Pubdate: Wed, 01 Dec 1999 Source: Jasper Booster (CN AB) Copyright: 1999 The Jasper Booster Contact: PO Box 940 Jasper, Alberta T0E 1E0 Fax: (780) 852-3384 Website: http://www.bowesnet.com/booster/ Author: Peter Glenn ADDICT WITH HIV TELLS STORY George Phillips woke up one morning. He was entering middle age. He was addicted to heroin, cocaine and alcohol. He was HIV positive. "I woke up and I was 40 years old and I had a deadly disease," Phillips told 200 Jasper students during a talk at the Activity Centre for AIDS Awareness Week. While most of the focus of AIDS prevention has been on promoting safer sex, Phillips contracted the virus through sharing needles with fellow drug users. His descent into a dark life of drugs, crime and the streets began early. As a child he was beaten by his hard-drinking father who "wanted to make me a man." Dad did time for manslaughter and robbery and when he wasn't in jail, moved the family from town to town where he'd hold a job for a while, then quit or get fired. As a result, Phillips says he didn't learn to socialize with other kids. He was lonely but at age 10 found that drinking and smoking pot made him feel better. More drugs followed and then a progression into crime to get money to feed his habits. "I'd had a needle in my arm at 12," said Phillips. "At 17, I was in a federal penitentiary doing time for robbery." He said that while for most of his life he was "a functioning addict", working, owning a house and a Harley, getting married and enjoying the free-wheeling biker lifestyle, cocaine eventually brought him to lows he'd never imagined. He ended up on skid row in Edmonton, living with and off the avails of hookers, ripping people off on the street to pay for drugs. It was during one of his attempts to get clean that he visited a doctor about a recurring skin disorder. When he told the doctor he'd contracted Hepatitis "C" from sharing needles, the doctor told him to get an HIV test too. When Phillips got the call telling him the test was positive, he relapsed and went back on heroin for four months. Phillips was frank with the students, admitting that he gets a bit of a high from speaking to groups of kids because it makes him the centre of attention, something he never learned to be without drugs. But while he copes day to day, Phillips is a realist. He's been straight for six months now but knows that even if he licks his substance abuse problems for good, the disease remains. "Life is better being clean and sober but there's so much I wanted when I cleaned up that I can't have. I can never get my health back. I can never get a good job because I'm too weak to work. I wanted a relationship with a woman but I'm too afraid to pursue one." Students asked Phillips about life in jail. "It's brutal," he said. "Not at all nice." When asked whether he'd infected anyone else, Phillips said he doesn't think so but says he may have if he had the disease for a long period of time without knowing it. "The problem is most of the people I had contact with were prostitutes and users. They don't use their real names so it's hard to get in touch with them." For the same reason, Phillips believes there are many more than the estimated 15,000 people infected with HIV in Canada. "A lot of them are afraid to get tested." He told students he's trying not to live in the past and that Edmonton's Living Positive, an HIV support group, has helped a lot in that regard. But that he hopes his experiences will help others stay clear of the kind of life he led. "Maybe some of you will think: that's a pretty shitty lifestyle. And it is." Phillips also warned that there's no such thing as 100 per cent safe sex and that while AIDS is a killer other sexually transmitted diseases, like gonorrhea and venereal disease are still common, just less talked about. "Abstinence," he said. "is still the safest way." - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake