Luana is a patient at the Evelyn Jordan Center, an infectious disease clinic in the University of Maryland hospital system. She has recently celebrated the 20 th anniversary of triumph over her addiction and 22 years of living with HIV. She is now an educator and aspires to create a recovery program designed specifically for the needs of HIV positive women with drug addictions.

My kid’s father was a big time drug dealer in Detroit. He thought by allowing me to experience drug use that another guy couldn’t pull me. Back then that was the thing to get young school girls to go out and trick for them. I fell in love. I was sneaking and sneaking and sneaking… Then they came in the house one day. My son was six months old. They put the gun in his mouth and made us get on the floor and they stole our stuff. I left it. I had everything and I left it. I got pregnant again and I left for Baltimore, but I fell in with the wrong crowd here.

I am triple diagnosed- I was an addict, I have HIV and Hepatitis C. I also have cancerous polyps. I was diagnosed with HIV in 1982. All this from addiction. Because I wasn’t taking care of myself health-wise. You become a slave to the drug. It dictates what you do 24/7. If that’s unprotected sex with a trick because he’ll pay more without protection that’s what you’ll do. Or if you have a man who’s having unprotected sex in prison and doesn’t tell his wife when he returns home she won’t know until she’s pregnant or in the flate stages of AIDS.

“Women in particular are affected by substance abuse and HIV – you can’t talk about the one without the other- they are definitely married.”

It’s harder for a woman to negotiate safe sex. Maybe he doesn’t beat her, but he will flip it on her, “What you don’t trust me?” or, “Why do you want a condom, what have you been doing?” What if he is the sole breadwinner? Or what if he is using on the down low? Or having sex on the down low?

And if they have a child- God help that child.

In the early 1980’s women were not being diagnosed or were being misdiagnosed. I found out when I went into treatment.

I felt back in the 1980’s and 1990’s when I was with ACT UP that they would see this as a health issue. That it would boomerang and help the addicts.

HIV didn’t sink in for five years. I didn’t address it. I had to get clean first. I went to a transitional house for women. They saved my life. They wouldn’t let me relapse. Some of these other programs just don’t work. Thirty days is not enough for an addict to understand addiction.

I finished that program, got my GED and they paid for my first year of college. I just celebrated 20 years being clean with no interruption.

I’m in this field now. I’m a health educator. I used to be a welder and shipbuilder. I would read the blueprint and put it together. After I was diagnosed I couldn’t do it anymore.

The gay guys really brought forth my HIV. In the support groups- they allowed me to go through the changes I needed to go through- crying and getting the anger out. It helped me learn how to deal with my HIV. Those brothers really taught me well.

I started out in this field as a support group leader. I worked with organizations dealing with HIV, I did all the Red Cross trainings. Now I am going into business myself because there is still no place for a sister to work on her addiction and her HIV.

You can’t talk about substance abuse without talking about HIV, especially in the African American and Latino communities, especially for women. Women in particular are affected by substance abuse and HIV – you can’t talk about the one without the other- they are definitely married.

There are a lot of opportunities for the brothers right now they have a lot of resources, but the sisters don’t. It’s not geared toward the women culturally. Hopefully we will meet up with Latina and Hispanic women because they are the second most disproportionately hit community.

The other population really getting hard hit is men and women over 50. Society assumes they aren’t sexually active, but that’s not true and I’m talking as someone who’s had sex with those men, those happily married men for umpteen years. I don’t know how many men I have infected who took that back home.

This is a global health issue and needs to be addressed by every culture in the world. There’s no literature that addresses their culture.

Q: What do you think about needle exchange?

They should have just poured, poured that into every state, every town in the nation.

It was working, but as soon as things are working the government cuts it off. We don’t have as many needle exchange vans as we used to.

Q: Do you think it encourages drug use though?

No- there’s not as many programs now- did that slow drug use?

Q: If you could change anything with respect to drug policy, what would be your top priority?

That we be like Canada and have free healthcare for everybody and that we have educators out there on a daily basis. That would cut down on crime, money needed to cure HIV, money needed for treatment.

If we don’t have healthy minds and healthy bodies, who will replace those leading us now? They won’t be there forever. We need the wisdom and experience of the older people and the innovative ideas of the younger people.