Ending the stigma of HIV starts with changing what we think about each other

“The worst thing you can do to another person is to pretend they don’t exist.”   Oprah Winfrey

First, let me start off by saying that the AIDS Walk 2015 was a great experience. It was well managed and the weather was great. With an unofficial theme of “Ending the Stigma” it was a great success. I applaud the forward action put forth by Ian Johnson and staff at The Center San Diego. However, it brought up some thoughts for me based on my experience in the LGBT community this year.

I recall years ago at the beginning of the epidemic, in our society in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, gays and lesbians were gaining ground in terms of social acceptance. I remember the trend being you were no one unless at least one gay or lesbian person ran in your crowd. It was, as we called it, “chic”. We were very popular in the bigger cities as the disco era was developing and beginning to happen.

HIV/AIDS – the silent killer was just around the corner. In fact, in the Manhattan social scene, the party scene, it began to be known that there was a disease festering among us, and that to the privileged, the rich and the famous, it was a good time to get out. The party was over, or at least about to come to an end. And it did.

That brief advancement of our community was short lived. We would soon have a dark cloud over us, a stigma attached to gay men that we were clearly facing a long, hard battle of a modern day plague of AIDS. When it first came along, it affected mostly gays, back alley junkies, prostitutes and generally people considered to be on the fringes of society. That is where the negative stigma was born.

Yes, I was one of the cats playing in the sandbox on Fire Island when the New York Times reported that a rare cancer affecting gay men in New York and San Francisco had shown up in 41 homosexuals. That’s how we were referred to at the time.

Today, we have come extremely far both in societal acceptance as well as HIV treatments, prolonging the lives of persons with HIV to say the least. Yet it still runs rampant in our community and new infections are at an all- time high. We all know the numbers and they are nauseating.

Bravo to all the participants in the #bethegeneration program, a cause committed to ending new infections in San Diego County by the year 2020. Illicit drug use and HIV infections are linked together like never before. Needle exchange programs are still not easy to access and remain against the law. I hope you are wondering why, when all this has been said and done, that I think it is necessary to bring up. Aren’t we all tired of HIV/AIDS in the press after a battering 20-30 years of coverage?

First of all, if we, all of us, are to make even a dent in new HIV infections, we are going to have to go through a radical change in our thinking and understanding of “those people”, you know, the ones still on the fringes of society. The homeless, the drug addicts, the mentally ill, etc. etc. The ones who hang out in front of the Center and cause trouble for everyone, and some are afraid of.

People suffering from addiction hold a consistent commonality to each other. They, by in large are the abused, and suffer ongoing abuse from our own community. We are our worst enemies.

According to Gabor Maté a well- known expert in the field of addiction and author of In the realm of Hungry Ghosts, many, if not all of his patients suffering from addiction have been either sexually, mentally, or physically abused, neglected, emotionally and otherwise abandoned.

In the formative years of the brain of a child, it seeks safety and a connection to the mother, without which, the child underdevelops key brain chemicals responsible for the feelings of attachment, a sense of love and belonging, an overall sense of well- being. In essence, developmentally disabled in these key brain functions. Let’s talk about what we see everyday.

These people, who belong to us and our society, someone’s brother, uncle, sister daughter, son and cousin, belong to us. As the great Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz says, “Nothing records a sad life as graphically as the human body.” They lose everything. They lose their teeth, money, standing in society, jobs, careers, relationships, marriages, beauty and health.

Yet, nothing, absolutely nothing can shake the addiction from them. They often die early from HIV, Hep C, infections of the heart valve, infections of the brain, spine, kidney failure, blood infections, overdose, suicide, violence and accidental deaths.

So, the question is not what’s wrong with the addiction, but what’s right with it. That’s right, what does it provide in these people that is missing in their lives?

Drugs by themselves are not addictive. What is addictive is the effect it produces. If the brain chemicals are not there to begin with or underdeveloped, and the person uses a chemical ,when these chemicals hit the brain, they provide an endorphine rush to the brain. It produces dopamine, providing a sense of peace, control and the calmness of a warm hug, the very things lacking in the first place; the things that are naturally in place for most of us. Is the person going to continue using these chemicals which solves their problem, temporary or not? You betcha!

Yet our society looks down on these people having lost everything.

They see other people going about their lives with a sense of ease and comfort and can only dream of. They believe it’s their fault they cannot. Most of society believes it’s their fault, so we treat them as such. So what’s the link between this and HIV? If someone with HIV feels no one cares for them, they do not inherently posess the ability it takes to care for another. Sociopathic, if not psychopathic.

Furthermore, when a person is under the influence, they tend to make poor choices and bad decisions about everything. Remember that last time you were drunk?

The stigma attached to drug addicts, homeless and mentally ill and hence HIV are often times, if not all times, the same thing. It’s the condition. One usually does not exist without the other. By perpetuating the stigma attached to “those people”, we are in essence perpetuating new cases of infection. Think about it.

Why then, I ask, are we expecting to reduce or stop new infections when we are side-stepping the heart of the matter?

Our collective mistake is to band-aid the problem instead of getting down to it. Here’s the big question: Do we clean it up or green it up. In the book entitled Green, by Yehuda Berg it explains the necessity of treating our problem at its core.

Our physical garbage and our emotional garbage are one in the same.

If we bury our garbage, it must not be there. What we do is pass our garbage to each other, thinking we are making progress. “Those people” scare us because they remind us of ourselves.

How many of us are 2-3 paychecks away from beginning a domino effect which can, very easily, result in the inability to cope with the problems that pile up and become astonishingly difficult to solve.

It is a delusion that we are cleaning ourselves up when in reality we are just exchanging our garbage. You know as well as I do that it is smoldering and festering somewhere. The excess sewage then seeps into the media, entertainment, politics and religion and so on.

In order to reduce and stop new infections, we have to change what we think about each other. Thats right.

Our collective conscience and what transpires through us as a result, will save lives and completely begin to heal ourselves at the core, and in turn save the planet as well .

My point is that the very people we scoff at become our most effective leaders. Often times we come from the worst of circumstances, that’s why they are our leaders. How many times have we heard Nicole Murray Ramirez speak about how she ran through the park on drugs and in drag from former police chief and former Mayor Jerry Sanders, a very funny story. Even Ian Johnson talks about being homeless, living out of his car and on drugs.

With enough time, patience, kindness and understanding, “those people” are tomorrow’s leaders. Bank on it.