It had been a year since I'd been tested for STDs. Honestly, I just didn’t think I needed to get tested more often than that. In that year I had two sexual partners, and we didn’t use protection. Then, I met a girl, and we became friends. Things started to heat up between us romantically, and she asked me when I had last been tested. I told her how long it had been, and she requested that we both go get tested. We decided to share our results with one another too. She told me of a place where I could go and get tested for free without an appointment.

I went to the testing site the next day that I had off work. I waited about 10 minutes to be seen. I was taken into a private room, where all the testing was done. The tester explained to me what PrEP and nPEP were, which was cool because I had never heard of them before. You take PrEP as a way to prevent contracting HIV.

When I was in active addiction, I was having sexual intercourse with men in exchange for drugs. I honestly would have done anything to get my next high. I don’t think I identify as gay or bisexual, it’s just part of the drug world. A lot of people do sex work. Meth was my drug of choice, so hooking up with guys that were also using became my world. I definitely wasn’t using protection for oral sex. There were probably times when I wasn’t using protection for anal sex either. That period of my life is a blur these days. When you’re getting high and not sleeping or eating for days at a time, you forget a lot. My sexual health and keeping myself protected were not a priority for me during that time.

I have been sober for over a year now. When I got sober, I went to a drug treatment program, and I was tested for HIV and STIs there. All my results were non-reactive, even though I engaged in risky behaviors for a long time.

I was really nervous to get tested. I’m not sure why. I guess there was a fear of finding out I contracted something. The unknown of what would happen next scared me. Who would I have to tell? What does treatment look like? What if it was something that couldn’t be cured like Herpes or HIV? My friend was talking about their experience getting tested and asking me when I was last tested. I told them it had been over a year since I was tested for STIs. They were shocked but not in a judgmental way, more of a concerned way. We got into a discussion about how often people should get tested and why it’s important. I told my friend that I use condoms, so I didn’t think it was an issue. They asked me if that included oral sex and when I said, “no” they reminded me that I can contract an STI through oral sex as well.

We kept talking about stigma and sexual health. I don’t remember learning much about sexual practices in school. I remember they separated the boys and girls in maybe elementary school, and we talked about periods and puberty.

I lost a relative to HIV. I was a child when it happened, so I do not really think I understood what HIV was. I knew that they were sick, and I do not think they were taking their meds. It was devastating for me to lose a loved one as a child, especially when it felt like they could have stayed alive longer. I was sharing this story with a woman I am dating, and she asked me how often I get tested for HIV and STIs. I told her that because I mostly dated women, I didn’t need to worry about getting tested as often. Her face looked surprised when those words left my mouth. She asked me why I thought that.

We had a good discussion about transmission rates and how HIV and STIs are transmitted. She reminded me that I do not always know the sexual partners of the people I am sleeping with. There are also still options for protecting myself, like dental dams and insertable condoms.

I was diagnosed with HIV back in 1998. I was maybe 21 at the time, I think. I believe it was at a Walgreens store. There was an outreach program, and somebody there was conducting HIV tests. I believe I found it by just walking by, so I walked in and got tested. What motivated me to get tested was that I had contracted several STIs from the partner that I was dating. After we had broken up, I continued my sexual activity with others as well. I contracted STIs one or two times, and I just figured I should probably just get myself checked for HIV.

When I found out I was HIV-positive, I felt like everything just stopped. My heart missed a pulse. Everything just became slow motion, and I didn't know what to say or how to behave. I was in a state of shock. I didn’t tell anyone about my status for a couple of years, outside of my HIV support group. The HIV testing site referred me to see a doctor, and from there the doctor’s office referred me to the support group for people living with HIV.

It was 9/11, and I got an email from a sexual partner that they had contracted HIV. I went and got tested and found out that I had also contracted it. This was in 2001, so I hid it from most people. I felt shame. I had been using drugs when I contracted it. Before finding out my status I was getting tested maybe once a year.

I had met this person, who notified me of their status, through sex work. I hadn’t gotten into active addiction yet. When I had a client, I would use meth with them if they used it. Then, I would not wear a condom. After I found out my status, my substance use increased, and the sex work decreased. Since there was no knowledge of U=U, I didn't feel comfortable knowingly doing sex work. I think my substance use increased because I was a bartender, and it became very depressing hiding my HIV status or being ashamed of it rather. When I would get asked on a date, I would tell them right away. Then, people would just not want to have anything to do with me or ghost me.

I contracted HIV in 2010, and I found out through a routine doctor’s appointment. I had been having unprotected sex for pretty much 10 years before that test. My cell count was low. I had been without insurance for about 5 years. I got insurance through a job, and I figured, “Let me go to the doctor for a checkup.” I had been having sex with people who were HIV-positive without condoms. I didn’t think HIV was a death sentence, but it was a life-changing event for me. I was a little bit ignorant about it. I didn’t have just HIV; I had AIDS. My CD4 count was so low that it was AIDS, and I was like, “Let me live fast.” I started doing more drugs and risky behaviors. That was my answer to it. I was trying to speed things up, so I would have a shorter life.

