The counselor at the Minority AIDS Project (MAP) stared at the young man sitting in front of him, trying to digest his words.
But the determined male shifted resolutely in his chair as he slowly repeated his goal–he wanted to catch the HIV virus.
As farfetched as it may seem, several counselors at MAP, a community based AIDS service organization in Los Angeles, said that there is a growing population of gay males who are deliberately attempting to infect themselves with the HIV virus. They’re called ‘bug chasers’–HIV negative men who are having unprotected sex for a variety of reasons.
“The bottom line is, they’re suffering from a sense of low self esteem,” said counselor Rev. Russell Thornhill, who remarked that he was surprised when he started hearing about the “bug chaser” phenomenon a few years ago.
“A lot of times, we find that their parents denounced these men because they were gay and their parents threw them out of the house. So many of these men suffer from a deep-seated sense of feeling unloved.”
Thornhill said that in many cases, young men who are HIV-negative want to catch the virus because they are involved with a partner who is HIV-positive. “The infected partner says, ‘I don’t want to be with you because you’re negative.’ So the result is that the negative partner becomes fragile and insecure. He decides he’ll become positive in order to have a closer connection with that person,” observed Thornhill.
Thornhill said that counselors at MAP try to dissuade the young men from becoming ‘bug chasers.’ “We tell them that they’ve got to love themselves first,” he said. “We talk to them about strengthening their self-esteem and letting them know that they are worthy and that they are God’s gift to the planet.”
Counselor Spencer Collins, 29, who said he started hearing about ‘bug chasers’ a year ago said that the term is well known in gay circles. “It’s been traveling throughout the gay community for some time through word of mouth,” said Collins. “The second time I heard the term was at a health conference and I overheard a gay man say he was a ‘bug chaser’ and he wanted to catch the HIV virus. I said, ‘bug chasers–who would want to have this horrible disease? When you’re at a low in your life and you don’t love yourself and you don’t have anyone who loves you, that is what happens.”
Collins said that he recently talked with another 22-year-old black male who wanted to catch the virus. “He had been in a relationship with another male for four years and their relationship was pretty rocky. He was negative, but he discovered that his partner was HIV positive. The positive partner wanted to break up with him because he did not want to risk his partner getting infected. As a result, they had a big argument and he came to MAP to talk to someone. He believed that if he became positive, then he and his partner would stay together.”
Collins urged the young man not to jeopardize his life by trying to catch the virus. “After giving him the facts about HIV and AIDS, he decided that if it meant endangering his life, he would remain negative.”
Collins said that despite the spread of HIV and AIDS, there are numerous couples who stay together, even when one partner is positive. “They sit down with a doctor and figure out ways to protect themselves,” he said.
Collins has also heard that “bug chasing” has become a growing phenomenon among the younger gay population and that many of the men want to “chase the bug” to collect a state check. “They think that if they become positive, they can get benefits such as Section Eight housing and they don’t have to go to work. They think they can party all week and hang out in the malls. The way they see it, all they have to do is pop a pill everyday to maintain their health and everything else is beneficial.”
But Collins said that many “bug chasers” are unaware of the side effects of becoming HIV positive. “They don’t see the health problems–the wasting syndrome, the humps that develop on the back or that the medication does other weird things to your body. There are lumps that form on the neck and abdomen. People see the healthy pictures of Magic Johnson and these other healthy looking people and they say, “Hey, catching HIV isn’t as bad as it used to be because now we have medication.”
Bennie McGowan, a risk reduction counselor at MAP who is also HIV-positive said he had dated “bug chasers” in the past. “The guys I was dating knew my positive status but they were in a state of denial. They said I was lying,” he said. “They tried to hold on to me and wouldn’t leave the relationship. They would say things like, ‘When we have sex, take the condom off because I don’t want to use it.’ Then, they would deliberately do something to make it break.”
Mike Jones, coordinator of Project Adodi, a men’s counseling group, said that the “bug chasers” phenomenon is nothing new. “Back in the early ‘90s, it used to be called the Worried Well,” he recalled. “Back then, people would go out and have unprotected sex with people infected with HIV because they thought it was trendy.”
Pausing, Jones added, “There are kids out there in their teens and early ‘20s who believe it’s popular to go out and get HIV. They think it’s a free ride. They think they can get Section Eight, Social Security and other benefits from getting infected with HIV.”
Thea Williams, a program coordinator at MAP, said “I urge our people to wake up and to deal with this plight that’s before us because if we don’t fix it, nobody else will. When you look at the numbers, we make up 13 percent of the population but 50 percent of the infections of HIV and AIDS.”
Thornhill said that it is critically important to educate the community about HIV and AIDS to stop the spread of the disease. “We want people to love themselves and their community. It’s about keeping yourself safe and talking to people and telling them to take care of themselves.”
Pausing, Collins added, “HIV and AIDS is real. It’s going on out there and it’s something our community needs to deal with.”
