How many of you think that because you’re HIV+Positive you don’t have to worry about catching HIV again? It would seem
to make sense, since when you have most any other disease, say measles for instance, you can’t re-catch it while you’re
still sick with it. And once upon a time it was true that if you were POZ you couldn’t be tremendously hurt for the worse
if another POZ guy (or guys) exposed you again to more HIV. But times have changed, and there is no longer just one HIV
virus out there for you to catch. In fact, the virus you catch today isn't the same virus that went around 25 years ago.
Since the advent of successful treatments against HIV, the virus (like many other viruses known to man) has found ways
to become resistant to certain meds. This in turn creates a need for different meds which the virus will probably become
resistant to over time. Meds also have different reactions in each individual, making it unwise to put every HIV+Positive
person on the exact same treatment regimen. And therein lies the problem.
Let’s say you have a regular bareback fuckbuddy named Charlie, and you and Charlie are each on three different meds (for
the sake of ease, let’s say you are on drugs A, B, and C, and Charlie is on A, C, and D). You have developed a resistance
to A, and Charlie has developed a resistance to C. After sharing loads back and forth, you have both potentially compromised
drugs A and C in your systems, leaving drug B as the sole one to work inside you, and D as Charlie’s only defense. What
Charlie didn’t know is that his old fuck buddy Steve was taking B, C, D, and E, but developed resistances to both D and
E before meeting Charlie, and became resistant to C after meeting him. That means that Charlie’s drug D may someday no
longer work for him, nor will one he isn’t even taking yet… E.
To put it simply, sharing infected fluids with other POZ guys has the potential to dramatically reduce the number of
treatments available to them and to you. If you became infected with HIV from the mid 1990’s to today, you were probably
not infected with pure virgin HIV (unless you are a Bushmeat hunter). The HIV you received likely had resistances to
certain drugs built in. Once you start a drug treatment, your strain of HIV may have the ability to build resistances
to the drugs you are on. If you then infect someone who had been HIV-Negative, you potentially infect them with a more
drug resistant strain than you originally got. And if you re-infect someone who already has HIV, you potentially compromise
the med plan he is on. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that there are tests that can be done to determine which HIV meds a newly infected person will be
resistant to. Such tests can eliminate much of the old trial-and-error treatments that POZ people had to endure in
former years. Since HIV meds are hard on the body’s system, this test is a definite boon to HIV treatment.
Also somewhat good news is that a newly acquired strain of the virus doesn’t "teach" an existing strain how
to be similarly resistant. It’s like having 2 armies that speak different languages working against you inside your body.
At least they don’t gang up on you with the same resistances. The meds that work against strain #1 will continue to do
so. The meds that work against a more recently-acquired strain will continue to do so… unless and until they develop resistance.
What this means for the HIV+Positive barebacker is that he must decide how much risk of drug-resistance he is willing
to take on by having unprotected sex with other POZ men. Only he can decide for himself how willing he is to subject
himself to the possibility of re-infection (or as we prefer to call it here at BarebackHealth.net, "Cross-Infection").
Also to be kept in mind is that along with different strains of HIV, your bareback sex partners may also be giving you
various and sundry STD’s, from chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis to herpes, and hepatitis C. The more that HIV has the
upper hand on your immune system, the more likely it is you will suffer from the symptoms of these other STD’s.
One of the things we ask of every barebacker who comes to this site is that he adopt a practice called "Sero-Sorting"
whereby he limits his sexual encounters to only those men who are of the same HIV status as himself. This is problematic
for POZ barebackers, as it means potentially exposing themselves to these other strains of the virus. The goal, of course,
is to take it upon ourselves as barebackers to voluntarily do what it takes to prevent new infections from happening.
Essentially it means choosing the lesser of two evils for the POZ barebacker. Being POZ is no longer license to fuck indiscriminately as it once seemed to be. The stakes are now higher for POZ men
than they ever have been. We at BarebackHealth.net won’t tell you not to have unprotected sex with other POZ men ~
in fact, we would prefer that you practice sero-sorting to prevent the causation of new infections. But we can
recommend that if you are POZ you should consider these facts and rein in some of the reckless and random behavior. One of
the great lessons for mankind that has come out of HIV is that it never is only about one person. Every time we mate,
every time we fuck, we start a ripple effect that touches many others down the line. Re-infection / cross-infection is
a reality. Only you can decide how much of a risk you are willing to take.