem right!”

You could just cut right through it.
Yeah, I thought you were supposed to love everybody? And now there are these weird conditions on it.

Did you ever have the fear of the fire, of being a good boy, or did you immediately just see right through it?
When I was very young, I probably worried about it. Worried about making sure I didn’t do anything that made… If God was actually watching me, that was a scary idea, that somebody could see me at all time but wouldn’t help me if I needed something.

He’s just there like the worst referee, to blow the whistle every time you mess up.
“I’ll allow it.” Laughter.

For me, I think the closest that we, in western civilization, get to confronting the idea of death is hallucinogens. What is your experience with hallucinogens?
I don’t have the biggest experience with them. My drug intake has been limited to, like, pot and mushrooms. I like mushrooms a lot. They’re fun, they’re helpful. I feel like they’re calming and they help me remove the human emotions of being fearful or protective of my day-to-day environment and look more at the grand picture of things and be like, “Oh, I’m okay.” That’s always good. Every day feels like I’m a rat in this maze, and I can’t see what turn I need to go to, and then you take mushrooms, and you get lifted up above the maze and you see if I go this, this, and this way, you know you’re okay. Or, you go, “I’m not okay! I’ve been messing up!” I always feel like that’s a good thing. It’s like getting your oil checked to make sure your car is running okay.

Right, every couple thousand miles you’ve got to take a handful of psilocybin.
Mmhm. Just to make sure everything is okay, on the right path.

In those experiences, have you ever confronted something really dark? You hear a lot of people say, “I thought I was going to die, I thought I was dead.” Have you ever confronted that? You seem like you have a pretty naturally cheery disposition.
I’m always more fearful of what I’m hiding. What’s going to come out that I haven’t wanted to come out? It’s always been fears and I think I remember a time where me and Rory [Scovel] and a bunch of people did mushrooms, and Rory flipped out and thought he was dead. When I was taking care of Rory I thought, “I want to take care of my son, and I can take care of my son but I don’t necessarily need to be married.” I think I’ve had some insights like that where it’s like, I’m only doing some things because I feel like I need to do them. There’s definitely been some major things that have happened, but nothing where I felt like a demon baby.

That’s interesting. So having to take care of a friend who is tripping on mushrooms and then realizing, like, “Oh, this is like a child.”
Yeah.

What was that process like in your head, when you came to that realization that you didn’t have to be married to be a good dad?
It was just that I mostly had a fear of, like, if I’m not around him every day then I’m not taking care of him. But I realized there’s a lot of different ways to take care of people. I guess, when I was with Rory, I was just learning that he needed this and he needed that right now, and I thought, “This is just like my son.” And that’s all I like to do. It was a big deal, but I’m always still fearful. So who knows?

Have you ever had a close call? For example, I was driving and a semi truck ran me off the road, and that was a very scary moment where I was just like, well, if this happens, it happens. Have you had that moment where you looked death in the face?
No. Nothing like that in particular. Other than the time when I had a staph infection in my face. People were like, “You might die,” but it was more like, “It’s 60/40 that you won’t, but you could.” So it wasn’t like, oh, I’m going to die. I’ve never had anything like that.

Even with the staph infection thing, did you make peace with the idea, or did you just focus on the 60 percent and not the 40 percent?
I think I just kind of floated through it. It was painful and I vomited all the time. I was either vomiting or sleeping. So I didn’t really pay much attention to what was going on at all. But then, obviously, those things tend to refocus you on what’s at the basis and what’s important. I thought, “I’m me, these are the things I love to do, and these are the people who love me.” Sometimes you lose sight of that.

What were those important things that you found?
I just love to do comedy! I love doing that. I love taking care of my son and being around him and having fun. And that’s it. Even if I don’t call them enough or spend enough time with them, my parents will get a hold of me if they think I’m going to die. So that’s good to remember. Mostly it’s just like, the things that I like to do are be on stage and have fun in general. That’s it. Those are the things that nobody can make you not do.

Being a parent yourself, how do you look at your parents now, since you’ve become a parent?
I’m more forgiving, probably. Laughter. It’s difficult, and you’ve got to make weird decisions, and sometimes no matter what you do, there’s just new pressures that you didn’t understand before. There’s a definite difference in, like, “I’ve got to make sure I eat today” and “I’ve got to make sure this guy eats today.” It’s a whole different thing. With the first one, it’s just like, “Whatever, I didn’t eat today.” But no, he has to eat. So it’s understanding what that feels like. I think that’s about it. I still am like, they made some weird decisions, but some of them taught me how to go the other way. Where it’s like, you wanted to do some things that felt like you should do and you didn’t because you were like, I have to do it this way to be safe. And I’m like, “Well, that didn’t really work out for us.” So I try to do it this way, and hopefully this will work out. It seems like it’s still 50/50.

Not 60/40?
Okay, maybe 60/40, going the right way.

What is the worst advice you’ve ever heard about parenting and what’s the best advice you could give?
Worst advice… I think the worst advice I ever got about parenting or just in general was someone was like, “Now that you’ve got a kid, you’ve got to go out there and get your nine-to-five and get your 401K.” And I did all of that and then I flipped out. I mean, that isn’t going to be what I do. Every family is an individual family, and you know what works best for your family and what works best for your family isn’t what works best for someone else. You just have to do what’s right for you. I think I’m the best parent for my son that he could have. I don’t know if I’m the best parent for another kid, but I’m good at being a buddy and sometimes being forceful, but mostly being a buddy and being very…

This kid, his diet mostly consists of hamburgers and fries and pizza and slurpees, and if you tried to make him eat something else, it’s not going to happen. He just can’t do it, texture-wise. His mouth doesn’t want it. And he needs a parent that understands that and will also put gummy vitamins down his throat and make sure that he’s okay, and not saying, “You have to eat broccoli.” If he had to eat broccoli, he’d starve. Just knowing your kid and loving your kid. Just because your friends have kids and they want to tell you how to do this, or they’re doing that, I mean, that might not work for your kid.

That seems like great advice all-around.
Yeah, yeah.

Just learn about your son. I mean, it goes back to all the things you were told by the Catholic school. Like, “This is how it is!” and you were like, “I don’t know, I like people.” To like people, you have to know people. And to know people, you do some mushrooms, and then you know yourself and you know other people.
Yeah, and I feel like in general, the best clothing is tailored clothing, because everyone is a different size. No one looks good in one-size fits all stuff. You have to tailor your life as well. That’s what’s going to work best for you. You can say, “This works best,” but tweak it a little. That’s just how it is. Up late, go to bed late, make it work. We do fun stuff. It’s fun. Laughter.

It seems like within the last few months, you’ve really started going. You’re on an NBC show, you’re doing late night, got a half-hour on Comedy Central, you’re doing cool shit. What’s been the biggest change?
Hmmmm… I guess just not having to calculate my food budget. That’s been the biggest change. I have a little bit less stress in that regard, and that’s been freeing to my comedy, to not have to go to a gig and be like, “I need to get this check and deposit this check today so that I can get back home.” That’s been the biggest change. It’s more relaxing, and I think it’s better for my art. Just being able to look at my son and be like, “Oh, you’re out of shoes? Your shoes are dirty? Let’s go buy you shoes,” rather than, “Let me double-check that we can buy you shoes.” I mean, I don’t have anything extravagant, but I can buy shoes. That’s fine. That’s what I need.

You don’t need a boat.
No, I just need some shoes.

Hamburgers and some shoes.
Funches: Yeah. I didn’t even know that the hamburger budget was in place.

That seems like the perfect level of making money in show business: having the hamburger budget in place.
Yeah, we’re set. Laughter.

So what’s the next thing for you? Is Undateable being picked up? Do you know?
I don’t know. It looks like another 60/40. It could come back, but this Thursday are the last three and they’re going to play three in a row and off of that, we’ll hear that week. So we’ll find out. Trying to write more stuff for myself, more stand-up. Trying to get better. I’m just constantly doing that, and trying to layer new jokes and have new material.

You’re just going from Charmander to Charizard.
Yeeeeeah!

But trying to stay cute.
Trying to stay cute and evolve. But not too cute, so I can have sex.

Charmander doesn’t really seem like the kind of dude who would get laid.
Yeah, yeah. But like, look at you: you’re fine and you’re covered in a kitty shirt. 

