HIV fear

[willpowerrise]

hii!! This sounds weird. I have this extreme fear of catching HIV. Sometimes my mind build up stories as to how I would have contracted it. I am not engaged at all in any risky activities. The fear arises from unusual situations. Latest is I fear that I would have drank or washed my eyes with toilet bowl water. The toilet is used only by me and my husband only very few times some friends may have used it. My concern is whether the toilet bowl water has HIV in it? where does the water comes from toilet bowl. Is it mixed with other houses water supply Is there any risk of getting HIV by drinking or splashing toilet bowl water on eyes considering the toilet is used only by me and my husband. I know I would never do this but my mind wants to believe that I have done it. So please help. I am stuck with this thought.
:winks:

[MyNameIsTerry]

I can only say how this tends to work in the UK when it comes to water supplies, but this is what we tend to have:

- Houses.

Main water piping through the street and an individual supply is "jointed" off with a pipe running to your house. This then runs into your house through your own piping. Your piping is separated into cold water only supply which goes to taps, toilet, etc and hot water supply which is cold water piping running up to a heater to then run back down to hot taps, shower, etc. It may differ internally with heating.

It is possible a shared jointed supply may come off a mains pipe (street) I guess, but again the above will apply.

- Flats

Pretty much the same but the mains will joint off into a larger supply to take care of the extra demand. Then it will probably be running through a mains tank in the flats and onto a shared downpipe that joints off to the individual flats. I'm less sure on this.

Obviously there are also water tank supplies in more remote areas but I would expect the piping is a similar affair, just that the origin to the mains differs.

But either way, you won't be sharing your water with other properties since until it enters houses it's a shared supply running through the water mains for the street.

I would suggest seeing what your CDC website says about HIV as they explain how you can catch it. HIV dies very rapidly outside of the body and it's a myth about catching it off toilet seats and door handles simply because of this short timing. You would probably need to be sitting on the toilet with the person?!

So, even if you drank that toilet water or washed in it, I doubt there would be a risk.

And as you say you know you aren't even exposing yourself in the first place so this is an anxiety thing with the typical skewed thinking that we suffer from when our anxiety is high.