ODC News Letter
May 2012 -
In This Issue: Life Expectancy Increases for North Americans Living with HIV, HIV Stigma and Awareness - Time to Change our Message, How Neuropathy is Currently Treated, CAC Bowling Outing, Lobby Days 2012, May Events.
Old News Letters...
G.H.
Stone Cold Junkie
My story is familiar to most people - that is too ashamed, embarrassed, and/or remorseful to tell others about. I'm not one to carry a banner displaying my condition. But, after serious thought, I've decided to share my story in hopes that someone won't make the same mistake I did - living the life of a stone cold junkie.
Never could I blame my circumstances on a dysfunctional family - which I did have. My father was an alcoholic who died of throat cancer when I was 21 years old. My mom, after years of caring for us on her own, started dating another alcoholic. However it may be professionally titled - I made conscious choices that got me where I am today, a statistic.
It's also a conscious decision to take care of myself as best as I possibly can. Being a product of the late 60's and 70's era, drugs were the past time of the ghetto; if you didn't get high off of something, you were a square. I never ever was a square, as a matter of a fact I was a black hippie. Alcohol was not my forte; I started right in with the pills - acid - marijuana - and snorting cocaine and heroin at the then early age of 17.
Even by today's standard that's considered late, then it was considered early, getting high at 17 was rare. The Old School is where I attended and learned my bad habits. You hid yourself from anybody who didn't get high - there was no open market like today - everything was kept secret and indoors - you didn't buy drugs out on the street in those days. You only bought or used at someone's house - unlike today.
Heroin became my drug of choice, snorting for years - one day - as a matter of fact the day of my father's funeral - I started injecting my drug of choice. It was August 1975, the same year my son was born. His mother and I used together - over 21 years before drugs tore us apart. Methadone programs, prison, numerous jobs that I couldn't keep because of my addiction to heroin. Somehow or another I never sold drugs for any length of time, always trying to work and hustle to keep my habit satisfied.
I moved here to Aurora in 1990 after separating from my son's mother. Not knowing then what I know now, that Kane County is one of the most infected counties in the state of Illinois. And it was here in Aurora that I became positive in 1991, finding out in prison during a routine physical checkup - I of course was devastated.
The stone cold junkie life had subsequently brought my life to a devastating reality. I now must alter my daily activates severely. Medication is a daily ritual - I didn't take meds until I became ill with pneumonia in 2003. Basically my story is my message. Drugs and sex do not mix. If I don't leave you with but one warning it would be - you mustn't share needles and treat all sexual partners as if they are positive because they could be and not know it is possible! Use protection, get help for your addiction. Life is precious and all too short. It's no joke - this virus, it's a stone cold reality.
G.H.
