Question
How long can I live without HIV drugs?
2 January 2017. Related: All topics, Life expectancy, Living with HIV long-term.
Can you please tell me how long can someone live without taking HIV medication?
Answer
The best way to answer this is to say that modern HIV treatment (ART) means that life expectancy is not affected by being HIV positive. HIV positive people with access to treatment can be expected to live as long as before they became positive.
Without using HIV treatment, life expectancy is related to how quickly your CD4 count drops and how low it gets.
Without treatment, some people see their CD4 count drop to under 200 within a few years of infection, while others people can go for 5-10 years or longer before they need treatment.
See also: Your CD4 count and the risk of becoming ill.
This is different to saying how long you could live. However, without treatment, once your CD4 count falls below 200 life expectancy drops very dramatically.
Note: This answer was updated in January 2017 from a question first posted in November 2011.
Hi Olek, it sounds like you have lived through a lot of difficult and life changing experiences. It is good that you are still doing well, even if your recent eyesight has become worse. You are also lucky to have a partner who you can share this part of your lives together – and I realise this might not be easy either. I am not trying to pretend everything is easy because some things about getting older cen definitely be difficult. Your life must also have included many good experiences, even when health was difficult before effective treatment.
How does your partner feel about this, and about being left on their own without you? Is this something you talk about together or can you talk to friends or in a support group. Sometimes just connecting to anything that gives you pleasure every day might change how you feel – or let you see happier options that you just can’t connect to at the moment.
HIV meds are now so good that they give you time to perhaps learn from other people who have lost their eyesight but are still active and leading happy lives. I have also remember when AZT was first discovered – roughly 40 years ago – and treatment is now so much better. Just stopping meds would just bring back the terrible infections that people died of before treatment and those slow painful deaths are something I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
I hope that you are able to connect to a support or counselling and that this helps life to become happier again, but I understand that this might be a slow and steady process. You might also find that your experiences could help other people now and that this might connect you to new friends too.
I was a young man who cought hiv which developed into aids this was when azt was about I had pcp and was poorly but I survived life was never easy i am now at the age of 73 and just been registered blind and finding it hard as each month goes on I have a partner who is 5 years younger than me who is deaf life is difficult at the best of times but I am getting tired of life excuse my language this time god has fucked me I am considering stopping my meds I have thought of this a few times it does scare me I am not looking for help and I know it’s my choice but not sure am I brave enough