On this site, you will find links to my published articles, particularly my monthly column, “Years of Living Precariously”, for A&U Magazine, my chronicle of the early years of the AIDS epidemic. You will also find other articles, radio broadcasts, podcasts, and video performances.
Please feel free to comment and share, if you feel moved to do so. Comments are always welcome! And thank you for reading.
I can only imagine what they would be like now, this band of brothers, and if we would still be friends. In my mind, they are exactly as they were in the photograph, in their late twenties, laughing on the beach, their lives and careers fully ahead of them.
During a recent half-hearted attempt to organize my life, I discovered a shoebox filled with old photographs. In one of them, four friends are lying contentedly on the soft sand of the Pines beach at Fire Island. They are all gay men in their mid-twenties. They are smiling, relaxed, all sprawled across one large white bed sheet. The sky is clear blue, worthy of the snapshot.
The year is 1985.
A decade later, I would be the only one remaining.
I am not in the photo. I am behind the camera.
Three decades later, I am still here, despite my acquiring the virus in 1984 – a year before it had even been officially identified as LAV/HTLV-III (years later becoming HIV). Through luck, timing, genetics, healthy denial, a pro-active approach or, most likely, a combination of them all, I somehow managed to hang around long enough to benefit from the pharmaceutical cocktail that changed the course of the epidemic in 1996.
David, Martin, Eddie and Garon all made it through the 1980s and died in the next decade, after I had fled the city for the relatively less chaotic haven of Boston. New York had become a war zone, and I was grateful for the opportunity to be offered a job in a calmer city that was also near my parents and the rest of my family. I did not want to die in the New York City hospital system.
I can only imagine what they would be like now, this band of brothers, and if we would still be friends. In my mind, they are exactly as they were in the photograph, in their late twenties, laughing on the beach, their lives and careers fully ahead of them.
These friends are gone, but tangible remnants of their lives remain in my possession. A snapshot of Garon standing triumphantly next to his prize sunflower in Albuquerque; another of a wickedly smiling Eddie at the base of the Eiffel Tower. And so many other photographs, relics in our computerized, digitalized age.
Relics of another time, another place, another world: Burroughs Wellcome, William F. Buckley, Jr., Jesse Helms, John Cardinal O’Connor, the New York Native, African Swine Fever, Louise Hay, Healing Circles, AL-721, the Spike, Jeff Stryker, Larry Kramer, GMHC.
These are names and terms that were second nature to those of us in the middle of the maelstrom, fighting for our lives, to all those who worked and lived in the trenches in the 1980s and early 1990s: the activists and the educators and the infected and their partners and their nurses and doctors. Who will remember these names in ten years? Who recognizes them even know? They are artifacts of that brief moment of history now mercifully behind us: a mere fifteen years, the years between the first cases of gay cancer in 1981 to the advent of the protease inhibitor cocktail regimen in 1996.
History fades if we are not relentless in bearing witness. Even then, even with the most meticulous preservation of an historical moment, there will emerge doubters and deniers.
It has been three decades since that photograph was snapped in the blazing Fire Island sun. I am powerless to bring any of those friends back. But I must remember their names. They must not be forgotten.
They are gone, but I am here. And I can testify, I can bear witness. I can say, ’This really happened.’ The men in that photograph had names, they had histories, they had complexities. They are a snapshot of a generation of lost men.
It’s so important to tell our stories. We have to get our stories out because we’re the ones who remember those early days and you know, once we’re gone, it’s going to be up to history to write the stories instead of us.
If you live in, or will be visiting, NYC this year, stop by the NYC AIDS Memorial Park at St. Vincent’s Triangle on Greenwich Ave. As you walk the perimeter on Greenwich Ave, you will notice placards of 12 survivors who told their stories at the Memorial last year, with photos and quotes from the stories. I am one of them.
It is overwhelming. I’m so humbled to be included with these amazing people, on the site of the old St. Vincent’s hospital, which was ground zero during the height of the epidemic. And it also brings back a flood of memories from the past 40 years. Which is painful, but also necessary. And that’s why we must continue telling our stories.
The installation will be there through December. There are scannable video links to each of our stories, located directly on each placard.
