I don't understand the desire to get pozzed

[hntnhole]

On 8/12/2023 at 4:46 PM, NWUSHorny said:

there is really no reason to take the risks

For many of us, if not most, this is true.  The depth of the ability of humans to shut certain rational ideas out of their minds is truly amazing.  That said, each guy has to make his own decisions, do that carefully, and live his life on his terms. 

The crucial thing that many miss, is that balanced, intellectual process that must be achieved to figure out what they want out of life in the first place.  

[ErosWired]

5 hours ago, norefusal said:

i'm not sure where your hostility comes from. 

It comes from having been pozzed, coming very close to death from it, living with the hard reality of the way both the virus and the medication needed to stay alive tear down the body, and being forced to change my lifestyle to accommodate the disease, and being forced to confront the fact, every. single. day, that I am HIV positive - and then listening to men go on in ignorance about how great it would be to get pozzed and how they just can’t wait to do it. It comes from listening to men glorify and fetishize a disease that has killed so many people, and try to make it sound like something exciting and fun.

5 hours ago, norefusal said:

fear of being stealth pozed is pretty fucking irrational in and of itself but that's what prep is for. 

If that’s what PrEP is for, then it’s obviously not irrational to worry that it could happen. And don’t kid yourself that it doesn’t happen. More than once I’ve had Tops let me know they just seeded me with a ‘toxic load’. If I get a little hostile about that, sorry not sorry.

[BootmanLA]

21 hours ago, ErosWired said:

Further, conflating those other risk activities with chasing is somewhat apples-and-oranges for another reason: If a racer wrecks. A climber falls, a surfer drowns, or a skydiver plummets to his death, the individual’s results aren’t communicable to the rest of the population.

If the person dies, sure. If not, someone, or a lot of someones, is/are going to bear what could be astronomical health care costs as the result of his willingness to risk severe injury or death in pursuit of ... what amounts to a high.

21 hours ago, ErosWired said:

The argument that health care in a well-ordered society would be the equal responsibility of all taxpayers doesn’t carry much water - it only means the burden the chaser unnecessarily places on other people gets evenly distributed so that his self-centered choice has a negative impact on everyone. There’s a difference between being willing to support persons whose luck or skill has failed them, or even people who have made poor lifestyle choices, and being willing to support persons who have actively engineered a misfortune that need not have been, and that threatens to harm others.

I frankly don't see the difference between poor lifestyle choices and chasing. They're both choices. They both have predictable (if uncertain) effects. Some chasers don't succeed; some obese smokers don't have heart attacks. But enough people in both situations do suffer those consequences. We don't, in general, challenge people's right to "socialized" health care (even if it's the quasi-private employer-subsidized group plan type we have in this country) because they are obese due to diet and lack of activity. We don't, in general, tell people they're ineligible for insurance if they go base jumping, even if that's one of the riskiest activities there is.

People make deliberate choices every day, sometimes for a lifetime, that directly impact the amount of health care they will require from the system. I get that chasing is perhaps the most extreme example of that, but in a very real sense, just having unprotected sex (once it was known that such activity carried the risk of a fatal disease) was no different, at least pre-PrEP. You can say it was "luck" that kept a lot of people negative, but an awful lot of them contributed to their "luck" by not having bareback sex. 

[ErosWired]

34 minutes ago, BootmanLA said:

People make deliberate choices every day, sometimes for a lifetime, that directly impact the amount of health care they will require from the system. I get that chasing is perhaps the most extreme example of that,

I think the difference I see, from the perspective of society’s willingness to take on part of the cost of care for, say, smokers or those who have become obese by consumption, is that the society (at least in the capitalist world) implicitly acknowledges those conditions as a result of allowing an free-market economy in which enormous profits are generated from a system that encourages the population to consume sugar and addictive substances. The society has held its nose and allowed these ills to metastasize within it for the sake of profits. Eliminating the ills would eliminate the profits, so the society palliates the sufferers in order to perpetuate the profit machine.

There is no such cash cow inherent in HIV chasing, save possibly in the very limited interest of select pharmaceutical companies (and down the line, potentially, the mortuary trade), and such profit as there might be is only to be made because it is involved in the care needed to mitigate the harm in the first place. The subject population is too small a subset of the total population to make the calculus work as a societal interest in perpetuating pozzing - there’s no money in it. For the cookie companies - and their shareholders - the cost of treating the obese looks like a cost of doing business; with pozzing, the cost-benefit is all cost and no benefit. 

Edited August 23, 2023 by ErosWired

[BradStevens]

On 8/20/2023 at 10:02 AM, Likesitnasty said:

Probably because people go around asking questions like “why would someone want to get pozzed”.

Some people are turned on by the concept of being sexually extreme. When people go around clutching their pearls like this, it gives those people an objective.

I didn't read this at all at "clutching one's pearls" - that implies that we're prudish, which obviously we're not or we likely wouldn't have become poz in the first place. I too have never really understood the romanticism of those who chase being pozzed. It is certainly nothing that I wanted to have and when I finally tested positive in April 1990 I felt like I'd been given a death sentence. I had probably been poz for 3-5 years at that point.

