First, quick background. I am 35 years old, I've had serious acne since I was 13 or 14. I have tried every OTC product, in nearly every combination, as well as several homebrew treatments, prescriptions, and even dietary changes. I have gone so far to to use bleach on my face. This is the first and only thing I have found that has eliminated 100% of my acne wherever I apply it, and it's CHEAP! It may not work for everyone, but it works for me, so I have to share.
Disclaimer: I have incredibly tough skin. Chemicals to not irritate it at all. None of these ingredients is dangerous, but be careful with how long you leave this mask on until you know how your skin will react.
Ingredients: aspirin, benzoyl peroxide mask, retinol cream
40-50% aspirin with just enough water to make it a paste
20--30% benzoyl peroxide mask (I use Neutrogena Clear Pore Cleanser/Mask)
20-30% Retinol cream (I use Good n' Natural brand)
Mix together, apply to skin as a mask for 10+ minutes. Rinse off.
The paste this makes is gritty from the aspirin, and I have to apply it fairly thick, but I can do it as little as every 3 days and I stay acne-free. If I go more than 3 days, I break out, so I know this is the only thing stopping my acne. I do this before I go to bed every 2-3 days. I wash my face with shampoo in the morning (since I'm washing my beard anyway), and that's ALL I do. Nothing else is needed. If I miss a spot (like near the edge of my beard) and get a pimple, I can apply this to just the pimple, once, and it is gone in a day.
How I figured this out:
I tried all 3 ingredients separately, one after the other, etc, without getting the same effect. Applying the retinol cream overnight as it says to do made me break out worse. The benzoyl peroxide mask was the most effective thing I'd found before, but not by much, and I had to use it every night for 15-20 minutes, in addition to washing with a salicylic acid wash in the morning. One day I had three pimples merge into a single, huge lump over my eye in the course of 4 hours. It looked like I'd hit my head and gotten a bump, they were so huge. I applied an aspirin paste to it, as that's a known remedy for dissolving lumps and bruises, and it subsided. I started trying to treat my whole face with aspirin, but it dried out and flaked off too quickly, so I added the mask to it to cement it together. This worked, but not perfectly, and it had a cold feeling to it that I found unpleasant, and it was hard to rinse off. Since I had the retinol cream, I added that to the next batch, and it solved both problems, left my skin feeling fresh, and, most importantly, eliminated ALL acne where applied.
I don't measure the ingredients, just eyeball the relative amounts, and it makes no difference. Aspirin is CHEAP, and since it's the bulk of this mix, and I only use it once every few days, I spend about 75% less on skin care products now than I have since I hit puberty. My clothes no longer get bleached by peroxide residue after a shower. My face no longer itches, then bleeds when I scratch it and pop a pimple. For the first time in over 20 years, my face is acne-free.