I’m just cute enough.
You’re also rugged in a way.

I think you’re rugged as well.
Thank you. I got called handsome by a lady today, but she was like 50.

Was she cute?
Yeah, she was all right! We’ve got a date.

You got a date?
Laughter. No. She was rugged.

The lady at Foot Locker? You’re just into women in uniform.
Referees.

Follow Josh Androsky on Twitter and see Ron Funches live in Los Angeles this Wednesday night.

America is locking up more people than any other nation on earth. Home to just five percent of the world’s total population, the United States houses more than 20 percent of the world's prisoners.

In the last three decades—fueled in large part by a national drug policy and legislation like three strikes laws—America has imprisoned more people in local jails, federal penitentiaries, and private correctional facilities than Stalin put in the Gulags. New court rulings have declared overcrowded prisons to be unconstitutional, and the sheer cost of incarceration is forcing prisons to let prisoners back out on the streets.

VICE News was granted rare access to go inside one of the most maximum-security prisons in the country, a place that’s on the frontline of what could be a sea change in prison policy. Salinas Valley State Prison is home to America’s most powerful prison gangs including the Aryan Brotherhood and Mexican Mafia. It's a place that’s projected to have more than 700 assaults this year.

In an institution that houses the worst of the worst, we see how one maverick warden is trying to turn the system around by rehabilitating murderers before they get returned to the streets.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter

Image via Flickr user senoranderson.
Confronting your own mortality is an inherent part of the human experience. And because it occurs at an extraordinarily vulnerable point in our lives (if you’re “lucky” enough to die of old age from a horrible disease) there’s a growing chorus of medical and legal professionals who believe that by allowing doctors to assist in the termination of a terminally ill and suffering patient, we don’t have to add pain and suffering to the mix.

On June 5, the province of Quebec adopted the controversial Bill 52, also known as the “end-of-life-care bill,” which would legally permit doctors to actively participate in the death of terminally ill patients suffering from physical or psychological pain. This came after a vote of 94-22 in the National Assembly, effectively making it law, and will take somewhere between 12 and 18 months to implement. So while it’s clear this is historic for Quebec, there remains an understandably charged debate amongst physicians, legislators, and citizens.

Euthanasia laws aren’t exactly a new concept. It’s legal in Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium (even for children). Physician assisted suicide (PAS) is also legal in several countries like Albania, Germany, Switzerland, and four US states: Oregon, Washington, Montana, and New Mexico. The distinction with PAS is that the doctor does not actually perform the action. It’s akin to your doctor handing you a lethal dose of morphine and looking the other way.

Euthanasia, on the other hand, requires a physician to be present, perform the procedure, and ensure everything runs smoothly, thus incorporating them into the process. Quebec would allow doctors to do the deed, but according to Quebec lawmakers it’s not euthanasia, per se.  

“Medical aid in dying refers to the fact that it is always in a medical context and in the form of aid asked by the person,” Veronique Hivon, a member of the National Assembly who coauthored and cosponsored the bill, told VICE. “The term euthanasia does not imply that it only comes as a request.”

In Belgium, euthanasia is legal, and if poor old aunt Susan is on a whole set of machines and incapacitated, the family can make the decision on her behalf. What’s unique about the Quebec bill, according its authors, is that that wouldn’t be allowed to happen, as the request must come from the patients themselves. "Nobody can ask for it except the person," Hivon said.

In fact, there’s a whole set of similar ironclad restrictions and qualifications you have to meet if you want to get government-sanctioned suicide, which are outlined in section 26 of the law. For example, you must meet the legal age limit, you have to be capable of giving consent, you have to suffer from an incurable serious illness, it must be in an advanced state of irreversible decline, and you have to suffer from “constant and unbearable physical or psychological pain which cannot be relieved in a manner the person deems tolerable.” According to Hivon, the patient would also need a second independent medical opinion and—like everything else related to government—they need to fill out a form. This form can be filled out by a third party if you’re physically incapable but mentally cognizant.

These safeguards bring reassurance to proponents, but to critics they give faulty justification to a procedure they feel has no place in medicine. “It’s just not good for society to have people who are legally allowed to kill other people,” Dr. Catherine Ferrier, the president of the Physicians Alliance Against Euthanasia, tells me. For her, the issue centres on defending those most vulnerable, and laws of this kind not only endanger them, but also are inspired by fear and apprehension rather than compassion. “Euthanasia is driven by a fear of the whole dying process. How do you respond to fear? You try and control it, but you lose a lot by doing that; it’s not something you can cut off and not have repercussions.”

Image via Flickr user armymedicine.
Dr. Derryck Smith is a clinical emeritus professor of psychology at the University of British Colombia, and a board member of Dying with Dignity, a member-based charity focused on education and support for the choice-in-dying-movement. He interprets the bill as “a humane piece of legislation that alleviates endless suffering at the end of life.” He points to Dr. Donald Low, a Toronto physician who stated his case via YouTube for sensible euthanasia legislation only eight days before he eventually succumbed to a brain tumor. He also notes that these are tested waters, “It mirrors legislation that is in place in Belgium and Oregon, etc," Smith says. It’s nothing new, and it’s going to give Quebecers assistance in dying when they’re in the ravages of pain.”

Somewhat unsurprisingly, Ferrier’s opinion is the one most present in the Canadian medical community. A survey by the Canadian Medical Association found that a clear majority—44 percent—would refuse to assist a death compared to only 16 percent who said they would participate. While the bill itself is supported by a majority in the National Assembly and by the general public, the sentiment is not shared by those on the front lines.

“For many people who answer, they answer that they want it, and it’s because they or someone they know has had a bad experience,” Ferrier says. “Their care wasn’t managed properly, so they are afraid. They say ‘I’d rather be dead than go through what my aunt went through.’ We should improve care, and it’s foolish to jump to killing people.”

When asked why physicians would support the bill, Ferrier cited her personal experience, “The further you get from the dying the more likely you are to support it. If you’re in radiology you may support it, but those working close to the elderly and dying overwhelmingly reject it." Ferrier’s claims are indeed supported by statements from those in palliative care.

While medical practitioners may oppose the law, that doesn’t seem to bother supporters in the least. According to Smith, change rarely comes from medical professionals; it’s the public and elected officials acting on their behalf that alter the zeitgeist. “Physicians are nervous,” he says. "They have not yet been trained in how to deal with a request to die, or the actual procedure itself. Over time, more and more physicians will become more comfortable with it. The same thing happened with abortion. It was public pressure that brought that into the fold and not the leadership of the medical community.”



Image via Flickr user consumerist.
So public pressure may be enough, but what about dignity? For many people, this debate is less about whether it’s morally right or wrong, but about having the freedom to make an informed choice about how you die. To some, the notion of being at the mercy of the medical process and consumed with bureaucracy without a prospect of a peaceful and controlled exit sounds horrifying and undignified. Smith looks at dignity as synonymous with autonomy and individual choice. In this case, it comes from your capacity to dictate the terms of your demise, and being unable to do so is what’s undignified.

“Dignity means you are in charge of your own death at a time of your own choosing. It’s an issue of autonomy, and of being able to choose. The problem is that choice is unavailable. After all, if you were given the choice most would choose to die in their own homes surrounded by loved ones. But that’s something that’s afforded to very few people.”

Yet that’s not how critics of the law understand dignity. Many of us are going to age differently, and some of us may slip gradually into senility, or our mind may remain lucid while our bodies deteriorate. Either way, it’s inevitable that we’ll become more dependent on others. So perhaps we shouldn’t equate independence with dignity, and conversely, dependence on others as undignified. If we conclude that those who are dependent on others are undignified, what does that say about those medically disabled and living life to the fullest? As Dr. Ferrier points out, “If someone is dependent on someone else, that doesn’t mean they have less dignity. The notion that you have less dignity when you are sick and dying is a false understanding of what dignity is.”

One thing both sides can agree on is the need for more palliative care. It’s a large field with increasingly more physicians specializing in alleviating pain, keeping patients comfortable, and easing discomfort at the end of life. The practice itself was brought to North America in the 1970s by Dr. Balfour Mount, a Canadian physician, who remains vehemently opposed to euthanasia. Alarmingly, the current percentage of Canadians that have access to this type of care is about 16-30 percent. As Ferrier puts it, “we should focus on improving this type of care. Poor management at the end of someone’s life is what’s causing this push towards euthanasia.” But Smith cautions that universal access to palliative care is a long way off, “Everyone wants more palliative care, and I support palliative care. But we can’t wait for everyone to have palliative care before we get this legislation because we’ll never get it. It’ll take forever.”

