I had shot heroin a couple of times in the 80’s with these people I had just met the same night. It was a hooker and her pimp/boyfriend. The hooker was coughing like crazy. Both of them were hardcore heroin addicts. The guy had done time in prison which is a breeding ground for contracting HIV. And the guy had sores covering both legs.
That’s every risk factor in the book. And being an addict and making poor choice left and right, I chose to share a needle with both of them.
And this was the '80’s, before they had any drugs to manage HIV. People were dying all over the place from AIDS. Back then, being HIV positive was a death sentence. Once you got HIV you could expect to die a slow, painful ,wasting away death. There was nothing anyone could do for you. No one would even touch you because they knew so little about AIDS back then and people thought you could catch AIDS from just touching someone who was infected. This was the climate I was in my drug days.
I found a place to test me as fast I could. I didn’t even consider not getting tested. But I went in and the doctors did their thing and told me I would receive the results in the mail in two weeks. I was scared s*itless; those were the scariest two weeks of my life. I used to have a habit of staying up late back then and watching the news on TV until I fell asleep.
Every night when I was waiting for my results, the news would be talking about AIDS and showing these rail-thin poor sick guys who were wasting away from full blown AIDS. Their loved ones would be gathered around the victims bed as he slowly died because there was little known about AIDS back then. I felt sick with fear and when the results came in the mail I remember feeling so scared I almost blacked out. But I tested negative. I was not going to die! A huge weight was lifted off of my shoulders.
I vowed never to be that reckless with drugs again. I swore I would never share needles again. But unfortunately I was a crack addict and it led me to having unprotected sex with hookers and sharing another needle with a friend of mine who was a hooker and a heroin addict. It was a crazy thing to do.So I went through the whole process of getting tested again. I tested negative again.
Anyways, now that I quit drugs and hookers I am not at risk. But those experiences with needles was the most scared I’d been in my life.