I had been using drugs for 23 years, like hard drugs and intravenous drugs. The first thing I ever did when I woke up was hit the pipe. It became part of my routine. To me, sex and drugs were together.

In 2011, I was a pastor of a church. I just wrote my first book, and my wife was cheating on me a lot. I had a mental breakdown. I quit my job at the church. I left my family because it was devastating to me that she could just keep cheating on me like that when we had kids. My wife and I were separated since 2011, but we had sex once in 2012. She was the only sexual partner I’d had since the last HIV test that I’d had.

In 2013, I got a job at a law firm, and I thought I was like back on point, you know. One day I went to lunch with a friend of mine, and they had one of those big buses outside. I was like, “Bro, we got time, let’s go give some blood.” The following month, the health department came to the law firm where I worked, and they were looking for me. They told me I was HIV-positive. It freaked me out. At that point, I had only had sex with my now ex-wife for like 12 years, so it was pretty crazy. I mean, I had no clue. I didn’t know it was associated with my blood.

At the time I was in Atlanta, Georgia, and I had gotten really sick. I didn't know what was wrong, I just knew I didn't feel right. It was unlike anything I've ever felt before. I went and had a rapid HIV test done at the health department. About a week later, I was getting a call on my cell phone, and it was from the health department. They told me I had to go see a doctor and get retested because they said the test was inconclusive.

When I went into a local health center, I was told I had HIV. At that point in my life, I had been doing drugs and things like that. I knew in my mind that it wasn't a matter of if, it was when I was going to find out. My sexual practices were male-on-male, unprotected sex, some prostitution involved, and things like that. I had been all over the country. I had a good 5-6 years of being homeless and basically living off Grindr, which is a terrible thing.

In my addiction, I prostituted a lot. I rarely used condoms because I needed the money. When I was withdrawing from drugs, I really didn’t care about protecting myself. I was told that the person I was with at the time had HIV. He was a drug dealer. I was so in my addiction that, since he had the drugs, I didn’t care really. I had gone to jail one time, and I decided to get tested in jail. It came back positive, so that’s when I found out. It didn’t really surprise me that much, but it was still scary. I didn’t know what to do or where to go. You can get meds in jail, but it’s like they don’t care. It was after I got out of jail that I went and saw a doctor and started meds.

I'm pretty sure I had gotten out of jail maybe two weeks after I had done the test. I went to the hospital because I had some kind of infection or something. The people were going around doing HIV tests, so I said, “You know what, let me take another one.”

I found out I was HIV positive last year; I went with a friend. They were going to get tested, and I figured, “I'm here, why not get it done?” It was my birthday, so it’s only been about a year and a couple of months now since I found out. Before that, I never really thought about it. It had been a few years, like about five years prior to that, that I had been tested. At the time of that test, I was negative for HIV. I was actively using drugs, and I wasn't concerned about my health. I didn’t practice any safe sex. It was just random people sometimes, and you know, whomever I was getting drugs from. There was no protection or safety. At that time, I wasn’t concerned about it. My drug of choice was methamphetamine. I used and shared needles too.

At first, I was just in disbelief. I ignored it for the first week. I had to stew on it. I was angry and I didn't know what to feel. Then I went to see my doctor and he was like, “You know, it’s not a death sentence.”

I had just moved to Florida from Maryland in 2003. I flew up to Maryland for my son’s birthday and got tested then because my family and my doctor, who’s a family friend, recommended it. I was heavily into addiction, and I was very skinny at the time. The doctor recommended that I get tested because he said, “You haven’t been tested in a while. I know you are interacting with the behavior of using drugs and stuff.” He tested me, and it took three days to get the results back then. It wasn’t rapid testing.

They called me and said that my results came back positive for HIV. I thought I was going to die. I didn’t know much about it back in 2003. Computers weren’t that big at that time, so I went to the library and researched it to understand what it was all about. I learned that you can actually live with it and that I can manage it through the doctors.

I was maybe 26 when I found out I was living with HIV. I had fallen sick some kind of way; I got a cold or something. I ended up going to a medical center, and this nurse was telling me once I got in, “do you want to get tested for HIV?” I told her no because I was like “what is HIV?” She said I’m going to test you anyway. About an hour later, she was like, “well I got the results.” She sat down and looked at me and said it came back positive. I said, “positive?” and she said, “yeah,” and I started crying. I felt terrible because at the end of the day I didn’t know where I was going to stand. The nurse said, “if you start the medicine now it can save you” because at the end of the day, I just was sick.