Going forward, countries all over the world must cope with aging baby-boomers. So we’re left with difficult choices about how to offer dignity when we’re unsure what it means, or how to provide a semblance of personal choice to someone who may be incapable of thinking clearly. Confronting death head-on for yourself and your loved ones is a long and arduous procedure. At this rate, it’s possible you could have something similar to “medical aid in dying” on your deathbed. Just be sure to hand in all your forms in triplicate, dot your I's and cross your T's before you do check out. 

The main entrance to HMP Wormwood Scrubs (Photo via)

Kevin Scarlett was found hanged in his cell at HMP Woodhill on the 22nd of May, 2013. He was 30 years old and had a long history of mental health problems, having been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. He was also a regular self-harmer and had made a number of attempts to kill himself in the past. Despite all this, the staff at Woodhill felt he posed little risk of self-harm and suicide.

Scarlett was one of 74 self-inflicted deaths recorded in English and Welsh prisons last year, the highest rate since 2007. This trend has continued with 32 more deaths between the 1st of January and the 12th of May this year. Overall, deaths in prison custody reached an all-time high in 2013. Reform groups and trade unions have blamed a combination of factors for this rise, ranging from prison over-population and bad morale, to poor mental health provision and budget cuts. 

Soon after entering Woodhill—a category A prison in Milton Keynes—on the 14th of January, 2013, Scarlett was placed on the "basic" regime, keeping him confined to his cell for 22 hours a day. He was unable talk to members of his family, watch TV or listen to the radio. At that time it had become common practice at the prison to place a sign on the doors of inmates on basic, warning other prisoners that they would be punished if they communicated with them.

After a three-day inquest into Scarlett’s death, the jury were highly critical of Woodhill and returned a verdict of accidental suicide. They found that Scarlett’s risk of self-harm and suicide had not been properly assessed by prison staff, that he should not have been left alone in a double cell and that he should have been allocated to a safer cell.

Scarlett’s step-brother Lee Jarman, 33, sat through the proceedings at Milton Keynes’ Coroners’ Court from start-to-finish. “One of Kevin’s coping mechanisms was to talk to people, and he was denied that,” says Jarman. “We believe his suicide was a cry for help.”

After committing a series of low-level offenses, Scarlett committed the crime that put him inside Woodhill in December of 2012. Armed with a hammer and a dumbbell, Scarlett and his accomplice Brendon Gray, 29, looted two shops in Northamptonshire, making off with less than $10,000 in cash.

Scarlett was on remand at the time of his death and intended to plead guilty to a charge of armed robbery.

Lee Jarman

“I tried to get Kevin sectioned six months before he committed the crime,” remembers Jarman. “It’s very difficult, because as a family you can see the person you love falling apart. You can go to doctors and say they need to help this person, but if they’re not willing to do that it can become impossible. Kevin had been on care in the community for years and it wasn’t working.”

Unable to communicate with Scarlett for the whole of his time at Woodhill, Jarman and the rest of the family didn’t know the extent of his difficulties inside the prison. In fact, it wasn’t until a family liaison officer knocked on his mother’s door to let her know of her son’s death that they were aware of any problems.

As the number of self-inflicted deaths in English and Welsh prisons has increased, the Prison Service has become characterized by harsher sentences, budget cuts and a rising population.

Eoin McLennan-Murray is the President of the Prison Governors Association and serving Governor at HMP Coldingley in Surrey. “I don’t think there’s a simple explanation for why the deaths have gone up," he begins. "We’ve had spikes before and we’ve had troughs. It’s possible there’s a correlation between the rise in self-inflicted deaths and a combination of things that are happening in the Prison Service at the moment. So let’s look at the things that are happening.

“We’ve had a significant reduction in resources. We’ve had major restructuring, both of the management and of the personnel in the service. We’ve had a series of prison closures and a rise in population. The combination of all these things has had an impact on staff. They feel less secure in their employment, they have to work harder and be more adaptable, they have to take on new roles. We’ve also got problems with recruitment, and there’s been a pay freeze for goodness knows how long. That’s a toxic mix in terms of how it plays with morale.”

The Prison Officers Association agrees that the increase in self-inflicted deaths is symptomatic of broader problems. “The Prison Service is in crisis,” a POA spokesman tells me. “The only way to deal with this is to have root and branch review of all the underlying problems. A self-inflicted death is a tragedy for all concerned. Due to budget cuts and staff shortfalls, the numbers have increased.”

At the time of writing there are 85,228 people in prisons in England and Wales, over 9,000 more than the Prison Service's own estimation for how many people can be kept in safe accommodation. This number is set to increase, with already over-crowded prisons told to take on an extra 440 inmates by August.

Responding to the news, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Nick Hardwick, told BBC Radio 4’s Today Program that he was “very concerned,” before admitting the system was not coping well with the increase. Justice Secretary Chris Grayling responded to Hardwick’s comments by stating that finding space for new prisoners would just mean “a few hundred prisoners more will have to share a cell over the next few weeks.”

Deborah Coles

For Deborah Coles, Co-Director of the prison reform charity INQUEST, the spat between Hardwick and Grayling was “shameful.”

"The prison inspectorate is the prison watchdog," she tells me. "It was set up because the importance of having independent inspections was recognized. It smacks of complacency and arrogance when you have a Chief Inspector warning of a significant risk to inmates and staff, only for the Justice Minister to completely dismiss these informed comments. There is a complete disconnect between what is happening on the ground and the government, and that is a recipe for disaster. Grayling is in complete denial about the serious problems facing the Prison Service.”

Added to this atmosphere of cut backs and over-crowding, government policy in recent years has taken a more punitive attitude when it comes to the Prison Service. Changes to the Incentives and Earned Privileges (IEP) scheme announced by the government in the winter of 2013 have meant that prisoners no longer receive their privileges from good behavior alone; now, they have to work longer hours and be shown to be engaging in “purposeful activity.”

Books and other basic items can no longer be received by inmates in the post, while many objects now have to be purchased by prisoners using their own often meager wages.

The Prison Reform Trust has warned that these changes amounted to “punishment without purpose,” saying the number of prisoners making contact with its advice service has trebled since the policy was announced. The Ministerial Board on Deaths in Custody is currently investigating the impact of these changes.

While prison life has become harsher, mental health services have been put under critical strain, and efforts to change the way that prisoners with mental health conditions are treated have not been pursued; Lord Keith Bradley’s review – which recommended a radical new approach to the way the justice system treats its prisoners with learning disabilities and mental health conditions – was welcomed in principle by the Labor government when published in 2009, but never acted upon.

In January of last year, a national inspection found that progress had not been made on the report’s key recommendation – “to facilitate the earliest possible diversion of offenders with mental disorders from the criminal justice system” by having psychiatric staff at police stations.

Deborah Coles claims the “current situation can only get worse.”

“It is symptomatic of a government whose criminal justice policies have increased the prison population, and will continue to do," she says. "With austerity and cuts to frontline mental health services, you've got increasing numbers of people getting sucked up into the criminal justice system, which—quite frankly, in many situations – can do nothing more than warehouse people. You've got extremely vulnerable men, women and children existing in prisons with extremely limited and austere regimes, with the ever present risk of suicide and self-harm.”

Kevin Scarlett

On hearing the news of her son’s death, Kevin Scarlett’s mother Patricia was heartbroken. After the inquest she spoke of feeling like the whole process had made her son seem like a “faceless individual, represented as just another difficult person who could not be helped.”

She has since moved some 300 miles away from the family home in Milton Keynes. Jarman lets her know when he's doing media appearances to discuss the case, but she likes to stay out of the limelight. “There are too many memories for her here,” he explains. “Whether good or bad, there are just too many.”

Since his step-brother’s death, Jarman has worked with INQUEST to bring attention to the issue of the lack of mental health provision in prisons. Unable to work a job because he's currently undergoing treatment for bladder cancer, Scarlett’s case has become his life.

