It is easier to chose to not have sex than become another rat in the HIV maze.

Constant lab tests, the humiliating exams, the struggle to maintain medical relationships around informed consent (I am always being tested secretly when they take my blood, but I do find out about it later when insurance refuses to pay), the filth in public health clinics (changing diapers in the waiting room), the stern lectures from nurses who do not know you or anything about you, the assumption that you are a drug addict, and the insurance company’s gravitational pull to send you into the black hole of Previously Existing (that they lobby to extinguish), and this is just the beginning of the list.

HIV drugs can destroy nerves to the extent that the neuropathy is so excruciating you cannot walk. Nightmares the medical literature downplays but is very similar to LSD. Bone loss so extensive your bones can start dying inside your body.

And cost.

Again, the literature will tell you typically 50k a year. Try more like a 100k.

Out of what air do we conjure up these sums to pay the piper.

It is your entire life that becomes worse than the disease. Again, the literature downplays the reality. You will be told that HIV can be managed. I am here to tell you, it will manage you. Any kind of life you had previously is over. The people they call the Hard To Reach are often people who are hard to reach because they have nothing to reach for. Suicide is epidemic.

PrEP is just a part of this package.