I had struggled to come to terms with my sexuality during childhood and was told in 1991 that I had just six months to live after a HIV diagnosis.
I was still alive 10 years later but heavily dependent on alcohol, crack cocaine and heroin. In 2006 I ended up overdosing on class A drugs while suffering with the Aids related disease PCP Pneumonia.
At my lowest point I didn’t see a way out, I was told that I had hours to live, the second death sentence I had been given in my life.
I have no idea how I survived, alcohol and drugs were my friends, they were a coping mechanism!
I was homeless, addicted to crack and heroin and I overdosed in March 2006, I was then taken to the Royal Liverpool Infirmary.
The police called my parents and told them to get there quick, they said I had four hours to live. It was horrendous, I was about seven and a half stone at this point. Apparently, I looked like a skeleton under a blanket.
I was wired out my face on heroin and crack plus the drugs they were giving me, I had PCP Pneumonia, and not many people are alive after having that… But I lived.
My story began in 1972 when I was born in a women’s prison to a mother addicted to heroin.
I was adopted by a family in Tarleton and it wasn’t long before I began to discover that I wasn’t heterosexual.
I was born in a women’s prison, so I had a great start there!
It was in a day and age when there was no Internet and no books about being gay, I didn’t even know what being gay was.
I came across it because when I was 10 I slept with a girl and then slept with a guy when I was 11, he told me about cruising areas (where LGTB+ went to find sexual partners when the practise was not accepted).
I didn’t know what gay meant then, I just thought I was weird because I fancied men.
I struggled to deal with my feelings, it wasn’t illegal to be gay in the UK at the time but it wasn’t at all accepted in polite society.
At age 11 I started drinking, using alcohol as a coping mechanism.
I learned that you had to act butch and manly or you would get your head kicked in.
I was at a grammar school, I was on the rugby team, I did sports, there was no room to manoeuvre, I just had to act straight – You live separate lives, I didn’t tell anybody and that makes you destructive because the secret is too big to keep.
As I grew up, homosexuality gradually became slightly more accepted in British society.
When I was a teenager I found my first partner whilst living in Liverpool, but in 1991 we received the worst possible news.
I had just turned 19 and I found out that I had HIV. They said: ‘with the strain you’ve got you will be lucky to live six months’.
It was difficult, I remember that the guy ahead of me got the same diagnosis and threw himself off a bridge!
I always remember my diagnosis, not only because of what it meant for me but because I was told about it the same year Freddie Mercury passed away after contracting Aids.
In 1993 I began to contract Aids related diseases and two years later my partner passed away having received a similar diagnosis to me.
It was years of me watching my partner die and thinking: ‘that’s going to happen to me’.
My attitude was that I was going to die so I wanted to go out on my terms, the second I opened my eyes each day I drank vodka, I don’t know how I survived.
Now I not only had to live in a society where it was still largely unacceptable to be gay but I also had a condition that was causing fear and panic throughout the world.
It was just another thing I couldn’t tell people.
I remember someone found out that I had HIV at a gay club and I was completely ostracised.
They kicked me out, that supportive community wasn’t there. You had to be careful about telling people too, they would use it against you and blackmail you with it. It was a scary way to live.
When I was 25 my drinking had got so out of control that my doctor demanded I stop consuming alcohol.
I had gone yellow.
I just said: “f**k off, I’m dying of Aids, I’m not going to stop drinking!”
I was put in a detox centre and decided that I needed to find a partner who didn’t drink to help me battle my alcohol addiction.
I did eventually find someone but that someone was a heroin and crack cocaine user instead.
I was like a lamb to the slaughter, I had no confidence or self-esteem, I was like a walking shell.
When people told me about PTSD later on, I knew had been living with it for years.
I had never taken drugs before in my life but when he suggested I try it, I did.
In March 2006, having lived with HIV and Aids related diseases for more than a decade, as well as alcohol, heroin and crack addiction, I was admitted to hospital following a drug overdose.
I was told I had four hours left to live.
I had full blown Aids, an alcohol problem, a heroin and crack cocaine problem, I didn’t have a lot going for me.
I was sent to Littledale Hall in Lancaster, a rehab clinic, to die essentially. But I survived.
I took every day as it came, learning to walk again, putting on weight, pushing through life without the addictions.
For the first time in my life, I began taking medication to combat the HIV.
I noticed that there were no charities for LGBT+ people in Lancaster, I kept moaning about it and someone said I should actually do something about it rather than moaning…So I did.
In June 2008 I founded ‘Out In The Bay’, Lancaster and Morecambe’s first LGBT+ charity group.
Run exclusively by volunteers, the charity provides to support to individuals and families struggling with LGBT+ issues in the area.
Out In the Bay is a brilliant phenomenon.
We manage to support a hell of a lot of people. We get referrals from the police, from schools, all over the place.
The foundation now run the pride events in both Lancaster and Morecambe.
The charity also runs a myriad of groups, helping LGBT+ people meet and discuss their issues as well as helping families who are dealing with their relatives as they come out.
The ethos of the charity is to just help anybody who needs it.
Help is free but most people don’t realise how valuable it is, it’s something that society misses out on massively.
It’s very easy to help other people.