Adult Acne – It’s Been A Long Battle

My battle with acne has been a long and arduous one starting at age 17 (I’m in my 30s now). I won’t bore you with the details, but I’ve tried everything and spent a great deal of money. I suffered from constant acne as well as milder run of the mill pimples. Here’s the lowdown on the stuff I tried:

Antibiotics: works only temporarily, but for a chronic sufferer like me, it was worthless.

Accutane: works but there are scary side effects – one time, I had to pull over on the side of the freeway because my eyes’ sensitivity to light went haywire and I couldn’t bear to open my eyes (talk about scary).

Cortisone injections: works but is toxic and temporary. I have mixed feelings about this one, it seems like I was just chasing my pimples around whereas I just wanted to stop breaking out completely. An alternative health doctor once told me that my body was trying to get rid of the toxins that got injected, by breaking out – that’s probably right.

Topical creams (RetinA and a bunch of other creams and gels I don’t remember the name of): drying, makes your skin look red AND flakey, basically worse than before. Again, none of these stopped the breakouts.

I tried some other stuff but I’ll stop here. Basically, I use Proactiv now and my acne is mostly gone. I recommend it to everyone, it’s cheap and if it doesn’t work, oh well, at least it was only $40.

I tried a BUNCH of things to get rid of my acne scars, but I’ll post that one another time.