I cried and cried for about two hours, so I said finally I need to call my mom and tell my mom. When I called my mom, she answered and I was like, “mom I got something I want to tell you.” She was like “what?” I said, “I got HIV,” and she started screaming.

Sometime between July of 2020 to July of 2021, I contracted HIV. I had a motorcycle accident where I crashed the motorcycle and went to the hospital from the scene. They did bloodwork and they called me 3 days later and told me I had HIV. I was out for a ride on the bike when they told me, and I tried to kill myself while on the bike right after that news. It was very devastating.

I was in a faithful relationship for 6-7 months at the time. She was negative, and I was positive, so I got HIV sometime before I met her, I believe. I was unconscious so many times while getting high, so my spirit tells me something was done to me while I was high, and I don't remember.

I didn’t think I could get HIV, or I guess I just thought my chances were slim. I don’t know. I guess I just didn’t think about it as much as I did something like Herpes. I’m a straight male, and I don’t have that many regular sex partners. Then, someone was talking about getting tested. They said that they get tested every 3 to 4 months. I asked “why” because that seems like a lot. They said that it’s the recommended time frame for people who aren’t mutually monogamous. My friend explained the different ways you can contract HIV and STDs. They told me info about the rates of transmission among different groups. We ended up talking for almost an hour about HIV and STDs. There was a lot of stuff I had never heard before. They told me of a place where I could get tested and didn’t need an appointment.

As a child I was a sweet, loving, and sensitive boy. I always felt a deep, close connection to my mother. However, I never felt love and acceptance from my father. I was not the ideal version of a son in my father’s eyes. My father would scold me if I ever acted or sounded feminine. From a young age I felt that something was wrong with me, and I would pray to God to please make me straight. I lived in fear and always had to go in a different direction than where my mind and heart wanted. I completely lost myself trying to be as close to the boy my father wanted me to be.

As young as thirteen, I tried to escape this pain and confusion with alcohol and marijuana. When I was sixteen, my father passed away from a heroin overdose. After his passing, I decided that I could not live this lie anymore.

I believe it was 2011 when I found out I had contracted syphilis. I was down here in Florida and was tested regularly. Then, I ran out of insurance because I closed my business. This was pre-affordable healthcare, so I went back up to my house in Michigan. I just figured I was really stressed out, you know, because I was moving and everything. When the TV volume is turned up to 70, and I still can’t hear it, there’s probably something more than stress going on. That’s the most noticeable thing because I only had about 20-25% of hearing in one ear due to the syphilis. I ended up in the hospital, and the hearing specialist had me go in to do a syphilis and HIV test. I got a call like the next day that said, “you need to go to the emergency room right away.”

I contracted HIV and syphilis simultaneously. I went from no issues to nearly dead because they ran tandem. I was in the hospital for a few weeks with intravenous medications.

I contracted HIV from having unprotected sex. This was 22 years ago. Before my child’s mother and I got together, I was tested for HIV and STIs. It all came back negative. We were monogamous. She always said, “nah she didn’t have it,” but I knew I didn’t have it at that time. I got really sick and wound up in the hospital. They told me I have HIV and I was like “what!?” I got that bad and didn’t even know what was going on. It was a shock, but it was like “anybody but me.” It really hit home. After I found out I was HIV positive, I talked to her about it. It wasn’t no angry conversation. She was nonchalant, so I figured she already had it. I just put two and two together.

I started using drugs around when I found out I had HIV. I was using before, but everything got elevated. I was using cocaine, alcohol and sometimes weed. I was in denial and trying to cope. I first went to treatment in 2017.

I am white, 61-years-old, and I am gay. I was diagnosed with HIV on November 21st, 1984. I've survived HIV and addiction for 38 years and I have every intention of continuing. I was told I have this new gay disease. I was put in isolation in the hospital. I found out because I had night sweats, fevers, and swollen lymph nodes. They did a blood test, and my test results were positive.

At that moment, I felt terrified when I got the news. My friends were dying of HIV, and they were dying horrible deaths. I’m pretty sure my mode of transmission was through unprotected sex. I was having very risky sex. At that time, I was high on drugs and alcohol, I did anything with anyone anytime.

I found out I was HIV positive in December of 2020 at 71 years old. I stayed in the hospital for 20 days after they found out what was wrong. I had four or five different things that were going on with me. I had double pneumonia and meningitis. I had gone to the hospital because I seemed to be having a cold that just wouldn’t quit. I figured I needed to know whatever was going on because I wasn't getting any better and I was losing all this weight. They said I had AIDS.

For the life of me I couldn't figure out where I got it from or how it happened. I do realize that my immune system was bad. I had gone to my primary care person to try and figure out what was wrong, and she had told me that my immune system was compromised, and I asked her, “So how do I un-compromise my immune system? What do you do?” and she said, “I don’t know.” She really didn’t give me any further guidance. At the hospital, they didn’t even talk about how I got HIV.