Nine and a Half Years Lost to Ignorance

Summary

Nine and a Half Years Lost to Ignorance shares addiction, HIV survival, and resilience at hiveaid.org—revealing lessons of recovery, hope, and renewal.

Nine and a Half Years of Fleeting Life Wasted started in early 1987. A Lack of Knowledge led to becoming hooked on crack cocaine. From the start of my addiction, I knew that the consequences of my habit would be severe.

My life would be totally subjugated to it. There would be wreckage of all my hopes and dreams. My computer hardware career would be destroyed. Everything else conducive to a wholesome and fruitful life would also be demolished.

I allowed the weakness of my mind to transform me into a slave in bondage to my own desires. I knew there was hope for me. Getting my act together required total abstinence from my drug of choice.

Now, I felt that I was looking at myself from a remote place that I once inhabited. Everything was surreal and lacking any sense of genuineness as I muddled along in the grip of my drug craving. I cried. I prayed for the strength to escape the ghastly predicament I had foolishly placed myself within. I was ashamed of myself. I kept as far away from my family as possible. I did not want them to see what I had done to myself.

At this early stage in my addiction, there was a faint ray of hope. I believed I would strap my groans and get it back together. I had the wish to do so. During the next year of 1987, this tiny ray of hope ended. I received a death blow. I was told that I was HIV positive. I was informed of this diagnosis at a blood bank. I frequented it to get funds to support my habit. On that day, I not find work.

Needless to say, this news was like being shot in the head with a cannon. At this time, in the middle eighties, most people thought that a person with HIV had six months to live. Some believed they had a year at most. I believed what I was hearing about my illness and based on that information I utterly gave up on life.

What was the point in being drug-free when I only had six months to a year at most to live? I isolated myself even when people were all around me. I anticipated becoming very sick and dying miserably with every cold.

I waited for the moment of my demise for nine and a half years. I was living in the wasteland of a drug-controlled life. With every cold, I prepared myself for the coffin. This was the consequence of my scourge that I understood. I placed my confidence in the wisdom of mortals. I wallowed in my death garment. I went about making money to support my drug habit.

Now my cries and my prayers were two-fold. At that time, I was a believer, and I prayed to gain my freedom from drug addiction. I also prayed that this wicked plague is taken away from me. Nine and a half years were taken by drug use. They shattered an already brief moment to experience physical life. I placed my confidence upon the carbon-based. I did not cement my cries and prayers with celestial faith.

For nine and a half years, I lived as a vagabond. I was a vagrant in my disease-infected body. I drifted in my loathsome mind. I wandered as a lifeless spirit because of my lack of knowledge.

This is not an epitaphic discourse about physical existence and spiritual death. It is so laughable that a fool and their aspirations are quickly disjointed. This happens when they place all their assurances on maggot food, like they are. They should look towards the true knowledge base that surpasses the breath and makes void the shovel.

For nine and a half years, the count is finished. The hours are a total waste because a little knowledge is a grand destroyer. If the knowledge that one does have is not seasoned with wisdom, time becomes a looter. This only happens if one surrenders and does not stand up to fight against the odds and the general consensus.