Clearly those who romanticize this disease did not live through the worst of it, being forced to watch beautiful vital men wither away and die often within months of testing positive. There were no drugs back then and even in the mid 1990s all they had was AZT which had been taken down and dusted off from where it had been shelved due to its toxicity. Boy, I wish that PrEP were available to me back then so I wouldn't have to be in this situation but that's not my reality. I'm one of the lucky ones who is still alive (and relatively healthy) after nearly 40 years of living with this unforgiving and relentless disease. Be careful what you wish for!

[Guest]

I think there’s a big split between the rational and the emotional, especially around this topic. Why do people get into heavy BDSM where they are dominated even hurt yet still are drawn to it? Why do people start taking drugs to get away from their problems only to create a bigger one down the road? Why do people stay in abusive relationships even though they know they should get out or risk dying at the hands of a violent lover? They all have the same issue…something is broken emotionally. It’s not judgement, it’s fact.

anyone reading this likely deals with some demons. Maybe from our parents, siblings, churches, peers, lovers, communities, etc. some just have slight emotional scarring… some of us become self destructive demons. Even when everything is going amazing there’s something in me that wants to tear it down, that says I’m not good enough or not entitled to love or what have you.  Decades of therapy have yet to unseat it.

if…when… I convert I won’t take medication. My mother always said I’d get it. Something very dark would take pleasure in her agony to see her not only be right but to see what happens from it. And the end would be a relief. my inheritors will get a big boost to enjoy life in a way I can’t and then they can forget me.

say and think what you want. Judge me if you’d like. I don’t care… decades of judgement from everyone constantly has created a hardening I can guarantee you can’t get through. But someone asked ‘why’ and I’m sharing one of the reasons. 

to my original point, I know how this sounds logically. But what’s driving this…driving me…is all emotion. And for me, emotion always wins.

[norefusal]

13 hours ago, ErosWired said:

It comes from having been pozzed, coming very close to death from it, living with the hard reality of the way both the virus and the medication needed to stay alive tear down the body, and being forced to change my lifestyle to accommodate the disease, and being forced to confront the fact, every. single. day, that I am HIV positive - and then listening to men go on in ignorance about how great it would be to get pozzed and how they just can’t wait to do it. It comes from listening to men glorify and fetishize a disease that has killed so many people, and try to make it sound like something exciting and fun.

If that’s what PrEP is for, then it’s obviously not irrational to worry that it could happen. And don’t kid yourself that it doesn’t happen. More than once I’ve had Tops let me know they just seeded me with a ‘toxic load’. If I get a little hostile about that, sorry not sorry.

thanks for sharing. we all have our experiences that shape how we view things. it's interesting to hear other people's stories. yours is very different from mine and that's interesting to me. 

having been here a while taking it all in like a sponge i see all perspectives. i personally don't find the site only full of just naive people who act like it will be all rainbows and unicorns once they're poz, although you are correct that that perspective does exist. 

 

[hntnhole]

Discussions, serious sharing of viewpoints on issues like this is the reason I come here.  Thanks to every one of you guys.  

[BootmanLA]

18 hours ago, ErosWired said:

I think the difference I see, from the perspective of society’s willingness to take on part of the cost of care for, say, smokers or those who have become obese by consumption, is that the society (at least in the capitalist world) implicitly acknowledges those conditions as a result of allowing an free-market economy in which enormous profits are generated from a system that encourages the population to consume sugar and addictive substances. The society has held its nose and allowed these ills to metastasize within it for the sake of profits. Eliminating the ills would eliminate the profits, so the society palliates the sufferers in order to perpetuate the profit machine.

I think (and this is just an opinion, not really supported (or contradicted) by any evidence to which I can point, that this is a rose-colored glasses view of why smoking-caused illnesses and obesity-caused illnesses don't generate nearly the opprobrium directed at HIV infection in men who have sex with men, or injectable drug users.

I think it's about the residual effects of moral outrage over gay sex and drug use, because those are things that the powers-that-be (or were) would never acknowledge as a possibility in their worlds. The overwhelmingly straight white Christian men who ran the country (not just the government, but the major institutions of society) could see themselves getting heart disease from a lifetime of rich foods, little exercise, and celebratory cigars on a steady basis. Even those who secretly COULD see themselves getting fucked in the ass by a man were not about to let that become an approved (even grudgingly) source of medical need that society wouldn't object to meeting.

That's changed somewhat, of course, thanks to decades of hard work on the part of a lot of activists (and a bunch of societal changes as a result). But while I am concerned about the spread of HIV, from a public health perspective, I'm not about to start pointing fingers at chasers regarding the health care cost consequences. In my view, there's not a lot of status difference, frankly, between someone who has bareback sex chasing poz tops, and someone who has bareback sex and doesn't do any particular checking to find out the status of the guy dumping a load in his ass. "Knowing" and "Chasing" put the person in the same position as the guy who eats "hamberders" five or six days a week or who smokes a pack and a half of cigarettes a day. 