He is tall and skinny with a welcoming personality. When discussing the case, he becomes passionate, though not emotional. Having told the story of his step-brother’s death so often, he seems to have gained some distance from it.

“This issue has given me a focus. Through the inquest there were so many failings,” he explains. “Prisons aren’t geared up for serious mental health patients. Prison guards aren’t trained in mental health; they’re trained to keep them safe. So we don’t blame the prison officers—they’re in a difficult position. They’re under-staffed, under-funded, without the relevant training.

“At the end of the day, it’s the government that sets the budget, and it’s the government that is ultimately responsible for the running of these services. Obviously these people have done bad things and need to be punished, but the Prison Service and the government have a duty of care to these people while they're serving their sentence. Prisoners should get the same treatment that you or I would get, and the truth is they don’t.”

Concluding the inquest into Scarlett’s death, Senior Coroner Tom Osborne stated that he would be writing to NHS England and the National Offender Management Service to raise his concerns that HMP Woodhill was not able to properly assess Kevin.

The visitors' centre at HMP Woodhill (Photo via)

David Hunter died at Woodhill on the 26th of May, 2013, just four days after Scarlett’s death. There were two more self-inflicted deaths at the prison before the year was out. Only Wormwood Scrubs, which has a much larger population, experienced more self-inflicted deaths in 2013.

A report, published in May, giving the results of an unannounced inspection of Woodhill painted a bleak picture of life inside the prison. Inspectors found that the number of recorded assaults and self-harm incidents was double that of other local prisons. The relationship between staff and prisoners was said to have weakened, and inspectors found there was a high-use of force at the prison. The prison’s response to the five self-inflicted deaths since the last inspection in January of 2012 was said to have “lacked rigor.

Responding to the inspectors' findings, Michael Spurr—Chief Executive Officer of the Ministry of Justice’s National Offender Management Service (NOMS)—said: “The governor and his staff are working hard to reduce incidents of violence and to improve rehabilitation—they will use the recommendations in this report to accelerate that work.”

In response to the findings made in this investigation, a spokesperson from the Prison Service said: "We are committed to reducing the number of deaths in custody and are carefully investigating the rise in self-inflicted deaths. We are applying strenuous efforts to learn from each death and are providing further resources and support to improve the safer custody work in prisons.

"This work includes an ongoing  review of how people at risk of suicide or self-harm in under-18 Young Offender Institutions are managed, and an independent review into self-inflicted deaths amongst 18-24 year olds. These reviews will help identify learning points that can be applied across all age groups."

After Kevin's death, Jarman is less optimistic about any of those apparent changes being made. “Mental health and prisons have always been taboo issues in this country, so put those two issues together and it becomes very difficult to find a solution,” he says.

McLennan-Murray is frank about what he thinks of the current state of the Prison Service, and coming from someone with his stature, it's a worrying omen of what could be coming.

“We’ve reached a tipping point,” he warns. “The change won’t come from a piece of legislation – it might not even be planned – but it will be the last straw that breaks the camel’s back, the spark that sets off the explosion. The things that keep a prison stable, that maintain the cooperation of the prisoners and staff, are being undermined all the time. We are edging towards the likelihood of greater instability.”

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The three-day strikes might be a thing of the past, but some things endure in the French capital: The techno DJs are still pricks, the waiters are still rude and the big nightclubs still suck. The best of Paris is hidden from view, whether it’s drag queen vogueing parties or raves in the suburbs. So read our guide and figure out the most efficient way of having fun in this place.

Jump to sections by using the index below:

– WHERE TO PARTY
– WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH DRUGS?
– POLITICS, PROTESTS AND JUST HOW RACIST IS EVERYONE HERE?
– WHERE TO EAT
– WHAT DO LOCALS EAT?
– WHERE TO DRINK
– WHERE TO STAY
– LGBT PARIS
– WHERE TO HANG OUT WHEN YOU'RE SOBER
– HOW TO AVOID GETTING RIPPED OFF AND BEATEN UP
– HOW NOT TO BE A SHITTY TOURIST
– PEOPLE AND PLACES TO AVOID
– TIPPING AND HANDY PHRASES
– A YOUTUBE PLAYLIST OF QUESTIONABLE LOCAL MUSIC
– VICE CITY MAP

Photo by Melchior Ferradou Tersen

WHERE TO PARTY

If the way a city drinks really reveals the way a city thinks, then Paris is full of people who hate fun and themselves. Sadly, the capital has been overwhelmed with shit clubs with heavy-handed door policies where people only really go to show off their shoes. If you really want to go clubbing, forget going anywhere except the Rex (1 boulevard Poissonière, 2nd arrondissement), La Java (105 rue du Faubourg du Temple, 10th arrondissement) or La Machine du Moulin Rouge (90 boulevard de Clichy, 18th arrondissement). Those three spots are where people actually go to dance.

In downtown Paris, the most famous clubs are the Social Club, New Casino, Wanderlust and Chez Moune. They have the usual mix of mean-looking bouncers, expensive drinks and douchebags but they do occasionally book decent DJs, so it’s worth checking their schedules.

Near the Canal St Martin, le Comptoir Général (80 Quai de Jemmapes, 10th arrondissement) puts on exhibitions and screenings. On weekends the restaurant becomes a huge dancefloor, making it absolutely the best place in Paris to drink punch while surrounded by portraits of African dictators.

It’s also worth looking into parties like Concrete, which is organized on a boat at Quai de la Rapée. They put on established French artists but their biggest advantage is that they tend to happen when most Parisians are asleep, like 7 AM on a Sunday or whenever Parisians are supposed to be at work. Gazza is another good night, serving the city with the likes of Karen Gwyer, Huerco S, Patten and other stuff that treads the line between sound art and dance music, a non-genre most accurately described as repetitive noise and confusion.

If you really want to rave until the early hours, it might be worth getting out of the city center. In the suburbs, many parties are organized by the 75021 collective at the 6B in Saint-Denis (6-10 Quai de Seine, 93200 Saint-Denis). This huge place is home to 161 residents and is one of the only places we know where you can dance without accidentally frotting a stranger with every writhe. There are loads of different rooms, with a few dancefloors and other places to just crash out on the sofa.

And yes, we realize we just listed the ability to fall asleep on a sofa as a selling point for a rave, but this is Paris and you're a foreigner, so being disheveled is just about the only way you're going to charm us.  

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Photo by Maciek Pozoga

WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH DRUGS?

Drugs in Paris have a pretty unexceptional reputation and tend to be cut with all sorts of crap, but that doesn’t stop people from stuffing them into themselves at any available opportunity. The most popular drugs are weed, “shit” (which is the affectionate local term for cannabis resin), cocaine, crack and MDMA. But yeah, they're not all renouned for quality. Paris is a long way from the nearest port so cocaine in particular will have been stepped on plenty of times before it even arrives.

Both weed and “shit” are pretty expensive, usually €12-25 ($16-27) per gram, but they’re the most common. You’ll hear loads of street dealers offering “beuh, coke, or shit” around Pigalle, Blanche or Barbès-Rochechouart—and it's worth avoiding these pricks.

The Emile Cordon street in Saint-Ouen is an open market known by many Parisians—and cops. And the purchase of cannabis is punishable by a fine anywhere between €50 and €1,700 ($68, $2,326). However, though the laws are strict, the police don’t always enforce them. Often, they simply confiscate the gear and shout at the scared kid.

Crack has reached the outskirts of Stalingrad, Barbès, Chateau Rouge, and Porte de la Chapelle, and is ruining all of them. The train station area of Saint-Denis became the capital of crack in the Ile-de-France, which also means it's a black hole of misery and bastards and worth avoiding.

The party drugs—ecstasy (about €10 (~$14) a pill), coke or MDMA (€50-80 ($70-110) per gram)—people usually pick up from the big clubs. Any traveller should be aware that the police are a lot less lenient with these, so getting busted could really screw you up and make your mom sad.

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Photo by Milene Larsson

POLITICS, PROTESTS, AND JUST HOW RACIST IS EVERYONE HERE?

These days, Paris is subject to strict squatting legislation, and the few illegally occupied places are already listed (or being watched) by the municipality. La Miroiterie (88 rue de Ménilmontant, 20th arrondissement) was one of the best Parisian squats where people tried their best to organize cool gigs between all the stormtrooper raids and eviction notices. Unfortunately, one of their walls crumbled last April, hurting two people in the process—it’s now definitely closed.