I have posted the link to my vid below, for those who would like to view the entire story (8 minutes.) And you can watch the others on that reel, as well. They are all worth seeing and hearing. There are so many, many stories that survivors have to tell, and they must all be told and carried forth by future generations.
Thank you for watching and listening, and for keeping our stories alive.
On this very evening, 54 years ago, two men walked on the surface of the moon for the very first time. I was 11 years old, and a camper at Camp Mar-Ven in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod.
The significance of the event was lost on us pre-pubescent youth, but we knew it must have been one of those “important events that we will always look back on and remember where we were”, because all of the campers were let out of our bunks, at what should have been “lights out”, and we were ushered in to the rec hall, each wearing our pjs, where a tiny black-and-white TV had been set up. The reception was so poor that someone had to stand next to the TV and continuously adjust the “rabbit ears” that served as the television’s antenna.
Campers and staff alike sat cross-legged, or sprawled, across the floor, in rapt attention of the event that was before us. I remember several of the campers and counselors and staff members. My cabin was particularly challenging, with juvenile delinquent Mitch, obese and bullied David, sensitive me, and my best friend, Doug, on whom I secretly had a crush, even though I was “dating” his 10-year old cousin, Karen. My bunk’s CIT (counselor-in-training), Jimmy, would comb his pubic hair in front of us. Which was bizarre, but, of course, pretty impressive to an 11-year old gay boy in-the-making, who was just beginnng to sprout hair in the proud places.
What I remember most about that night in 1969 was not the moon landing itself, but of many of the details surrounding our special dispensation to stay up late. Huddled around the tv screen, like 1920s hobos around a garbage can fire, we campers, boys and girls, ages 9-15, shared a sense of camaraderie that night. We didn’t know WHY it was special, but we knew it was special, because we were allowed to stay up late.
And when the broadcast was over, and we all ambled back to our respective cabins – sleepy, yet somehow wiser in the knowledge of life beyond Earth, we knew that nothing would ever be the same again, and that tomorrow would be a more knowing, and less naive, day than today had been.
It was the dawning of the Space Age. And now our horizons were so much broader, and our responsibilities so much greater, than those on just this planet.
Of course, none of thus knew that then. Tomorrow would be volleyball, and arts & crafts, and play rehearsal, and color wars. And we would go back to picking on some, and idolizing others.
Life, for a bunch of campers on Cape Cod, would go on just as it had been going on all summer. And tomorrow would be another day.
The earth kept spinning. Yet everything had changed.
For NYC Pride 2023, a reblog of “Last Dance”, my paean to the joy and freedom of claiming my identity, after so many years of shame, duality, and repression. 1981. Just one year later, the AIDS epidemic would begin to decimate our community.
Thank you for reading. 🙏 🏳️🌈
The disco ball above the small, cramped dance floor spins above the sweating, humping, happy men. And there is a flag-dancer on the edge of the crowd, turning and twisting his colored flags. And the ball turns and the flags fly and the men gyrate and everything is colors and music and freedom, freedom, and it is the end of the disco era but none of us know it yet and we dance, we dance, we dance as if our lives depend on it.
Last Dance
Summer 1981. My twenty-second birthday. Midnight. Going to the Anvil, Downtown. The Big Apple! I am a newly minted gay man, exploring this new world, feeling free for the first time in my life, a whole new world opening up to me, a world I didn’t know existed a year ago.
Full moon tonight. Ed, Doug and I take the A train downtown, walk…
Re-posting this piece, in commemoration of HIV Longterm Survivors Awareness Day, which is today, June 5th. As always, thank you for reading. We are still here.
A New Normal Part XIV of an Ongoing Chronicle of the First Fifteen Years of the AIDS Pandemic by Bruce Ward
One Sunday, about fifteen years ago, I was visiting my then eighty-five-year-old father in Massachusetts. We were sitting at his kitchen table, and each of us was silently filling our 7-day pill organizers, top for A.M., bottom for P.M.
That’s when I realized that, at age forty-six, I had been sorting pills much longer than my eighty-five-year-old father. In fact, the process of sorting pills had become completely normalized.
Over the years, I have continually had to adjust to a “new normal.”
