World AIDS Day 2010: Man Tells Story of Living With the Disease 31 Years Later

World AIDS Day 2010

When Roger Chapman (far right) was first diagnosed with what is now known as HIV/AIDS, doctors still thought it was a gay men's disease.

Thirty years ago, it was identified as GRIDS or gay-related immune deficiency, because clusters of homosexual men were the first to be identified in this country with the symptoms.

When Chapman, 58, discovered the news 31 years ago, he thought he wasn't going to live long; his prognosis was "death likely within a year."

"In the beginning, it was kind of hard because I didn't want to believe it. I used to get dressed every night and wait for the undertaker to come get me so he would find me nicely dressed," Chapman said.

Today, Chapman has overcome the feelings of inadequacy and self-hate that he felt. He is a leader and client representative on the executive board at Harlem United, a holistic health care center for people with HIV/AIDS in Harlem.

As a gay man and former IV drug user, Chapman said he had to make a decision:

"It came a point where I had to realize that either I'm going to live or I'm going to die. What's been happening to most of us who have HIV, especially for as long as I have had it, and for those who have AIDS, we start doing self-stigmatization.

"We start internalizing those things people say, 'Oh, you are a drug addict, a homosexual, a street worker,'" Chapman said. "We keep hearing those things and a lot of people take it in and that's how we lost a lot of our brothers and sisters. They started believing and they gave up. They gave up."

Chapman didn't want that to happen to him. After seeing the disease take so many of his friends and volunteering in AIDS wards, where he saw so many people suffering and dying, he made the decision to help others.

Today, as World AIDS Day approaches, men remain at the highest risk for contracting the disease. Men accounted for 74 percent of HIV diagnosis in 2008. Half of the men diagnosed with the disease in 2008 think they were exposed through male-to-male sexual contact.

"I learned that I don't have to die," Chapman said. "I had some stuff that I could share."

Hear more of Chapman's story below:

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