If you’re dying to go to a protest in Paris so you can chain-smoke tar and pretend you're in The Dreamers, in Bastille on the first Saturday of each month there’s a “Vélorution” where cyclists come together to stop traffic. It's hardly May '68 but at least you'll get to piss off the same taxi drivers who've been ripping you off since you set foot in town. 

If you like causing trouble, head to the FEMEN headquarters in Clichy (4 Rue du Port) where their members spend all day doing push-ups and kicking punching bags so that they’re in shape when they confront the police. If you ask nicely, FEMEN's leader Inna Schevchenko will probably fill you in on the finer points of how “topless feminism” will one day guillotine the patriarchy's balls off.

Photo by Melchior Ferradou Tersen

At the other end of the political spectrum, ever since homosexual marriage was legalized right-wingers have been protesting against the government with their “Manif pour tous” (Demonstration for everyone) movement. Take a look at their Twitter stream if you're in the mood for some outraged hopelessness.

We know the stereotype is that everyone in France goes on strike every three days, but the truth is we’ve never been so apathetic. Recently, most big protests have been organized by people who believe the Bible is literal, so we’re a long way from Montaigne and Voltaire. These days, people loathe the unions as much as the politicians, so it’s become rare to see anyone taking their fight to the streets.

Most Parisians like to say they’re so multicultural they don’t notice immigration, although this is largely because people treat immigrants just as they treat their fellow Parisians: by ignoring their existence. There are big immigrant communities on the outskirts of the city, and the angry young men of the banlieues sporadically clash with the police in riots that can last for days. 

Photo by Arthur Liminana

Recently of course the comedian Dieudonne M'bala M'bala—the guy who invented Nicolas Anelka's beloved “quenelle” gesture—has been accused of stoking anti-Semitism in the country, especially amongst young Muslims. But the sad reality is that there is a lot of anti-Semitism France and now there is a strange, quasi-alliance between the traditional French far-right and young Arabic people who hate Israel.

In early January, this became clear when a bunch of people gathered together in Paris's Bastille Square to celebrate their rage with a "Day of Anger." Apparently about 20,000 of them turned up in the rain to complain about various things. Some people were mad at the country's President, François Hollande, for being too much of a liberal and some were mad about abortion, but the event was remarkable for the number of anti-Semitic chants.  

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Photo by Melchior Ferradou Tersen

WHERE TO EAT

Phô 14
129 avenue de Choisy, 13th arrondissement
Phô 14 is the best canteen in the 13th arrondissement. The Vietnamese diaspora go there every day, creating a constant hubbub of words we could never understand, speak or write down. The place looks pretty bleak and you’ll have to sit on a plastic children's chair, but the food is delicious and cheap. The Vietnamese soup is excellent, especially with a good Saïgon beer and crispy spring rolls.

Café De L’industrie
16 rue Saint-Sabin, 11th arrondissement
It’s a well-known fact that Paris has more bistros than pigeons, but this one is remarkable thanks to its cheap prices. The Café de l’Industrie offers classic meals (duck, sausage and mash, steak, etc) with reasonable prices (€8 (~$11) for sausage and mash). The décor theme seems to be "colonial", which is obviously weird, but on an aesthetic level the African paintings and vintage portraits are beautiful. You might hear a few jerks say that “there are a lot of better places to eat”, but if you’re rich enough to pay more than €50 (~$69) for one course, you should go to La Coupole (102 boulevard de Montparnasse, 14th arrondissement) or Royal Vendôme (26 rue Danielle Casanova, 2nd arrondissement) and never, ever come back.

Louchébem
31 rue Berger, 1st arrondissement
This steakhouse is located in a former butcher’s shop downtown, and you’ll still catch sight of lumbering chefs wearing bloody aprons. For €23,90 (~$33), you can get beef thighs, lamb legs and ham bones with homemade mash. Wash it down with two liters of a nice French red wine and enjoy the gout and constipation that come from a truly great meal.

Voy Alimento
at 23 rue des Vinaigriers, 10th arrondissement
Our favorite vegetarian place used to be a small shop with organic ingredients imported from South America—malpighia glabra, maca, powder chlorella, to name a few – and is now a cheap canteen. For €12 (~$16.50), you can have a full meal with chestnut squash, soy marinade, urucum, and purple corn blinis—none of which were considered foods in this town until about five years ago.

L’as Du Fallafel (Or King Falafel)
32-34 rue des rosiers/26 rue des rosiers, 4th arrondissement
The two addresses of King Falafel appear in every single tourist guide to Paris, but there’s a good reason for that. The food is so good that you might have to wait a while, but the neighbourhood is full of top-hatted Jewish dads, cute couples, and hysterical fashionistas that should keep you amused while you wait.

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Photo by Melchior Ferradou Tersen

WHAT DO LOCALS EAT?

Butter Croissants
This is a cornerstone of French cuisine, and no visitor to Paris should spare themselves these 200 morning calories. A good croissant should be slightly puffed on the outside and tender in the inside. If you want to eat the best in Paris, go to Du pain et des idées, 34 rue Yves Toudic in the 10th arrondissement.

Bo Buns
Not so long ago, these wonderful bowls of Vietnamese vermicelli were only eaten by wankers who bang on about the “healthy and exotic lifestyle” they're leading. These days, pretty much every Parisian eats it. Go to Belleville or the 13th arrondissement—the semi-mythical Asian neighbourhoods of Paris where even the local McDonald'ses use a Chinese font on their menus.

French Macaroons
If eating macarons is part of your picture-postcard idea of what a trip to Paris should include, or if you’re a fashion blogger in search of something to Instagram, the place to go is the Ladurée store (75 avenue des Champs-Élysées, 8th arrondissement). Before you indulge, just know that nobody besides tourists actually eats them in real life. But they are nice.

Butter Ham Sandwiches
Thanks to inflation it’s becoming more and more difficult to find a chewable sandwich for less than €3 (~$4). But the butter ham sandwich (also called the “Parisian”) is still one of the most popular snacks in the city. It’s mostly eaten by philosophy students and bankers, neither of whom respect the French tradition of two-hour lunch breaks. The best Parisian sandwiches can be found at Chez Aline (85 rue de la Roquette, 11th arrondissement).

Burgers
Like most Western cities, Paris has recently become the theatre for a frantic race to make the mythical "Proper Burger." They tend to be expensive but they’re always satisfying, so head to the Big Fernand (55 rue du Faubourg-Poissonière, 9th arrondissement or 32 rue Saint-Sauveur, 2nd arrondissement) where the owners are so snobby they won’t even use the word “burger," preferring the grotesque French equivalent “hamburgé." Other good options are Blend (44 rue d’Argout, 2nd arrondissement) or the Beef Club (58 rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 11th arrondissement).

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Photo by Melchior Ferradou Tersen

WHERE TO DRINK

Ménilmontant/Belleville
Travel guides usually describe these areas as “cosmopolitan and colorful," which basically means they’re filled with Asian grocery stores and sport bars owned by immigrants who would rather kick a tourist's eyes out than shake his hand. They were ignored for a long time, but now everyone’s realized they’re the best place for cheap drinks. On the boulevard de Ménilmontant you’ll easily find bars serving pints for €3.50 (~$5). If you’re an artless pisshead, who has beer for dinner, this place will suit you.

La Butte Aux Cailles
Once upon a time the Butte aux Cailles was a hill covered in meadows and even today it retains the feel of a small village, far from the huge boulevards and overcrowded avenues that characterize downtown Paris. There was a time when people couldn’t drink in public, but thanks to a few angry voices it’s now possible to enjoy a beer in the streets: Proof that French people do sometimes protest for a good reason.

Pigalle/Montmartre
In Pigalle you’ll find sex tourists and in Montmartre there will be couples visiting the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur, but in between you’ll find a load of cheap bars dotted around.

Les Batignolles
If you find yourself starting to get sick of Paris, head to the least Parisian of all the Parisian neighbourhoods. You’ll find one of the few parks where you can hear birds chirping and spot black swans, and there’s a deserted surgical building that’s been converted into a restaurant/bar where you can get wankered with some retirees.