I was diagnosed with what then was called HTLV-111, in 1986. This was ten years before the pharmaceutical treatment we all know now as the protease inhibitor “cocktail” changed the course of the epidemic, in 1996.
My T-cell count, at the time the marker for viral progression, was 217. A normal T-cell count is 500–1500.
I was living in New York City, and had already been working as an AIDS educator when I received my diagnosis in ’86. And it was my nature to take the bull by the horns and take immediate action.
Of course, there was little to be done at that time. I found a prominent doctor in the West Village who had a primarily gay practice, and was now steeped in all things AIDS. There were a few experimental treatments that worked in separating the virus from healthy T cells, but only under the microscope.
One such treatment was only obtainable through an underground AIDS guerrilla group, the PWA (People with AIDS) Coalition. It was called egg lipids. So, in 1986, I took the subway to their makeshift office downtown and purchased a huge jar of this viscous, peanut-butter-like concoction, paid them a lot of money, and brought it to my tiny fifth-floor walkup studio apartment in what was then the seedy area known as Hell’s Kitchen.
What you would do is scoop the substance into individual ice cubes, freeze the tray, and, in the morning, pop out one of the cubes, let it melt, and then spread it on a piece of toast, and eat it.
Although the egg lipids did nothing to increase my T cells, I continued to do my daily routine, and, in fact, went to purchase a second jar at the PWA Coalition. And left it on the subway. I probably cried on the street when I realized it. And never purchased it again. Around the same time that I was diagnosed in ’86 and taking the egg lipids, the first pharmaceutical drug was released into the market: AZT. I was working as an educator for the New York City Health Department AIDS hotline, and TIME Magazine came into our offices to photograph the operators for the breaking story. And so my photo appeared, twice—phone receiver to ear, a head full of curly brown hair—on the inside cover of TIME, and again, larger, accompanying the story, under the headline: “A Ray of Hope in the Fight Against AIDS.” I was the unwitting face of hope.
Two years later, in 1988, I began taking AZT, myself. It signified a new marker for me. Now it was serious. I held that tiny blue and white pill, imprinted with a unicorn—the symbol of Burroughs-Wellcome pharmaceuticals—in my hand. I took a breath and swallowed it. Little did I know that I would still be swallowing antivirals, every day, for the next thirty-six years. And counting.
But then that became the new normal. Until I became anemic. And then a constant plateauing of “new normals” would occur, every year and a half, when I was switched from one antiviral to another.
For the next eight years, I managed to stay just one step ahead of the virus, from AZT to less toxic drugs: ddI, ddC, 3TC, Fuzeon, and then in combinations, that all may have slowed the progression of the virus, but did not stop its inevitable and relentless gobbling up T cells like the PAC-MAN video game.
And then, in 1996, seemingly out of nowhere, came the protease inhibitor cocktail. For the past twenty years, I have been on the same treatment regimen. I’m not one of those who can just take one pill a day. I’m on what’s called “salvage therapy.“ And the double A.M./P.M. pill organizer became the next adjustment, the new “new normal.”
I still take three antiviral meds, twice a day, for a total of ten pills a day. That’s in addition to the meds for all of the other ailments that I’ve experienced as a consequence of living with the virus for so long, like checking off items on a grocery list: two lymphomas and chemos, a heart attack, six stents, both hips replaced, high blood pressure, neuropathy, diabetes, depression, and chronic fatigue. And pills and injections for all of them.
I have estimated that I’ve ingested approximately 100,000 antiviral pills, since that first AZT tablet, thirty-three years ago.
I am basically held together by duct tape and Elmer’s glue. And the miracles of modern medicine.
Some research has stated that the typical long-term survivor is 13.3 years older than our biological age. So I’d like to think that I’m not doing too badly for a 76.6 year old man. (I am, in actuality, 63.)
I’m always adjusting to a new “new normal.” It’s the only way to stay afloat. So, I continue to sort my pills, every Sunday—just as I did with my dad, at that kitchen table, fifteen years ago.
Because we all—all of us—learn to adjust to new normals, throughout our lives. And I want to stick around long enough to see what the next one will look like.
