Anyone barebacked their way through the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and early 1990s?

[Indynudeguy]

Lifelong barebacker here.  Got through the crisis on the East coast then moving to the Midwest.  Never gave much thought to the crisis.  The places I was frequenting were all about raw sex.  walk in, check your clothes, and fuck all night.  I've never  used a condom, looking back, don't remember seeing any.  It was a time for poppers. Raw fuckers and pigs just kept to their own clubs.  Raw was our norm.

[Poz50something]

Started fucking with guys at 12 - I was incredibly lucky at that time - apart from the first time I fucked, both as a top and a bottom, I was almost exclusively a bottom, but my adventures were few in my teenage years. I always tested negative in the 1990s. I was really lucky. I tested poz in 2004, and it was during the health checkup for Canadian immigration. I tried meth in 1998, fucked up my liver, and I became really ill with Hep B when I went through a frustrated phase in Athens Ga, just before I met my hubs. He was convinced that the Hep B decimated my immune system, and my body was unable to withstand the HIV viral onslaught. I supposed it was inevitable; I was through and through convinced that there was this 'bareback brotherhood' which didn't help me one fucking bit, because it's complete fiction. Greg remained negative throughout though. Got on meds soon enough, and U=U. 

 

Edited May 3 by Poz50something

[Poz50something]

On 7/11/2017 at 10:44 PM, BearOKC69_Poz said:

I've stayed on my meds. Have been asked by a couple of out of staters if I would go off them if they came to see me. I would consider it but don't know how long you have to be off them for viral load to become toxic. Probably varies from person to person. The type of meds etc. have a buddy that says it only takes him a few days to become toxic.

don't forget, as you become toxic, the virus becomes toxic to you - I would guess that you'd feel pretty gnarly being off meds for a week or so. I don't know if it's worth that just to 'impregnate' a guy. 

[PozBearWI]

From the OP in 2017 my answer is yes.  Bareback in the 1970's and never stopped.  I did attempt to do some serosorting at times.  

But this has evolved to whether I would start/stop meds to gift.  And TBH I'll look at my own health first.  As it stands I am not on meds and while it is unlikely anyone is going to seroconvert if I fuck them; there are ways we might accomplish it if they were specifically wanting to seroconvert.  

At a point I believe I will start ARVs.  And stopping for the purpose of passing it on is unlikely.  If and when there is an actual question from someone directly to me; I'll figure it out for that instance.  

[BootmanLA]

On 5/3/2024 at 9:46 AM, Poz50something said:

 I was through and through convinced that there was this 'bareback brotherhood' which didn't help me one fucking bit, because it's complete fiction. 

I have mentioned this before, and I'm glad to have backup for it. It's not that we individually can't have supportive poz friends; it's that there's no magical brotherhood that suddenly solves all our problems when we become poz. And there's a whole bunch of new problems to deal with that come along with that status (at least for most of us).

On 5/3/2024 at 9:53 AM, Poz50something said:

don't forget, as you become toxic, the virus becomes toxic to you - I would guess that you'd feel pretty gnarly being off meds for a week or so. I don't know if it's worth that just to 'impregnate' a guy. 

I'm not so sure that's true. The medical community will tell you that you must take your medication every day to keep the virus suppressed, and for a lot of guys, that's probably true. But it's not universal; some guys' innate immune system hasn't been decimated by HIV, and missing a few doses may not have a huge impact on their health. Then again, being off meds for a few days (or even a week) is unlikely to produce the kind of viral levels that are highly likely to infect someone.

The bigger problem with stopping meds for a time and restarting (now that we have such highly effective treatments) is that HIV, if allowed to reproduce, does so sloppily and creates mutations - most of which don't help the virus, but occasionally a mutation will develop that your previous medication won't be able to control as effectively. Then, even if you go back on meds, the mutated version may still keep propagating. Sometimes a med change will be effective, but there are only so many variants of HIV medication so far, and most contain some subset of the same handful of active ingredients. 

[Oldercumslut]

I was on active duty during that time frame.   Wasn't that active and a lot of my MM contact was of th3 “it's not gay if part of a threesome” Sometimes used condoms, sometimes not. Did some rest stop cruising, basically pretty lucky.