Below please find our very first blog post by one of our Positive Prevention participants!

For the purposes of this blog I will go by the name of ChatJunkie. I was diagnosed poz back in April 2003. Seven and a half year later I am now on medications for the first time. Things aren't as bad as I thought they would be but I am experiencing some side effects.

I would like to thank Megan DePutter for putting on a great 9 week program called Positive Prevention that I am about to complete. I have learned so much from the course and from others in the course. One of the goals of the course is to take what we have learned and
get involved in some way to prevent the spread of this virus, take care of ourselves and end the stigma attached to this disease. I have volunteered to assist Megan through the next installment of the course scheduled for October 2010. Another suggestion I was given is to
contribute to this blog and share some of my experiences. During this course I discovered I have much to share and it is important.

I am not a writer in any professional way. I'm not much of a talker either, I'm shy and sometimes I feel what I have to say isn't all that important. Thanks to the internet, I have been able to open up more and find ways to talk to people and communicate better in real life. Because I spend a lot of time in chat rooms, I read a lot of bad information being given by people who have no training in giving truthful facts to other people. I will private message the person asking the questions and try to get them to call the AIDS Committee in their area and find out the real truth.

So, I hope you will follow along as I post some of my experiences on this blog and that helps you in some way. I will write what I see, the way I see it. I hope it brings up some discussion so we can learn from each other. We are not alone, we all have something important
to say and share, we can support each other. Our stories are all different but they can help someone else find answers to theirs.

If anyone chooses to comment, you don't have to use your real name, just make up a nickname.