Dallas Bragg describes being intentionally infected with HIV by a partner during his first meth use, and how shame from his identity as a gay addict compounds at every turn: medication, disclosure, sex. Recovery, he argues, means peeling back these layers to find an unblemished self beneath the stigma.
The first time I slammed crystal meth is when I contracted HIV because the guy I was with paused me, which means he gave me HIV on purpose. At the end of the night, before he left, he said, congratulations, you have AIDS. That was a traumatic event for me, and any of us who are former meth users who contracted HIV while using can attest that it can be a traumatic event, no matter how you get it. One of the layers of recovery is going to be When you take your medicine, or when you talk about your status, or even when you have sex again, the fact that you've contracted HIV is going to remind you of how you contracted it and what time of your life you did. And it makes it even harder to forget about your meth use. Because look, one day you would like to go on with your life without thinking about crystal meth, right? So there's a layer of shame you have for being gay, there's a layer of shame you have for being an addict, you have a layer of shame for Doing crystal meth, then there's a layer of shame for having HIV. Listen, under all those layers is the beautiful, perfect you. That person inside doesn't have any of those things. So the goal in recovery isn't abstinence from crystal meth. It's coming home to that, that version of you, coming home to self, coming home to that perfect place where none of that is your identity. None of that informs who you are.