(Re-blogging for those interested in learning about Harm Reduction as a therapeutic alternative for drug and alcohol recovery)
Marco’s success story is remarkable, given his rapidly escalating drug addiction, many relapses, and descent into physical and emotional darkness.
Harm Reduction: An Alternative Approach to Managing Addiction
In September, 2013, at the age of 45, Marco* tried Crystal Meth (also known as “Tina”) for the first time. Someone smoking from a pipe blew it into his mouth. A month later, he smoked it directly from a pipe. By the start of 2014, he began smoking every weekend. By March, he was smoking almost every day.
By August of 2015, Marco had lost contact with all friends and family members, and had lost his career. He smoked more, which added to his depression. He stayed at home, arranging Party and Play (PnP) encounters with other users, where they would consume the drug in order to enhance sexual activity.
He states, simply: “I knew I wanted to die.”
What is “Harm Reduction”?
When we hear the words “addiction” and “recovery,” many of us think of the 12-step model, founded in 1935 as Alcoholics Anonymous. For decades, however, there have been alternative roads to recovery, and the “harm reduction” model is one such approach that has gained in popularity and effectiveness in recent years.
While Harm Reduction may be used for all substances, this article focuses on the outpatient group program of “Crystal Clear,” at Mt. Sinai Hospital’s Addiction Institute in New York City, which works to treat crystal meth addiction, primarily among the gay male population.
Harm reduction is defined by a focus on reducing the negative effects of substance use, rather than trying to prevent or stop the usage itself, incorporating a spectrum of strategies that includes safer use and managed use. Advocates of harm reduction support the goal of people working towards abstinence, but recognize that, for many, this process takes time and that setbacks do not amount to defeat.
Harm reduction isn’t a new idea. While the term can be dated back to 1987, the idea of minimizing the harm caused by substance use disorder can be traced to the 1920s. The International Harm Reduction Association (IHRA) was founded in 1996.
Principles of Harm Reduction
The IHRA lists eight principles of harm reduction. The first two of these principles embody the non-judgmental approach toward managing addiction:
1. Accepts for better or worse, that licit and illicit drug use is part of our world, and chooses to work to minimize its harmful effects rather than simply ignore or condemn them
2. Understands drug use as a complex, multi-faceted phenomenon that encompasses a continuum of behaviors from severe use to total abstinence, and acknowledges that some ways of using drugs are clearly safer than others
A common misconception about Harm Reduction is that it condones or encourages drug use. The eighth and final principle combats this fallacy:
8. Does not attempt to minimize or ignore the real and tragic harm and danger that can be associated with illicit drug use.
Joseph Ruggiero, phD, is a clinical psychologist who has worked in the field of addiction for twenty years. He is the co-founder and director of the Crystal Clear program, the only program of its type for crystal meth addiction in New York City.
With crystal meth use among the gay male population reaching epidemic proportions at the start of the 21st century, Dr. Ruggiero saw the need for a program that specifically addressed the needs of gay men and crystal meth addiction.
Dr. Ruggiero does not believe that the harm reduction and 12-step approaches are in conflict. In fact, many of the program’s clients take advantage of both models. But he does believe that the harm reduction approach is more integrated, in that it can include tools such as psychotherapy, skills building, pharmaceutical interventions, support groups that encourage “cross talk,” and a deeper understanding of the complex of drug use in people’s lives.
Ruggiero states that “harm reduction is about working on goals that the client wants to work on and not making assumptions, and meeting people ‘where they’re at.’” He describes an approach in which relapse, ambivalence, and struggle are often a part of that process.
Making Choices
Kaitlyn Murphy, M.A., MHC-LP, co-leads the Crystal Clear program, and runs many of its outpatient groups. She sees the program as one which helps people make choices by looking at their motivations, while also giving them tools to achieve their goals.
During the COVID-19 shutdown, Murphy’s groups have been meeting virtually. With consistency in membership, over time, comes trust in one another. Members talk of shame and trauma and shared experiences.
Murphy believes that success in the program is about someone reaching their goals and living a life that is happier or has meaning. It is about living a life within the person’s own values — which generally goes hand in hand with using less, and often leads to abstinence.
Both clinicians talk about the amazing transformations they see in their clients.
