PO Box 1980

In my third year of sobriety, I was diagnosed with AIDS. I was shocked, to say the least, and numb. Who could I tell? I told my boyfriend and my parents and their initial shock turned into rejection and shame and they advised me not to tell anybody else. My sponsor tried to help by directing me to outside support groups, but I felt like I needed the kind of love and acceptance I had always found in AA. I tried talking to people I heard sharing in meetings about terminal illnesses, usually cancer, but I heard no one talking about AIDS in AA. After six months of drifting further and further away from people, I picked up a drink.