LIFE AND DEATH OF ERIC BROWN
Body piercer committed to the art
For Ottawa's Eric Brown, body piercings, implants and tattoos were a form of artistic expression, a means to the discovery of his true self.
“I didn't do this to be different, I did this to be me,” he once told an interviewer. “It makes me feel better about myself as a person.”
Brown was dedicated to extreme body modification in the way that other people are dedicated to music or painting, and he was willing to suffer for his art: He truly hated being pierced. “It actually hurts. A lot,” he said.
Nonetheless, he split his tongue, sliced off his nipples, modified his ears, nose and genitals, tattooed his eyeballs and pierced many parts of his body.
“There was not a body part, head to toe, that wasn't modified in some way,” said Leanne Aubin, 27, a friend and former partner.
A professional body piercer and an aspiring jewelry designer, Brown died in June from a massive drug overdose after a struggle with mental illness. Toxicology reports show he had 10 times the lethal amount of carfentanil in his system. He was 27.
“He was my everything,” said his mother, Chantale Brown.
Brown was 15 years old when she turned her back on drugs, alcohol and rebelliousness after becoming pregnant with Eric. “My life started the day I found out I was going to be your mother,” Brown told her son at his funeral service. “You saved me.”
Eric grew up in Ottawa and Smiths Falls. He liked to snowboard, skateboard and play video games, particularly World of Warcraft. He played guitar and painted. At one time, he dreamed about being a surgeon.
“He was always very brave and wanted to try everything,” said his grandmother, Claire Brown.
Eric received his first tattoo — a bar of music on his left forearm — at 16. Two years later, he launched his first body modification by splitting his tongue with a razor blade in his bedroom.
Eric had always been fascinated by African tribes that practised body modification, and by the time he was 21, he had added face and eyeball tattoos, along with silicone horns to his forehead.
His mother and grandmother worried about what Eric was doing to himself, but remained supportive.
Eric said he wanted to be in control of how he looked since he didn't like his appearance. “Some people get cosmetic surgery. Some people like body building. I like to tattoo myself and do implants and get piercings,” he told local filmmakers in 2015.
Aubin said she believes Brown used body modification to change how he experienced his psychological pain. “It's almost like a way of controlling it, the pain you feel,” she said.
Brown worked as a full-time body piercer until 2017 when he lost his job following a widely publicized incident involving his then-girlfriend, Catt Gallinger. He gave her an eyeball tattoo, but Gallinger's eye leaked purple ink after the injection, a procedure known as sclera staining.
Though Brown insisted he had done nothing wrong, his career in the tattoo parlour business was finished. “That's when he really started to go downhill,” his mother said.
Brown struggled with depression, and was also diagnosed with anxiety and borderline personality disorder. But determined to send his life in a new direction, he enrolled in a jewelry arts program at George Brown College last year. He even removed most of his piercings.
His first term, however, was interrupted by the pandemic and his mental health worsened while living and studying alone in Toronto.
After he returned to Ottawa, he reached out to his family doctor for higher dosages of his medication, but she refused. Brown spoke openly about wanting to end his life. He lobbied for the right to medical assistance in dying for those with mental health issues. He had the words “do not resuscitate” tattooed on his head.
Chantale Brown said her son received little help with his illness.
Weeks before Brown's death, his family held a “suicide intervention,” in which they gathered to tell him about how much he was loved. Brown was undeterred.
Chantale Brown said her son looked intimidating, but was a caring and vulnerable person.
“Don't be fooled by me,” Eric wrote in a poem read at his funeral. “Don't be fooled by the mask I wear. … For God's sake, don't be fooled.”