This is one of those transformations.
Marco’s Journey
Marco was in a spiraling depression, with suicidal thoughts. He didn’t take his HIV medication for a year, and he weighed 90 pounds, down from his normal 145. That summer, his brother had made two attempts to check in on Marco at his apartment. During his third attempt, in October, he came with the police. The next morning, Marco admitted himself into the psych ward at Bellevue Hospital. No one close to him had ever suspected that drugs were involved with his deep depression; he had been adamantly “anti-drug” until the age of 45.
He was at Bellevue for 10 days, for suicidal ideation. Upon his release from Bellevue, Marco revealed his drug use to his brother.
But that didn’t stop him. As soon as he left the hospital, his drug use returned, and with a vengeance. In January 2016, Marco was out of a job and behind on his rent when a marshall came to evict him from his apartment.
In the summer of 2016, Marco’s use escalated further, from smoking to “slamming.”
“Slamming” is a term for injecting a substance into a vein, via a syringe and needle. Not all who smoke crystal meth slam. But those who do see it as the surest way to addiction, psychosis, and a precipitous decline in health, welfare, and social interaction.
Seeking help
In August 2017, Marco began attending Crystal Clear group therapy, along with occasional 12-step meetings. During his first year, he continued to relapse. But, slowly and surely, the tools he learned through the program began to take hold and, with an enormous amount of strength, courage, and commitment, Marco was able to turn his life around. In August 2020 he “graduated” from the harm reduction program after two full years of sobriety. He is now studying to become a drug addiction counselor.
Marco’s success story is remarkable, given his rapidly escalating drug addiction, many relapses, and descent into physical and emotional darkness.
Understanding relapse is, in fact, a vital part of getting sober, according to Marco. The key to his recovery has been in recognizing the triggers and using the tools he has learned.
When he first came to Crystal Clear, he didn’t believe he could do it. After months of sobriety, he began to believe, for the first time, that he could stop using totally. Through the Crystal Clear program, Marco was at first able to process his recovery in a more responsible way, in a non-judgmental atmosphere, until he finally reached his ultimate goal of complete abstinence.
Recovery Takes Commitment
Marco’s journey to recovery may be an extreme one, but it is not at all unique. Some in his support group continue to struggle with addiction, after many years of use. Many have periodic relapses. Others have left the group and continue to use. And still, others in the group have died from drug-related causes.
Despite the differences among the group members, there are striking commonalities: the progression from casual use to addiction; feelings of shame, trauma, and alienation that both fuel, and are the result of, addiction, as well as the sexual validation that comes from the drug’s euphoric and invincible powers.
The Harm Reduction model has helped group members make use of the tools they learn through the program. One member, Raphael,* states that, for him, the term “relapse” can be daunting, whereas a “slip” means that he needs to keep coming to group and committing, perhaps in a different way, to the tools he has learned.
Members are discovering the deeper meanings behind their use. And that helps them to use more responsibly, less frequently, or to achieve abstinence.
Through open, honest communication, often by revealing wounds that have been locked up in shame for their entire lives, members find that recovery is possible, in an atmosphere of non-judgmental support and encouragement.
*Clients interviewed for this article used pseudonyms in order to speak freely.
For those who missed this the first time around, and for those interested in exploring treatments for themselves or others – my experience microdosing with psychedelics, in this case ketamine, to alleviate symptoms of chronic depression. Thanks for reading,
Last year, I embarked on a journey with ketamine microdosing, as a treatment for chronic fatigue, depression, and dysthymia, a type of chronic trauma. This is my story, for those who are interested in it, and for those who are interested in possibly exploring microdosing for themselves, or for loved ones struggling with depression or trauma, or looking to explore within themselves.
Written byBruce WardMedically reviewed byChelsea Tersavich, PA-CPublished onMay 21, 2021
Readers Note: This is an account from a recent client experience, written in the first person.
In 1988, four years after acquiring the virus we now know as HIV, I began to experience a continuous, unrelenting fatigue. This is what I have dubbed my “brain frog,” which has continued to persist to this day, for thirty-two years.
During those years, I have consulted with a multitude of medical professionals, and none have been able to ascertain whether…
Bruce Ward 