Le Canal de l’Ourcq
During summer, Parisians like to mass together on the Canal de l’Ourcq. As long as you can find a spot to sit that nobody’s pissed on, the area is lovely and dotted with locks and beautiful bridges. If you really want to French it up, order a pastis at the Bar Ourcq (68 quai de la Loire, 19th arrondissement) and try your luck at a match of pétanque (boules).

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Photo by Maciek Pozoga

WHERE TO STAY

If you’re planning on staying in Paris for more than three days, you’ll probably turn to Airbnb rather than looking for a hotel. This is a wise decision, particularly when you consider how overpriced Parisian hotels are.

If it’s your first time in Paris and you’re looking for an apartment, the best neighbourhood to head to is probably Charonne, especially if you're with a partner. It’s one of the few areas that’s both clean and located in Eastern Paris, which is where you want to be to find bars open after 7 PM and streets frequented by real people. There’s loads of cool, cheap places where you can eat, drink and wander about without fear—just as long as you avoid the super weird spot in front of Saint-Antoine hospital where pigeons come to die and it smells of vomit, bird shit, and burnt tires.

If you’re a little bit more experienced in Paris, you could try Lamarck and Jules Joffrin. It’s located in north-eastern Paris, a land of dull neighborhoods and semi-clandestine clubs but also respected music venues and amazing restaurants. Basically, it condenses the worst and the best things Paris has to offer into one area. Lamarck and Jules Joffrin are less apocalyptic than Abesses and Pigalle and also far from the horrors of Porte de Clignancourt or Château Rouge.

If you’re planning to spend more than two weeks in Paris, renting an apartment outside of the city itself might be a decent choice. A smaller town nearby will still give you the impression of being in Paris, just with far fewer hysterical people and subway stations. So, if you want to do this, then Montreuil is your only option really, because it’s the only good one. Bagnolet is too sordid, Les Lilas are full of young active couples with children named after folk singers, Pantin is still struggling to find its own identity, Vincennes is too bourgeois, and Aubervilliers too ghetto.

If you really must stay in a hotel, Mama Shelter (109 rue de Bagnolet, 20th arrondissement, from €79 for a room) is a pretty good choice. Remember to book in advance because they make all of their profits on stragglers. Sure, their interior decoration is trying way too hard and they serve cocktails named after 90s rap albums but there’s also an amazing pizzeria in their lobby and the hotel is right in front of La Flèche d’Or, an old train station turned music venue. Most importantly, you will be close to Ménilmontant, an area where you can go to find a flat as soon as you realize that booking a hotel was a terrible idea.

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Photo by Melchior Ferradou Tersen

LGBT PARIS

Although it can depend on which neighborhood you're in, generally Paris is welcoming for LGBT people and it’s very unlikely that you’ll get beaten up for holding hands with your partner. Although there were a lot of people in France who were reluctant to legalize same-sex marriage, those people do not represent a majority in Paris.

The most gay-friendly neighborhood is Le Marais, which is in the center of Paris. You might even find the man or the woman of your dreams here, but only if you are wearing the right shoes.

If you want to experience the gay party scene, you have to try the Flash Cocotte. It’s a crazy party, the music is great and everybody will be high and dancing until dawn. If you're a drag queen and you're willing to dance on stage, this is where you’ll become a star. Don't turn up too late or you'll end up waiting in the line for hours. Another option is the aggressively named lesbian and bisexual Wet For Me party, which is at La Machine du Moulin Rouge—one of Paris’ better clubs.

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Photo by Melchior Ferradou Tersen

WHERE TO HANG OUT WHEN YOU'RE SOBER

La Petite Ceinture
This old abandoned railway goes all around the city, with many gardens and deserted stations—it’s completely illegal to go there though, so don’t go there, just try to imagine it.

Jardin des Plantes
This cute botanical garden will almost make you forget you’re in a city devastated by pollution and food waste. There’s a few dinosaur museums in the area, which is always a fun way to spend a day.

Les Puces de Saint-Ouen
This place is composed of 14 markets, and each has its own specialty. It’s full of clothes, furniture and antique stuff, and it’s worth having a look around even if you’re not planning to buy to lug a 200-year-old wardrobe back across the Channel with you on the Eurostar.

Bois de Boulogne
Most parks in Paris look like they were designed by Harrods window dressers, but this forest is amazing. It’s about two and a half times bigger than Central Park and there are lakes and huge lawns, it’s worth spending a whole day there.

Canal Saint-Martin
Okay, there’s way too many people here during the summer, but you should go just to have a drink in front of the canal while watching swans trying to eat beer cans.

La Cartonnerie
This old 450-square metre workshop is one of the best places to check out contemporary art exhibitions. It’s at 12 rue Deguerry in the 11th arrondissement and it’s filled with old machines and cool furniture.

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Photo by Melchior Ferradou Tersen

HOW TO AVOID GETTING RIPPED OFF AND BEATEN UP

Scammers are everywhere in Paris, especially in the big tourist spots. You’ll find most of them at la Basilique du Sacré-Coeur, Notre-Dame, on the place Saint-Michel, in Châtelet and near the Eiffel Tower. This is where criminal groups spend their time robbing tourists by trapping them into playing bonneteau—a game of "chance" played with three cards. The player has to bet on one of the three cards to find the king of spades, but the scammer will win 95 percent of the time.

In these places, as well as the Pont des Arts and Saint-Germain, you may be assailed by supposedly deaf beggars who will ask you to sign a petition for (non-existent) research studies on deafness. Once you’ve signed they’ll ask you for a few Euros and won’t leave you alone till you’ve given it to them. If the deaf people of Paris heard about it, they'd be outraged at the stain on their reputations.

At Barbès-Rocherchouart you’ll find plenty of people willing to sell you phone cards or cigarettes imported from Africa. They’re extremely nice and their prices are pretty cheap, but their products suck. Also, be wary of pickpockets on the metro—especially at Saint-Denis or on line 13, where the most subtle thieves seem to congregate to pillage the most gullible and confused tourists.

Another well-known con is the "gold ring scam." This can happen anywhere in Paris but tends to follow the same routine. You’ll be accosted by guys who’ll tell you they found a ring on the floor. It will look gold and have something stupid like “20K carats” stamped on it. They’ll ask if it’s yours, and when you say no they’ll give it to you anyway. Then they’ll ask you for money—because it is gold after all! Except, obviously, it’s not.

You’ll also be accosted—getting accosted happens a lot in Paris—by people trying to sell you roses. Chances are they’ve just been chiefed from a nearby market/grave. They’re so persistent it’s pointless trying to ignore them, so just say “no” firmly. If you’re a male and with your girlfriend, for fuck’s sake please don’t say, “Nah, it’s fine, I already banged her,” like all the awful French bros do.

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Photo by Melchior Ferradou Tersen

HOW NOT TO BE A SHITTY TOURIST

It's well known that Parisians are assholes, and we’re not going to dispute that. However, the truth is we actually don’t mind tourists that much. We find it adorable when we see people taking selfies near the Eiffel Tower or rubbing Dalida’s bronze boobs in Montmartre. It’s just nice to see people who are actually happy to be here, to be honest.

The exception to this are the French tourists who visit the capital because “clubbing life is way better in Paris." They pay €10 (~$14) for a bottle of rain water at Colette and then hang out at hip clubs such as Silencio or Le Baron trying to get selfies with minor celebrities, so they should be easy to avoid.

Don’t do that. Also, try not to be American, we still hate them and their "Freedom Fries."

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Photo by Maciek Pozoga

PEOPLE AND PLACES TO AVOID

People Who Claim to Be “Real Parisians”
This is the number one lesson that people visiting Paris for the first time should learn: never, ever befriend people who make a big deal about how they’re “real Parisians." These people will make you eat snails, visit the Catacombes, invite you to an art exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, and get you shitfaced on the Pont des Arts, despite the fact that no locals do any of this. Later, they’ll confess that they’re actually from Lyon, Nantes, or even fucking Strasbourg. People who are really from Paris are so proud of their city that they will never admit it. It’s complicated.

