‘I have had 92 years ... isn’t that long enough?’
Dr Ivor Browne doesn’t think we should aspire to living for as long as possible, finds Niamh Horan
PSYCHIATRIST Ivor Browne has a reputation for challenging consensus thinking. He locked horns with the Catholic Church in support of Phyllis Hamilton. He also spoke out about the overprescribing of psychiatric drugs. He tackled — and helped to change — the country’s attitude towards mental illness. Now, as Ireland emerges from lockdown, his thoughts on aging and death are those of a man who has lived a live less ordinary.
Browne does not hold with the much advanced view that we must ‘‘preserve life at all costs’’. He doesn’t see the point of living as long a life as possible and questions the quality of life among some of the elderly.
Although in his tenth decade, he didn’t cocoon when Covid-19 was shutting down the country. And the government warnings? “I didn’t pay much attention. I am not interested in perpetuating my existence any longer than I have to. So I’m not taking any measures to try and prolong my life. I have been around long enough.”
He believes “it would be better if God took me”, although his admirers would presumably say otherwise.
The writer Sebastian Barry and the poet Paul Durcan count him as a friend, while the playwright Tom Murphy once modelled a character on him. Browne has also been credited with changing the lives of several well-known names. He “dried out” Ronnie Drew, as a psychiatrist to the Dubliners, and the author Colm Toibin credits him with helping him unleash “unexperienced” pain over his father’s death.
Asked why he wouldn’t wish to go on, he is stoic. “Well, why would I? I have had 92 years. Isn’t that long enough? Too long,” he says.
“I don’t mind if I have to continue to 95 but I certainly don’t want to go beyond that. I don’t want the €2,000 that Michael D [Higgins] is to give me if I reach 100.”
Like Bette Davis, he believes old age “is not for sissies” and adds: “It’s to be avoided as far as possible.”
Of those who died from Covid-19 in nursing homes across the country during the past three months, he believes that passing on was ultimately a blessing for some, especially those with a poor quality of life.
He himself is “in reasonable health”. He walks most days, often climbing Dalkey Hill. And he has a contrarian’s advice for the over-70s who have chosen to remain indoors during the lockdown: “Get out there and stop all that nonsense.”
If they are still afraid to embrace loved ones or venture beyond their front doors, he says “they need to see a psychiatrist”.
However, Browne does acknowledge and understand the forces that have led to a cautious approach.
“People are afraid of death,” he says, but they should “accept the reality. Death is only a transition to a different reality. In a sense, there isn’t any death in terms of [someone] ‘disappearing’. It might be good if we did disappear, but I don’t think that’s the way it is.”
Over the years, his relaxed attitude towards death has been informed in part by the writer Anita Moorjani, author of the bestselling Dying to be Me.
Moorjani detailed how, in 2006 — after four years battling cancer — she fell into a coma and “a completely different type of perception kicked in”.
When doctors told her husband her organs had shut down and there was nothing they could do, she wanted to cry out: “It’s OK, darling. Don’t listen to the doctor. I actually feel great!” Moorjani was resuscitated, made a full recovery. She has since travelled the world telling her story.
After hearing her speak in Dublin, Browne says he came to the realisation that “it doesn’t sound like there is anything to be afraid of ”.
The meaning of life, he says, “is that we are here and we should live in the present moment”.