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Sickness and treatment

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Andy: To have your mind affected and your personality, it's almost like losing who you are as well and I've really been affected quite badly by that. I've suffered from anxiety and depression. Of course the alcohol hasn't helped, but I think it's definitely the medical drugs that have taken the worst kind of effect on me, you know.

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Ben: It was bad back then. I was ill a lot, you know; thirteen, fourteen, fifteen....Sixteen, it started to level out a bit, but I felt terrible and I looked pretty awful as well. I was just ill.

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Charles: I've never suffered from HIV. I've never taken any drugs for it. The hospital themselves don't understand it. But I've never suffered any symptoms with HIV.

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Dave: A Protease Inhibitor, I think it was. When I started taking it, I was bleeding from the roof of my mouth constantly for two weeks. He said I might get some slight side effects, bleeding somewhere. So I thought I'll just try and cope with it for two weeks, so my mouth was bloody for two weeks. My pillows, my bedding, everything I ate, everything I drank, just tasted of blood. In the end I'd had enough after two weeks and just rang the hospital and they said: 'Come in, don't take any more pills.' And then I was off them then for a year or so.

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Joseph: Throughout the whole combination therapy cycle there were a lot of side-effects. There was diarrhoea, and then there was constipation, and then there was nausea and sickness, and fatigue, and skin reactions ...But I was just determined to stick with it, in the same way as I always did with medical issues. If I was going to do it, I was going to do it properly.

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Martin: The consultants will say you don't let the tablets rule your life, but unfortunately they do. You've got to take these things every single day. There's no rest, you can't have Christmas day off or things like this. You can't forget about it, but if you're sensible and you find a regime that works well with you, don't abuse it. Do not abuse it and that's the only way I just keep plodding on.

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Patrick: I think I'm on eighteen a day. Through choice I even take a multi-vitamin. Some days I hate taking them. I really get angry about having to, because I don't always want to. But realistically the long and short is - if I want to stay alive, I have to take the drugs.

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Paul: After three weeks, four weeks I started to notice a huge change. I was surprised, it shocked me how rapid. I suddenly started having vitality. People who didn't know about my HIV at the time commented on things, like one guy said, 'Hey, you've got chunky since last time I saw you, what've you been eating?' I thought - why did you leave it so long to take these tablets, you idiot? You should have taken them a long time before you got that ill.

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Owen: As far as HIV goes, I feel pretty good. I've been on the combination therapy for only 14 months. I was very ill before I went on it, but I'm not now. I do get side effects, which aren't nice. It's summed up to me by someone, who said they were talking to a young boy and he said, "Every time I look at my cabinet with pills in it, it reminds me of what I've got and I feel sad and depressed", which must be every day of his life. And my mate who told me this said, "Well, every time I look at mine I think they're keeping me alive." And that's what I do.

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Stuart: I was told I had to take them bang on a certain time every day, which I did do, and I've stuck to the regime ever since. And they turned my life around.