My Story………..HIV and METH – by Charles Strachan

The reason I’m writing this is because I am HIV positive, I have AIDS. WOW, some people might look at me and go, “You don’t look like a guy who sleeps with guys.” Some people might say well, “You don’t look like a guy who sleeps with girls.” And some people who are tone deaf or blind might say well “You don’t look like a girl who sleeps with girls. But the truth is HIV doesn’t care who you sleep with, you just have to be human. That’s why it’s called the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. Now I know that it’s a big transition from this happy clown guy that was on the flying trapeze to… I have AIDS. Let me tell you a little bit how I found out. I tested positive in 1988. I definitely got it though having unsafe sex with someone. I suspected that I might get it because I was somewhat promiscuous in my youth. But you know what? In the back of my mind I kept saying, “It will never happen to me. I’m a strong guy, I have a great body, I’ve got a great attitude, I’m not sleeping with a lot of people.” Well how wrong could I have been? I developed some lymph nodes that were swelling up in my neck, under my arms, and in the groin area that were painful. I found my energy level really went down, down, down. I was suddenly feeling like going to sleep all day long. So I went to see a doctor and he said I may have mononucleosis and that there was evidence of a viral infection and suggested I have an HIV test done. Well In 1988 the stigma associated with HIV was horrendous. People would absolutely walk out of the room. But of course at this point I really couldn’t believe that I could be HIV positive. In those days there was absolutely nothing but AZT. So I went back for the HIV test and I’ll never forget when the lady came in and told me the results. She brought in the piece of paper and threw it down on the desk and said, “Yep, your HIV positive.” And I remember at that moment it was almost like I went into tunnel vision and the whole room behind me was swirling around. It was the scariest thing. It took me six weeks to tell the first person. I was petrified to let anyone know because of the stigma associated with it. In those days it was considered to be a gay disease, or that people got it and they deserve to get it for being promiscuous. The reality is any body can get it and it’s not a gay disease and it’s not a black disease, it’s not a white disease, and you don’t have to be Jewish or short or tall or thin or fat. It really doesn’t matter who you are, if you don’t take precautions you will get it. In 2001, after being HIV positive since 1988, I decided that with all the stress and anxiety that had happened in my life, I was going to become a crystal meth user. Up to that point I had been pretty healthy living with HIV. In the ‘wonderful world of crystal meth‘, I started staying up; at one point I stayed up for 7 days. I went down to 119 pounds. My T-cells came down to eventually 19. Quite honestly, I was ready to check out of life. I in fact got PCP pneumonia and was hospitalized for 4 days with a bill of $46 000. My life spiraled out of control. And then I had made a choice that I wasn’t going to quit for my parents or my best friends or the people who loved me. I was going to quit for me. And I simply never used crystal meth again… period. Needless to say, when I chose to quit crystal meth and decided to see a doctor, I started taking the most modern medication. Now I have 3 years off crystal meth, which I’m really proud of. I quit cigarettes too now for 3 years on December 1, 2008, using exactly the same principal. The truth is HIV and AIDS is still a massive problem in this world, but we are dealing with it and it’s a much more manageable disease than it used to be. But this doesn’t give anyone the right to go out and have unsafe sex or to share needles because it still is a major problem. People are still dying on a daily basis. Especially in countries where there’s no access to the expensive, effective medicines that we have in this day in time.