ADDICT WITH HIV TELLS STORY

George Phillips woke up one morning. He was entering middle age. He was
addicted to heroin, cocaine and alcohol. He was HIV positive.

"I woke up and I was 40 years old and I had a deadly disease," Phillips
told 200 Jasper students during a talk at the Activity Centre for AIDS
Awareness Week.

While most of the focus of AIDS prevention has been on promoting safer sex,
Phillips contracted the virus through sharing needles with fellow drug users.

His descent into a dark life of drugs, crime and the streets began early.
As a child he was beaten by his hard-drinking father who "wanted to make me
a man." Dad did time for manslaughter and robbery and when he wasn't in
jail, moved the family from town to town where he'd hold a job for a while,
then quit or get fired.

As a result, Phillips says he didn't learn to socialize with other kids. He
was lonely but at age 10 found that drinking and smoking pot made him feel
better. More drugs followed and then a progression into crime to get money
to feed his habits.

"I'd had a needle in my arm at 12," said Phillips. "At 17, I was in a
federal penitentiary doing time for robbery."

He said that while for most of his life he was "a functioning addict",
working, owning a house and a Harley, getting married and enjoying the
free-wheeling biker lifestyle, cocaine eventually brought him to lows he'd
never imagined.

He ended up on skid row in Edmonton, living with and off the avails of
hookers, ripping people off on the street to pay for drugs.

It was during one of his attempts to get clean that he visited a doctor
about a recurring skin disorder. When he told the doctor he'd contracted
Hepatitis "C" from sharing needles, the doctor told him to get an HIV test
too. When Phillips got the call telling him the test was positive, he
relapsed and went back on heroin for four months.

Phillips was frank with the students, admitting that he gets a bit of a
high from speaking to groups of kids because it makes him the centre of
attention, something he never learned to be without drugs.

But while he copes day to day, Phillips is a realist. He's been straight
for six months now but knows that even if he licks his substance abuse
problems for good, the disease remains.

"Life is better being clean and sober but there's so much I wanted when I
cleaned up that I can't have. I can never get my health back. I can never
get a good job because I'm too weak to work. I wanted a relationship with a
woman but I'm too afraid to pursue one."

Students asked Phillips about life in jail. "It's brutal," he said. "Not at
all nice." When asked whether he'd infected anyone else, Phillips said he
doesn't think so but says he may have if he had the disease for a long
period of time without knowing it.

"The problem is most of the people I had contact with were prostitutes and
users. They don't use their real names so it's hard to get in touch with
them."

For the same reason, Phillips believes there are many more than the
estimated 15,000 people infected with HIV in Canada.

"A lot of them are afraid to get tested."

He told students he's trying not to live in the past and that Edmonton's
Living Positive, an HIV support group, has helped a lot in that regard. But
that he hopes his experiences will help others stay clear of the kind of
life he led.

"Maybe some of you will think: that's a pretty shitty lifestyle. And it is."

Phillips also warned that there's no such thing as 100 per cent safe sex
and that while AIDS is a killer other sexually transmitted diseases, like
gonorrhea and venereal disease are still common, just less talked about.
"Abstinence," he said. "is still the safest way."