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Antigone Hodgins
Her Apartment, Upper Tenderloin
June 17 and August 19, 1995
I was depressed and I felt a lot of shame. It was a small school, and I'd go to a party and I'd see people I had slept with. Everyone was doing it, but I was doing it a little more because I was drinking a lot more than most people. By that time I could drink a liter of tequila on my own.
My dad kept me in college on his credit card, and then he went bankrupt, so $20,000 later... I went back to San Francisco. I was 19 now. I worked at the Cliff House selling corn dogs. I don't know what this has to do with HIV, but... I guess probably a lot...
I tried to stop drinking,
and I stopped for a couple months. In fact, I had tried to stop every year
since I was 15 and I couldn't stop for very long. Then I met John. See,
everything revolves around a guy. It's how I identified myself. I was always
in love, or so I thought.
So, I was 'in love' with John, he was a DJ. I was living at home. He would pick me up at midnight and we'd go out all night, and my parents didn't care. John shot heroin. I didn't know it at first, but found out later. I thought, "Well, he's worse off than me. He's shooting." I really liked going around to all these clubs and getting in free; I thought it was so cool. I liked the idea of being out all night, and seeing all the same people. He got worse and worse. I used condoms with him. He cleaned his needles and practiced safer sex. After him I always used condoms with everybody else. But before that, I didn't.
I got sober when I was 20. I was living in the Haight. I just got to a point where I couldn't handle it anymore. And there were a couple of times, well, one time in high school and one time in college, where I was sexually assaulted. I always thought that it was my fault because I was fucked up, I was like, "I have to stop, I have to stop doing this. I have to stop drinking and using." My spirit was dead. I had lost all hope and all respect for myself and for life. I felt completely demoralized. I thought I'm not a stupid person, why do I keep doing this?
The next day I drank again. It wasn't until a week later that somehow I finally heard it. I had been out all night again and on my way to work I heard a voice from inside that said, "You don't have to drink or use today." And I felt it. It wasn't a decision. It was like a weight was lifted off of me. I called some people that I knew who were sober, in the program, and I said, "I really need help. I want to go to a meeting." So, they took me, and I've stayed sober ever since. I don't really know how. I followed whatever people told me, I stopped trying to control it, I stopped trying to figure it out, and I just went.
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