| SCOTT SINCE 1985 -- submitted by Scott Zanetti,
Morristown, N.J.
When I
first heard about AIDS and HIV a couple of things
came to mind. One was that if I wasn’t
already infected, that I knew I would be shortly
because deep down inside, I just really
didn’t care. I hated myself and everyone and
the life I had been living for so many years as
an out of control heroin, cocaine and “you
name it” addict and an alcoholic. The second
thing I thought about was, way back, a long time
ago, I remember being taught in school that
having antibodies to a germ or bacteria or
whatever, was a GOOD thing. Now I am being told
that it is a bad thing. It just didn’t add
up! I’m no scientist but when I was in
school, the things that interested me most were
chemistry, biology and physics. In fact, I wanted
to be a nuclear physicist for the longest time,
that is, until I discovered drugs.
In 1968
I tried pot for the first time, Jimi Hendrix and
life began to change dramatically. School became
non-essential and so I went to Woodstock and I
guess you could say I didn’t come home until
1992.
Along
the way I became a somewhat skilled craftsmen in
the construction business and one day at work I
fell off the roof. Of course, I was under the
influence when I fell because I had used a drug
of one form or another every day since I was 18.
I was now 35 and the year was 1985. I had hurt
myself very seriously and told the E.R. doctor
that I was a heroin addict and that he was going
to have to administer more than the usual amount
of pain medication as I had developed quite a
resistance to opiates. Well not only did I
receive triple the amount of Demerol but
unbeknownst to me, an HIV antibody test.
Several
days in the hospital, one in intensive care, I
had been placed in traction and was in a room
with another man. After about three or four days
all of a sudden the orderly and nurses came in
wearing rubber gloves and masks and moved me to a
private room. I remember the sign they put on my
door saying something to the effect of
“contagious area, please wear protection
when entering room”. Eventually the doctors
came and told me that I had tested positive for
HIV and where that really didn’t come as a
total surprise, considering the life I had led,
the way I was treated by the staff and the way
THAT made me feel was really hard to take. Now I,
the one who had very little self-esteem, was
given another reason to wish my life would just
be over. From that point forward every little
physical ailment that came upon me was
‘obviously’ caused by HIV and I
developed a self-destructive bent, even more than
my usual. My fear of living and dying increased
more than ever and I really felt like a leper,
even more than I had felt before. After all, I
was doomed to die now, for sure, and in only a
couple of years. My employer let me go because he
received some documents from his insurance
company stating I was HIV positive, that made me
expendable. So much for confidentiality
Several
years passed, years in which I exhibited
behaviors that I thought I would never have and I
had much trouble with the law, I found myself in
a drug and alcohol rehab and hence, the beginning
off a new life began. It was not in particular
any one thing that the professionals at rehab
did, except in regard to finding sobriety but
more importantly, when I became honest and shared
my fears, that opened the door for what, to me,
was most important. A volunteer gave me a
photocopy of Celia Farber’s article from
Spin [1991] Magazine entitled “Fatal
Distraction”, an article that shed some
light on the fact that what we have been told
about AIDS may not necessarily be true. That gave
me HOPE and hope was something I didn’t get
from the “experts”. They told me to
expect to die. As a result of that article, I
began spitting out the AZT that the
“experts” at rehab were giving me and
embarked on a journey towards wellness.
I
remember in my early days of sobriety going to a
HIV-positives support group with a friend from
rehab that also tested positive. I remember it
like it was yesterday. He was sharing some
personal testimony, as in the fact that by his
behavior and the lifestyle he had chosen, he
became infected, and that his positivity was a
direct result of his poor living choices. Well,
those folks didn’t like to hear THAT! The
counselor went on to state that these poor folks
here were just victims of the cruel virus and
therefore had in no way a responsibility for
their “condition”. Well, that was all I
needed to hear because if I had learned one thing
in sobriety it was that I HAD to be accountable
and that I WAS responsible for the things I had
chosen. The poor decisions I had made were my
decisions and that I certainly was not a victim.
I had to be accountable and stop playing the
”blame game”. That was my last
attendance at that meeting.
I sought
out and found a M.D. who treated me as an
individual, helped me to detoxify from all my
prior self-inflicted immune-compromising choices.
Who treated me with nutritional protocols with no
regard to my HIV “status” and who
actual read my copy, of Peter Duesberg’s
book “Inventing the AIDS Virus”, with
an open mind. That, in of itself, I found to be
quite refreshing, as I had developed a distrust
of medicine from the way I had been treated and
the things I had been told. In fact, I remember
one doctor telling me I was just
“lucky” to not be sick, because what I
really should be doing is taking AZT.
As a
part of my recovery process [from self centered
living, that is] I began volunteering in a local
rehab and tried to carry the message of the truth
behind the HIV/AIDS paradigm. They told me I
could not, that the only message they were
allowed to give was the “party line
HIV=AIDS=DEATH” that was in the Red Cross
pamphlets they made available to clients. I would
not be allowed to contradict those
“facts”.
I began
researching alternative sources, began listening
to Gary Null and it’s been 9yrs now and
I’m still recording his show everyday. I
have bought and read just about every book on the
virusmyth.com bookshelf, in fact getting a
computer was one of the biggest things I have
done because that has connected me to AIDS
activists throughout the world.
My
personal story is included in “What if
Everything You Ever Thought You Knew About AIDS
was Wrong” by Christine Maggiore. I have
attended HEAL meetings in NYC and been helped
immensely by Michael Elner and Christine
Maggiore. I met Celia Farber and was able to
personally thank her for saving my life, by her
outstanding journalism, in spite of tremendous
pressure from her peers. I’ve met Joan
Shenton and Hew Christie from Britain [Meditel,
Channel 4 and Continuum Magazine, respectively].
It has been an incredible journey.
Six
years ago I married my former running partner,
herself a recovered heroin addict and HIV
positive 10yrs and we are both living healthy,
wholesome lives without fear of illness from the
“deadly virus”. We do our best to carry
the message of recovery from poor living choices
and freedom from fear of the AIDS established
dogma, a flawed construct of 30 old diseases
based on a non-specific antibody test.
One of
the things that we do is whenever there are
HIV/AIDS fundraising event locally we are there
handing out flyers and articles from the
“other side of AIDS” to all who are in
attendance, most wind up in the garbage, I’m
sure, but if we can save but one life, then it is
worth the effort.
One of
my personal involvements is in the Christian
community where for some well-intentioned, and
some not so well intentioned, reasons they have
embraced the hype that the media and medicine
have spun upon us, with great fervor. The good
news is that I believe I am actually making some
headway in a very difficult area.
Most
importantly I am living without the dreaded fear
of impending doom that I lived with when I was
given the faulty death sentence by the AIDS
orthodoxy and am spreading a message of hope to
all who are willing to listen, with an open mind.
Then I leave it for them to make their own
decision.
“There
is a principle which is a bar against all
information, which is proof against all arguments
and which cannot fail to keep a man in
everlasting ignorance---that principle is
contempt prior to investigation”
Herbert
Spencer
It is
now the year 2001; it’s been 16yrs. how is
it that I’m not dead? Could it be that I
made an investigation and questioned authority or
am I just “lucky”? I’ll leave that
for you to decide.
Scott
Zanetti
Morristown,
N.J.
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