Hi all, For about half a year now I've been suffering with having this HIV fixation. I know it's a touchy topic, but I'll tell my story anyways. It started when I went to Germany to study abroad for a semester. For the first month I didn't make much of it, but then I went to this rave and things changed. I had taken 2 x pills and something psychedelic, so I was very out of it the whole night. Maybe it was the bathrooms, but I got this idea fixed in my head that I wasn't being careful enough and that I may be infected by a virus. At first it was herpes. Then I remembered that I had sex with this girl back in the states without a condom. I knew her fairly well, and I even worked up the courage to ask her about it and she said she was fine. It was comforting, but i still couldn't stop thinking about it, especially in the presence of the opposite sex. I felt like everyone knew I was thinking about it, and that I was making social situations uncomfortable. I mean, I myself wasn't really worried for myself, like my health was at risk. It just bothered me that I couldn't know for sure so I went and got tested shortly after the rave. And this is when the weird stuff would start happening. I was very anxious about it, and I'd be biting my lips. Once, right before I was getting the test results back, me and a few friends (some of the people I had just met) went out for drinks and we all tried each others drinks. Now my lips had a loose scab from biting them, and after sharing the drinks with my lips in that condition (which I really shouldn't have) I was convinced that I'm cursed or something. Like my own worries have cursed me into a paradox. The test came back negative, but now i had this drink sharing incident on my mind. I asked professionals and most of them said they were pretty much 100% percent sure you don't get infected by sharing drinks, but i couldn't convince myself. In my head, if there was the slightest doubt about it, I felt like it was my human duty to be responsible, and to abstain, eventhough all I wanted to do was get laid (I mean I was oversees, I'm young etc...) And this is were my mystification of my anxiety took deeper, ethical levels. I kept thinking that I shouldn't have shared those drinks, because in our Capitalist world that is too "brotherly/sisterly" and that the economic energies were punishing me for it. I started thinking that I'm a bad person for wanting sex, and that it was some higher power's way of weening me off it. I felt like I was being punished. I felt uncomfortable in clubs. It felt like my unrational mind was winning over my rational half. I knew the odds, I knew that it's near impossible to get infected that way, but I also knew that I could never be 100% sure. No one ever talks about AIDS openly, so I didn't know what to think. It became a moral dilemma, and I started thinking about what other people might do in my situation. I talked to some close friends about it, but it didn't help much, probably made them have a weird opinion of me. I felt dirty, not fit for society. I was scared of touching things. I turned into a complete hypochondriac. Needless to say, I still managed to hook up with a girl, and guess what, the condom broke. It made the experience uncomfortable and not worth this magical experience that it should have been. Plus, i kept thinking that the only thing that brought me and this girl together is our common anxiety about being infected. Then I started pondering about whether she was infected (we never talked about it), or whether I infected her. Either way that was about 10 weeks ago, and I got tested at 2 months after the experience (at which point the results should be about 95% trustable) and I plan on doing a followup. Still the other day, another thing happened that screwed with my head, making me think im cursed in this fixation that I'll never know for sure. I had broken a bottle at a friends house, and i had to pick up the shattered glass. Now i noticed some cuts on my hand, so when it came to saying goodbuy, when this one dude whom I'd just met went to shake my hand I just gave him the knuckle pound, which is fine, but like 20 minutes later, I shook a bunch of people's hands. Now at that point i had a cut on my pinky, which was dry, and probably wouldn;t touch anything, but earlier i had also noticed a very very small cut on my palm, which i couldn;t really find when I chekced my hand in the car ride home. So I'm pretty sure I'm fine, but now I feel like a douche for not trusting people, thinking that my friends have AIDS. I'm sure that's not very healthy. Either way, I'm pretty sure I'm fine, especially after I do my followup test, but again, can I be a 100% sure? How much longer is this going to have to go on. I know people can sense it on me when I worry about it, and I feel like women are starting to look at me like I'm some kind of dirty bastard, and making assumptions about my lifestyle (like i shoot up or take it in the ass). Does anyone have this same kind of problem, and if you do, how do you deal with it? I know this is all stupid, I'd just like to hear some advice on how to cope with this. Thanks for reading my lrather lengthy story.
I'd say its just a little paranoia. If it worries you keep getting tested and let the results reassure you, and of course, don't do anything that would put you at high risk, like sleeping with South African hookers.
haha.. i had some anxiety.. but i mostly forgot about it.. then remembered last friday after i woke up from a nap. so i went & got the results && 100% HIV free.. i knew it was no big deal