Techno Dudes
If you have the misfortune to stumble upon a badly-shaven guy wearing headphones, sitting in front of his laptop and wearing a "Cue-Stop" T-shirt, here’s our only advice: run. This guy might be a DJ. If he’s not a DJ, he’s most likely some DJ's manager. If he’s not some DJ's manager, he’s probably important in one of the multiple sub-layers that make up the French club scene. Ever since Laurent Garnier and then Daft Punk made the scene cool, Paris has been flooded with douchebags wearing Air Max Ones, and tinted sunglasses. They like schoolboy pranks, loud farts, and listing their sexual conquests.

Right-Wing Hipsters
We have no idea why this phenomenon isn’t as big outside of France, but Paris is home to a great deal of people in their thirties who dress like hipsters, work in the media or for an ad agency, and spend all their time complaining that French people pay too much tax. They’ll tell their kids to “start a business in another country” because “thanks to taxes, there’s no financial future in France." They are awful and everyone scrupulously avoids them, even the techno dudes. For some reason the only thing they love as much as neoliberalism is shitty rap music.

Burger King
In 1997, Burger King restaurants left France because it couldn’t compete with McDonald’s or Quick (a Belgian fast food chain). The lack of Whoppers became another thing for Parisians to whine about until last year, when a new Burger King opened in Saint-Lazare. Thousands of people waited up to two hours for their burgers, including journalists eager to write a report on the “buzz." Nobody should ever wait that long to eat an Angus burger in an ugly train station. Fuck French fast food fans.

Silencio
This club was designed by David Lynch, which is apparently enough to make people pay €840 (~$1,148) a year to be a member. It’s not even worth being an occasional visitor.

Indiana Cafés
These Tex-Mex restaurants are pretty much everywhere in the city, and it’s basically the French equivalent of Hard Rock Café. Zero character and gross food.

Rive Gauche
This area on the southern bank of the Seine gets called “bohemian," “countercultural," and “creative," which are all euphemisms for “horrendously overpriced."

Metro Line 13
Over 600,000 people ride this line every day. Unless it’s a matter of life and death, don’t be one of them. It’s the most overcrowded line in Paris, everyone hates it and it smells like a disco in a radiator.

Colette
A “concept store” whose concept is to sell overpriced jumpers, art toys, and ugly shoes. When it got robbed of €600,000 ($819,792) worth of stock last March the running joke was that the thieves must have got away with three watches and a denim tote bag.

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Photo by Melchior Ferradou Tersen

TIPPING AND HANDY PHRASES

Tipping
When you go to a restaurant, tips are included in the total price. We're the only people who give tips—since our welfare sucks, we don't understand that French waiters don't need to kneel before their clients to survive until the end of the month. Of course, if the waiter or the waitress is really sexy, you can always leave a few Euros but once again, welfare makes the bribe less effective.

No need to give tips at bars. In taxis, just hand €10 if the fare is €9,90—taxis are so expensive anyway, that you might reconsider using them. Take the night bus, like every drunk and poor Parisian does.

Handy Phrases
Hello: Bonjour (when you meet someone who could be your dad or your mom) or Salut (when you meet someone who could hang out/exchange bodily fluids with you)

Goodbye: Au revoir (old people) or Salut (young people)

Please: S'il vous plaît

Thank you: Merci

You're welcome: De rien (very basic) or Je t'en prie (when trying to impress someone you want to have sex with)

I’m in a hurry, asshole!: Je suis pressé, connard!

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A YOUTUBE PLAYLIST OF QUESTIONABLE LOCAL MUSIC

You know what Parisian music is by now; we only really like it if it helps us look cool when we're staring into the mid-distance thinking about sadness. Note: This is not a definitive list or anything, it's just what was popped into my head while I was working on this guide at midnight on a Friday.

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VICE CITY MAP

We think that's about it. Bet you still go to fucking Silencio.

De rien,

VICE France

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Sid takes Ibogaine in Iboga Nights, a film by David Graham Scott, to help stop his addiction to injecting morphine tablets.

In 2003, after 20 years of taking methadone and dabbling with heroin, David Graham Scott decided that this was pretty much the worst way you could spend your life. Those drugs have a powerful hold though, so what’s an addict supposed to do? David decided to use Ibogaine in an attempt to wipe out his dependence once and for all. Ibogaine is a substance derived from the plant of an African shrub called Tabernanthe iboga, which is known for its psychedelic qualities and used in African spiritual ceremonies. Some claim it's something of a miracle cure for opiate addiction with minimal withdrawal symptoms. The theory goes that after a long, heavy trip on Ibogaine you no longer want heroin or other sorts of drugs quite so badly.

David documented getting over his addiction with Ibogaine in his previous film, Detox or Die. The follow-up, Iboga Nights, won the Best UK Film Category at the Open City Docs Fest last month. It catalogues the experience of opiate users as they attempt to get off the gear using Ibogaine. At times it’s a pretty bleak experience—at one point, a guy was injecting heroin into his groin—but it will also convince you to never, ever try that particular drug.

I recently spoke with to David about Iboga Nights, his experience on Ibogaine, and what he hopes the future holds.

VICE: What made you try Ibogaine?
David Graham Scott: I had been parked on methadone for nearly 20 years and I was coming up to the age of 40. I was on a relatively small amount, about 25 milliliters, but I just couldn’t get off it. There’s also a point when you get pissed off with going to the doctors and being treated like a second-class citizen as well.

Can you tell me a bit about your previous opiate addiction?
I started dabbling with heroin around 1984. First time I had a shot was in Aberdeen with a guy who seemed a bit of a literary junkie—i.e., cool in my eyes. I moved to Edinburgh in '85 with the aim of being aimless, at least for a while anyway. I was pretty useless at being a junkie at first and just spent a lot of time throwing up. I persevered, though, and joined the underground cult I so desired to be a part of. That is pretty much the truth of the matter and I don't doubt there was a mental health issue guiding my decisions as well. For a look at my lifestyle at this time you may want to look at this experimental film I made around 1986-7 called Opus Morphia. I narrowly avoided the AIDS epidemic that plagued Edinburgh in the mid 80s. I moved to Glasgow around '88 and got some crap job that actually made me feel worse than being a burnt-out junkie.

What was it like being a methadone user?
Once I was put in a police cell on some made-up charge and then the next day they got [exterminators] in to fumigate the cell because they thought I had AIDS. I was also advised to leave a town and not have sex with any women by the environmental health officer. I actually made it through without contracting AIDS, I was very lucky.

How did you find out about Ibogaine?
Through my brother. The guy who discovered it was a morphine addict and took Ibogaine simply as another drug to try and he found that when he took this stuff he didn’t have the same craving or desire to use [morphine] the next day—there were no withdrawal symptoms. My brother sent across this information and I went to a conference in London in 2001, and I met the Ibogaine provider who would appear in my film, Detox or Die. For the next couple of years I was thinking about it and researching it, but there had been a few fatalities so I wasn’t sure about it.

What exactly is it?
Tabernanthe iboga is an African shrub which has a psychedelic root and it’s used by native peoples in ritualistic ceremonies.

And is there a difference between iboga and Ibogaine?
They both come from the same plant. You go from the iboga plant, to iboga itself, which is the raw form of it, and then to Ibogaine, where one particularly strong alkaloid within the plant is isolated. It would be a bit like going from opium to morphine to heroin—each time it is more refined. I took Ibogaine and then the iboga bark can be used to top up the effects over time.

What was your experience on Ibogaine like?
It was about 36 hours of tripping, but it’s different for everyone. After about nine hours or so, I was starting to get more lucid and understanding who I was. You could pull yourself out of it and communicate with people.

And did you have visuals?
I had an intense visionary experience. There were a lot of time-traveling aspects to it; I was manning a spacecraft going into this grid-like pattern in space. There was a lot to do with evolution too but I can’t remember a lot of it because it was so bizarre and chaotic. Sometimes it was beyond me—I knew it was telling me something but I couldn’t understand it. There were also continual black wavy lines in front of your eyes which made it difficult to see easily. It’s not an easy ride by any means—it’s a heavy, heavy trip.

David Graham Scott

Did you enjoy it?
Some of the visions were very enlightening but I saw a lot of very disturbing things. Ibogaine has got very little potential as a drug of abuse because not many people would want to do it on a regular basis.

How did you feel afterwards?
There was some withdrawal briefly and I was like, Oh no, it hasn’t worked, I can’t believe I’ve gone through that hell. But then it was massively reduced to the point that I thought, Well, this has definitely worked, and coming off methadone was bearable.

