Matt's HIV / AIDS Story

Matt

Two things tell you all you need to know about Matt: 

His favorite tattoo: 

“It’s an abstraction of Thor’s Hammer on my chin. People can interpret it in any way they wish, I didn’t want to pigeonhole it, but to me it’s a symbol of inner strength and power.” 

And his voice-mail announcement: 

“Hi. You’ve reached Matt’s cell phone number.  Make it short and sweet.  I don’t have time to listen to everybody’s bullshit. Thank you. Bye.”

If the 43-year-old Navy veteran and one-time iron worker is focused and to the point, it’s because, as someone who is a recovering drug addict, he knows all too well just how manipulative drug addicts can be, and what “bullshit” can come with that.

“If you’re an addict and you’re really trying to get your fix, you learn a lot of little tricks to get people to do what you want them to do.  If you go to all this trouble in order to destroy your life, why wouldn’t you do that to improve your life?” 

Matt, who is also HIV positive, is in a unique peer-to-peer position to make that compelling case. He is a client and volunteer intern at the Lower East Side Harm Reduction Center in New York City.  The organization is dedicated to the preservation of life through counseling, syringe exchange, condom distribution, education and practical strategies to prevent the transmission of HIV/AIDS, HVC and other harmful diseases among injection drug users. 

In his role at LESHRC, Matt offers information not only to clients but also through community outreach.  On a frigid night in late fall, he is carrying clean needles, condoms and other harm prevention materials to help fulfill the LESHRC mandate.  He is walking along the streets where he himself was once homeless, seriously addicted, and sleeping in cardboard boxes under piles of discarded clothes.  He has known the harassment of police officers, the looks of pity, contempt or indifference on passersby, the desperate feelings of loneliness and depression just waiting to be allayed by the next fix. 

“I try to give people a little bit of hope who  might not have anything else going for them. A lot of my friends out here on the streets don’t have anyone else in their lives, especially this time of year.  I’ve been through it. I had one of the worst heroin addictions of anybody I know. And if I managed to navigate the system –as tough as it is—and to make a decent little life for myself, then maybe they can too.”

That knowledge was very hard won.  Matt knows only too well how tenuous life can be for those who have struggled with addiction and who are now coping with HIV/AIDS.  He grew up, impoverished and the oldest of four, in a small Kentucky town. He had a loving and supportive family but always felt like a misfit. 

“I was the fuckup, I guess, the experiment.   I share the same birthday as Beethoven so that probably accounts for my love of music, my deafness and my insanity.  I couldn’t wait to get out of Kentucky so I joined the Navy and I went from this seventeen-year-old kid who’d never known anything but weed to people pushing dope on me only a couple of weeks out of boot camp.” 

For Matt, the military was a gateway to adventure -- but also to addiction.  In the course of his first tour of duty during Desert Storm, Matt purchased a kilo of heroin with some fellow soldiers in Izmir, Turkey. That began a spiral of addiction which would plague him for the next two decades.  He would become intermittently clean but was always vulnerable to relapse.  He knew himself well enough that when he received orders for a second deployment to the Middle East, he went to his commanding officer and told him that the availability of dope there would be a danger to him.   Since he had confessed to addiction rather than having been caught using drugs, he was given an honorable discharge, which afforded him the opportunity to clean up his act through VA hospital services.

Matt would avail himself of VA rehab from time to time but a nasty divorce in 2002 gave him the excuse he seized on to go back to serious drug use for most of the decade.  It was during this time that he first became aware of the clean syringe exchange at LESHRC. 

For the next 8 years, Matt participated in the clean  syringeexchange and thinks that this helped him to avoid infections from his drug use.  However, he couldn’t break free from his addiction until, on Labor Day, 2010, Matt decided that “enough was enough.”  He went on methadone, entered intense rehab for 18 months and kicked his habit.  “I finally started giving a shit after a lot of years without caring about myself.  You get to a point where you decide, I want to live. I’ve gotta make some changes.” 

One of those changes included becoming more involved at LESHRC.  He was attracted to its peer-to-peer program tailored to individual needs. There was no stigma, just a warm and welcoming family.  Their motto --“I want to save your life, I don’t want to fix you” -- came with no prejudgments.  He worked with the agency to establish a foothold in New York, to get an apartment through Section 8 and disability from the military.  Matt’s  

association with  LESHRC  eventually led to an internship.  It was a pivotal move because three months ago, again around the Labor Day weekend, Matt learned that he was HIV-positive. He believed that he had contracted the virus from an ex-girlfriend. Prone to depression, he went into an emotional tailspin at first. 

“After I got the results of the test, I did the wrong thing, you know. I just sat at a bar drinking beer, and staring into space. I thought, ‘What am I going to do?’ You know, my life is over. That was my first reaction. But after it kind of sunk in, I thought well, there’s Magic Johnson, right? It’s not a death sentence any more. I wasn’t in the dark any longer. I could take steps to fight it, to beat it.” 

Those steps have brought good news recently. His viral load has gone from 92,000 to barely detectable.  Even more important, he recently told his new girlfriend of his status and she accepted the news with loving support and loyalty.  Life is good. He has his Brooklyn apartment, a collection of bicycles and guitars, a loving girlfriend and a puppy, Prince Bubba of Bedford, who has his own Facebook page.  The blessings have only made him more determined to help others through LESHRC.

“I feel it’s hard for people to get treatment in places like therapeutic communities because they constantly break you down and then expect you to build yourself back up and not everybody can do that, you know what I mean. Some people have been beat down all their life. I’m constantly learning every day about addiction.  It’s a constant fight to try to keep myself clean. So I know what these kids are going through.  They’re like family to me.  We just want to weed out the bullshit, to be seen and heard and treated like a person. It sounds simple.  But it takes a long time, and a lot of help, to get there.” 

Since its inception, The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (ETAF) has always supported syringe exchange programs like the one at the Lower East Side Harm Reduction Center (LESHRC).  According to LESHRC, in 1991 when Elizabeth Taylor started to fund such programs through ETAF, 50% of all injection drug users in New York were infected with HIV.  Today because of robust syringe exchange programs like the one Matt is involved with, only 5% of injection drug users in New York are infected with HIV.  Matt's story is a testament to needle exchange working as a preventative measure against HIV transmission. As an injection drug user Matt was in the "highest risk group," and at the same time, sexually speaking, he is in the "lowest risk group" as a heterosexual male, but through unprotected sex he contracted HIV.  His story demonstrates that it is really not about "risk groups" - it is about protecting oneself from ANY risky behavior that could lead to HIV transmission.  You can learn more by visiting www.LESHRC.org and  www.ETAF.org, or by downloading the  free Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation app on your iPhone, android, and tablet.