Lee Daniels tried to contract HIV/AIDS: ‘I thought I needed to go’

by thegrio | April 6, 2017 at 2:23 PM


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The Hollywood Reporter

Lee Daniels once tried to commit suicide by having unprotected sex with strangers while under the influence of drugs in an attempt to contract HIV/AIDS and die from the disease.

“I thought that I needed to go. And so I descended into drugs and into sexual bathhouses to die,” Daniels said during a lecture at Loyola Marymount University’s School of Film & TV.

He went on to credit God as the reason that he was still alive and AIDS-free. “That I don’t have AIDS is a miracle from God,” he said. “I really don’t understand it, because I should have had HIV. Everybody else did.”

Daniels also spoke about HIV/AIDS and how it had affected his life as he watched others suffering from it.

“It [AIDS] wiped away all of my friends. I had no friends,” he said. “It was terrifying, because we never knew whether you could drink from glasses or what it was. It was the most terrifying thing ever, and I didn’t understand why it was that I wasn’t [dead], because there were far better souls than me that were going [dying].”

Watch clips of the interview below.