From the Star Phoenix about a guy I know.
When people find out he’s HIV positive, Dan says it’s almost like it’s not a surprise to them anymore.
The odd person might jump away when he tells them, but most don’t react at all, "because so many people have it," he said.
Over a cup of coffee with The StarPhoenix this week, Dan — who requested his real name not be used — shared a story that’s sadly not very different from many others in Saskatoon who have HIV, or who are at risk of contracting HIV.
As a toddler, he was sexually abused by his stepfather. At the age of four, he was adopted out from his First Nations family. He had his first drink when he was about 11, and started drinking heavily at the age of 13. After falling in love with a co-worker at his sales job in Saskatoon and being offered the choice of breaking up with her or finding a new job, he and his fiancee left for Edmonton, where they started using drugs. Out of money, they returned home to his parents in northern Saskatchewan. One night 12 years ago, they got drunk and went for a drive. When Dan woke from a coma after the crash, his brother told him his fiancee was dead.
A couple of years after that, Dan started using injection drugs.
He fell in love again. He and his common-law wife, a fellow injection-drug user, both contracted HIV about three years ago. They thought it was from a contaminated needle, but they didn’t know for sure.
His wife died three months ago. "I just completely gave up after that," Dan said. He is currently homeless.
Dan, 33, still uses injection drugs, whatever he can get his hands on — coke and morphine are the easiest to find. He doesn’t like to look at himself in the mirror.
"I don’t like the lifestyle. I don’t like any of it. I don’t like going out to find money and then wasting it," he said.
He dismisses many of the hardships he’s faced as excuses, saying he "chose the lifestyle." But then, ultimately, the drugs take over: "You do stupid things to get them, hurt people you would never hurt — friends, family. The way I was raised is the exact opposite way of the way I’m living."
His adoptive parents tried to keep him away from drugs and alcohol, he said; later in life, his dealer warned him repeatedly to stay away from injection drugs, telling him once he went down that road there would be no turning back. "I didn’t listen," he said.
Dan shares his HIV-positive status with people who ask, especially people he does drugs with.
"People share rigs, people share needles all the time, you don’t really realize how many people do. If there isn’t one there that’s clean, or a new one, you’ll do anything to get what you need."
The biggest emotion he feels is fear — fear that this is the way it will be for him for the rest of his life, fear that his stepdaughters will end up drawn into a life like his.
Staying with family isn’t an option for Dan anymore, he said; he’s hurt them too much.
His birth mother and one of his birth sisters have managed to go clean, which he attributes to strong willpower on their part. His sister used to help others "jug," by injecting drugs directly into the jugular vein in the neck. One man who she regularly injected normally wouldn’t show any affection for his partner, but every time before he got injected, he would kiss his wife. One day, Dan’s sister asked the man why. "Because it might be the last time," the man said.
Dan’s sister laid down the needle and decided to go clean then and there, Dan said.
But he doesn’t have much hope he could do the same thing.