[JeffSLmmPigDadd]

Yeah I totally agree with you. I’ve been on this site and other sites, for years now. And, well, while there’s a sense of eroticism about being converted (Joining the brotherhood, etc.) I wouldn’t want to wish HIV on anybody, Including myself. If I ever finish one of my stories on here, I try to avoid that specific topic. But again, I understand that there are those who Chase and wish to be pozzed.  If I was confirmed infected, yeah, I would be lying if didn’t think gating/having a biohazard tattoo would be hot.

[Alex60]

On 8/12/2023 at 3:15 AM, btmdad said:

Why would someone want to get pozzed?  

The porn industry has a lot  to answer for glamorous hunky hot gus breeding poz me up  the late Steve Hurley barebacked but in his later scene's wore a condom. Just looking at Aids memorial gay porn actors YouTube Aids related death. Opportunistic infection, overdose, suicide, heartattack The late Cass Mann said it so eloquently in his videos, gay men have created a lifestyle drugs alcohol self destructive way of living  that not worth living  One comment a 19 yrs old young an made was he wished he'd listened to watch Cass Mann video before having bareback sex and being pozzed up. Gay men haven't learnt a thing from the 1st 2nd wave of HIV Aids, except how to live a self destructive lifestyle drugs bareback sex Bugchasing breeding sounds romantic it's a slow suicide HIV meds will make you u =u, until the day an opportunistic infection hits. You can die from liver kidney failure, heartattack, Diabetes..  Dementia Old age or hiv, aids induced, Pick your poison chalice death comes to us all poz and neg 

[viking8x6]

27 minutes ago, Alex60 said:

The late Cass Mann said it so eloquently in his videos, gay men have created a lifestyle drugs alcohol self destructive way of living  that not worth living...

He overstated the case. Gay men (or some of them) may have glorified that lifestyle, but we certainly didn't create it. Just ask Caligula.

Quote

HIV meds will make you u=u, until the day an opportunistic infection hits.

Though an opportunistic infection will be a lot less likely if you start meds early and thereby preserve your immune system from destruction. Besides, you could just die in a car crash first. Or commit suicide. I know, I'm just a fucking ray of sunshine...

 

I'm not trying to say that your original point isn't valid (it completely is!).

But there are a whole lot of gay men out there, both HIV+ and HIV-, who don't deserve to be tarred with that brush. Plain ordinary gay, or bi, or "straight" (kinda) men, who have ordinary lives, and spend most of their time doing mundane things and having (or too often not having) mundane sex, neither of which resemble porn in the least.

 

[norefusal]

i'll never understand the conservative perspective. 

it's shocking to me in 2023 to read on BZ of all places sentiments like " porn/ hollywood made me do it" and "all gay men are immoral hedonists perusing sex, drugs and rock n roll, that's why they're all diseased" etc 

[brnbk]

On 8/20/2023 at 12:10 PM, hairyone said:

I hate being poz.

I hate the sympathy/pity from others when discussing my health.

I hate the discrimination from men who won't have sex with poz guys even though I am undetectable and can't transmit it to them.

I hate not understanding why someone wants this.

 

I am sorry to hear you feel this way. As a gay  Asian man I have experienced a lot of what you describe. Sometimes the gay community can not feel very supportive, and just plain hostile🕳️... but I hope you feel the love at times as well!,  💜

[ErosWired]

On 9/21/2023 at 2:50 PM, Alex60 said:

HIV meds will make you u =u, until the day an opportunistic infection hits.

This is not what happens. Opportunistic infections are called that because they take advantage of the opportunity presented when an individual’s immune system is incapacitated by the virus and unable to defend the body. These infections are types of illness that the body normally has no difficulty beating, but that have a chance due to this window of immune failure.

An HIV positive person does not reach a state of Undetectable/Untransmittable until his medication has the virus in his system controlled to the point that it is no longer significantly replicating itself, which allows the body’s immune system to begin to recover. Once that recovery reaches the point at which prophylaxis is no longer required, the danger of opportunistic infection is no longer at issue.

HIV isn’t what nearly killed me - opportunistic infections did, namely double pneumonia followed by fungal meningitis. Even after I survived, I still fell prey to some small-time thug opportunistics like candidiasis and molluscum that healthy immune systems swat down easily, but act like bullies when they get the chance. I had to take prophylactic antifungals for months to make sure some random spore didn’t punch my ticket. Once my CD4 count hit 200 again, however, my immune system had recovered enough to stop the prophylactics and stand on its own because it was strong enough to beat the opportunistics.

Make no mistake - we’re still immunocompromised, and still at increased risk of getting sick, and getting sicker than we otherwise would have if we were neg with CD4 counts above 500. But as long as a person stays on his meds and stays in a U=U condition, there isn’t a risk of suddenly falling prey to an opportunistic infection. If there were, we’d all have to live in big bubbles.