How does it help you get off opiates?
There are two levels to it. It’s a very intense experience of looking within yourself and seeing how you can move forward. Opiate drugs are very insular substances so you don’t really see the mess of your life whilst you’re using them—you don’t see how shitty your room is with overflowing ashtrays and bloody syringes lying around. It opens the eye up so you see your life for what it is and you can alter it in a positive manner. There’s another level where it actually acts upon the brain receptors that sense withdrawal—so it does something within the chemistry of the brain, which quells withdrawal. It seems to work particularly well with opiates, but not so much with other drugs.

How do you take it?
Ibogaine is a capsule. There are all sorts of different ways that people are doing treatments. One protocol is to give a large dose of Ibogaine with smaller doses of iboga. Just to lessen the chances of a bad reaction. This is because there is a chance of heart failure because the heart rate goes so low.

In the film you weren’t certain of your feelings towards Ibogaine. Have you made up your mind now?
I’m ambiguous. I have to remain on the fence a bit. The film shows both sides—you’re made aware of the prospect of fatalities. But I don’t think the deaths are of significantly high levels compared to the number of people taking it. And most of the people who die whilst using it have underlying health issues.

Glaswegian heroin addicts Ian and Paul undergo a gruelling Ibogaine treatment during the film

With that in mind, what would your advice be to people who want to take Ibogaine?
Research it a lot and do it with the help of a provider—someone who knows what they’re doing. When you take it, you get ataxia, which makes you feel like you’re incredibly drunk and it’s extremely difficult to move about. It’s very difficult for me to sit here and say, “Don’t do it, it could kill you,” because, chances are, it won’t. Definitely get your health checked out though—I got my heart checked and other vital stats taken. I was also going to the gym, taking supplements, and juicing.

Are there other psychedelics which supposedly work for other drugs?
Yes, for example ayahuasca seems to help with cocaine addiction. There are a lot of psychedelic substances coming out of tribal cultures and we’re finding them to be of immense benefit for mental health issues in the West.

So do you hope that there is further research?
Dr. Ben Sessa, a psychiatrist and psychedelic researcher who appeared in the film, hopes to be doing research into Ibogaine very soon. I’m not a scientist, I’m just a guy who believes there is some potential within this and I do sit on the fence to some extent. There are dangers. Let's be careful—but I do believe there is something within it.

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Our crew traveled to remote Liberia to check out Monkey Island, an area inhabited solely by former lab-tested chimpanzees who survived disease and two civil wars. As part of the Liberian Institute for Biomedical Research, also known as Vilab II, the lab produced important breakthroughs in developing treatments for a variety of ailments, including hepatitis.

The lab, which was funded by the New York Blood Center, shut down in the mid-2000s following growing pressure from activists looking to end the use of chimpanzees for research. Now the lab's apes live on a series of islands that were originally set aside for their retirement.

We trekked deep into Liberia to visit the island and investigate the legacy of the researchers who called it home.

Up to three-quarters of women have admitted faking an orgasm, and a third of those fakers reported faking it "every time." Do you think you can tell the difference? We got five porn stars to provide us with two videos; one of them having a real orgasm, and one of them having a fake orgasm. Underneath each video we reveal which is the genuine orgasm. See if you can guess:

Follow Jules and Jamie on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user neovain.
Canada’s wait times across twelve major medical specialties have doubled in the past twenty years, and may be associated with as many as 44,273 untimely female deaths, a recent study from the Fraser Institute has found.

In 1993, the typical wait time from a doctor’s referral to treatment was 9.3 weeks. Last year it was 18.2 weeks. And for every extra week that patients wait, we see an increase in the mortality rate of three female deaths per 100,000 people. In total, wait times may have contributed to 2.5 percent of all female deaths in the country.

“That’s not to say that it doesn’t exist for male mortality as well,” said Bacchus Barua, one of the authors of the study and an economist with the Fraser Institute, a right-leaning think-tank advocating for increased privatization in health care. “But given the present data, it seems clear that it does indeed exist for women.”

The increase in mortality associated with wait times was “likely unnecessary” and “these widespread, systemic delays have important consequences for patients, their friends and families, and the economy,” the study said. The ultimate consequence of these delays—death—most often falls on women.

Barua didn’t want to speculate on why exactly long wait times kill more women than men, but he said that “there have been some hypothesis that it’s possible there might be some gender bias in how doctors receive complaints.”

The evidence of that is strong and even Statistics Canada has acknowledged it. In a stud y that came out in 2010, the government agency said that “women were significantly less likely than men to see a specialist within a month. This could result from systemic gender biases in access to health care services, evidence of which has previously been demonstrated.” StatsCan put it to doctors’ “diagnostic and management practices.”

What does that mean? It means that doctors, a majority of whom are male, white, and come from families with an annual income over $100,000, take women’s complaints less seriously and choose less aggressive treatment options for them, according to Women and Wait Times, a paper by the research group Women and Health Care Reform.

In general, women and men communicate with their doctors differently and don’t have the same experiences of treatment, the research says. The effects of these differences is apparent—for example, even though women have a higher need for hip and knee replacements than men do, when they need them, they are three times less likely to get them.

Colleen Fuller, a health and pharmaceutical researcher who’s worked with Canadian Doctors for Medicare and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, questions the Fraser Institute’s methodology but has no doubt the health care system treats women differently than men. She said the wider issue is access, not wait times.

“The medical system is very patriarchal,” she said. “And not all females are at a disadvantage equally. If you’re older, if you’re racialized, if you’re an immigrant, and now if you’re a refugee, you’ll have more problems.”

In the last fifteen years, doctors have been making more money but working fewer hours, which puts even more barriers in place, Fuller said. “Doctors are the ones responsible for wait times,” she said. “Even though there’s a lot of rhetoric about government wait lists, they aren’t government wait lists. They are physicians’ individual wait lists.”

It is up to doctors to prioritize patient needs and offer as many options as possible. This means their own attitudes constantly come into play. “There is not a queuing system that is fair and equitable,” Fuller said. “And anything that isn’t fair and equitable has more dramatic impact on people who are systemically at a disadvantage.”

The research by Women and Health Care Reform found specific examples of doctors’ attitudes that may cause them to care for women differently. It found that myths about women and their bodies are still pervasive—even for men who’ve graduated medical school.

“Some doctors may believe that women are better able to handle pain, because women can endure the pain of childbirth,” the study said. “Some doctors believe women’s pain is caused by being overanxious and believe that women are ‘overly emotional’ when they report pain symptoms.” The paper also noted that there “is much evidence to suggest that doctors make more errors in diagnosis and choose less aggressive treatment options with women than with men.”

Fuller sees the entire medical system to be based in myths like these. “The philosophical framework around medicine has been driven by a sexist perspective on female sexuality,” she said.

Evidently, doctors’ attitudes toward women are important. In fact, they probably couldn’t be more important, considering doctors are the only strange men we allow to shove various instruments up our vaginas on a yearly basis (unless you’re into that).

It’s for exactly that reason that this issue is intensely personal for many women. Fuller told me she stopped seeing male doctors at the age of 20, when she read in Cosmopolitan magazine that she shouldn’t be taking birth control pills because she has type 1 diabetes. When she asked her doctor about it, he laughed at her.

“For him it was a funny issue, but for me it was about figuring out how to stay healthy and not get pregnant,” she said. “That was the last time I saw a male doctor.”

He probably thought it was a joke that she was getting medical advice from Cosmo a magazine who just published a story about how Paris Hilton now has a pet Unicorn. But Cosmo was right, and in this case provided her with legitimate information about her condition while her physician failed to do so. (If you’re a woman with type 1 diabetes, long-term use of birth control pills may increase your risk of complications because they raise your glucose levels, according to the New York Times. Perhaps Fuller’s physician could have mentioned that before prescribing them to her.)

For many women, it only takes one male doctor being flippant or creepy or insensitive for them to swear off male doctors forever. And when half the population feels uncomfortable seeing two-thirds of the doctors, it’s no wonder they have worse health outcomes. Male doctors may not be able to fully understand the different health concerns of women, but they should strive to empathize, at the very least. Having a uterus shouldn’t be a necessary requisite to feeling compassion. Maybe feeling compassion should be a necessary requisite to being a doctor.
 

@waitwhichemma