Let's Talk About Acne
*This post is long, boring, and gets into oddly specific stuff regarding acne. I mostly wrote it for myself, for posterity, and in case some random person who is also struggling with acne stumbles upon it and it helps them feel better/is applicable/helpful to their own situation*
November 29, 2018
November 29, 2018
I've had acne for over a decade now. It's always been pretty mild, and I'd get a couple spots around my chin and jaw every week that would go away within a few days. By the time I got to be in college I'd figured out how to conceal and manage my acne fairly well. But then around August of my junior year of college, for reasons still completely unknown to me, my acne started getting a lot worse. I'd wake up with new spots every single morning, and I'd get big cystic spots every so often, which I'd rarely gotten before. The entire lower portion of my face was a mess of scars, popped zits, newly forming zits, and inflammation. It was painful, frustrating, and time consuming because I'd spend so much time trying to keep my face clean and my acne concealed. I felt like my acne was starting to become a defining part of me, which is something I'd never felt before.  |
| Make-up vs no make-up. I wish you could see how bad the pimple on my right cheek was in real life. It left a scab-scar the size of a dime that took weeks to go away. |
Despite having struggled with acne for so long, most people probably would not identify me as "a person with acne". Whenever I'm in public, my acne is as hidden as I can make it. I know that people can tell I'm trying to conceal my acne because even makeup isn't a miracle drug, but I feel more comfortable with it at least partially hidden rather than in full view. I know my acne isn't anywhere near as bad as some people's, and I should be grateful that it stays pretty much strictly on the lower portion of my face, but even so, it still takes a toll on my self confidence.
After spending 4 full months wondering what the heck was going on with my skin and why my acne had all of the sudden gotten so horrendous (as well as testing any number of new skin care products, trying futilely to find a miracle cure), I sucked it up and made an appointment with a dermatologist. I'd been going to the dermatologist for years, and the only reason I'd made this appointment in the first place was to refill the prescription for the medication they currently had me on (which had CLEARLY ceased to be effective). I was dubious that they would be able to give me something that would actually work because even the stuff that I'd been on for years (Epiduo, Epiduo Forte, and at one point an antibiotic called doxycycline, used to fight inflammation) only had about an 80% effectiveness rating (for my particular skin; they work miracles for other people). But as aforementioned, I was a little bit desperate for a cure--or even something that would just make my skin a LITTLE better--that I was willing to try anything, even Accutane.
Luckily, when I got there the dermatologist agreed that we needed to try something new and that Accutane wouldn't be an option, since I would be studying abroad and because it's such an intense, harsh drug, I would need to get blood tests every month, which would be impossible/impractical to do in Spain. So she told me about several alternatives, one of which is called Spironolactone. It's a blood pressure medicine that also, coincidentally, blocks the production of androgens (which, in excess, can cause acne). Spironolactone seemed like the best, least invasive choice for me, and the only precaution was that I couldn't get pregnant while on it because if I had a boy he would end up with female characteristics...but no worries there, as I was 100% positive I would not be getting pregnant for many years. Thus commences my spironolactone journey!
Before the two month update, though, let's talk about...
Some Myths About Acne
1. People get acne because they don't wash their face. Let me tell you something. Y'all acne-free people have WAY WORSE skin hygiene than us acne people. You probably use Dawn dish soap on your face once a day and you're fine. Us acne people buy the expensive non-comedogenic (that is, a product that won't clog pores) soap and wash our faces MULTIPLE times a day.
2. Girls get acne from wearing make-up. Okay, this is a half-truth. Some girls who already have acne can make it worse by spreading the bacteria around. But this isn't always the case. And if you are not prone to acne, you can probably wear all the make-up you want and still won't break out. For those of us with acne though, there are multiple types of acne, and if you have hormonal acne like me, wearing make-up will not make my skin worse, nor will not wearing it make my skin better (believe me, I tried, and all that did was destroy my confidence while not improving the condition of my skin one bit). Hormonal acne is caused by imbalances within the body; the stuff that goes on your skin will not alter what's happening in your adrenal glands. So really it depends on the person, it depends on the make-up, and it depends on the type of acne.
3. Acne is only something teenagers get. False. Anyone can have acne. Heck, there's such a thing as baby acne (as in, acne that occurs in infants). Related to that, a lot of pregnant women who have never had acne in their life struggle with it during their pregnancy. Acne can last well into your 20s.
4. If you don't have acne as a teenager, you never will. This is related to the above statement, but acne can occur at any point in a person's life, for any number of reasons. Acne that starts around puberty is usually a combination of genetic and hormonal acne that will go away with age. But acne can start for the first time well out of your teens, and even past your 20s, for no apparent reason and it is infuriating!
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| Before (October 2018)/After (December 208) (3 weeks on spironolactone) |
January 24, 2019--two month update
Week 6 was the turning point for me with this particular acne medicine. Week 5 I had a flare up and thought "Ugh, yet another product that isn't going to work for me." However, from week 6 until now, I've had a total of maybe 5 zits. I know that for some people that's more than they've had in their entire life, but for me it's amazing. Plus, they've been the kind that go away in a few days, instead of lasting for a week and becoming a horrible scabby, scarred disaster like the cystic acne I was getting all throughout last semester. It feels SO amazing to touch my face and not feel like I'm a blind person groping the craters of Mars, to wake up in the morning and not have to "assess the damage" i.e. take account of all the new zits that cropped up in the 8 hours that I was unconscious, to not feel like I have to hide or cover up my face. I still have scars from the months I spent last semester hatching acne babies, but those will fade with time.
I'm sorry if this post was disgusting to you. Actually, I'm not sorry at all, because the only people that this post would offend or disgust are people who have never in their lives struggled with having painful, fire-engine-red pustules pop up completely unexplained on their faces, and those people do not deserve apologies.
-SE Wagner
P.P.S. I <3 u & ur face 2 @AB
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