Hi everybody,

I am a 19 year old girl on Roaccutane for the first time. My acne was moderate, cystic and extremely painful. In the past I had tried everything - basic over the counter washes, benozyl peroxide, topical vitamin A, antibiotics, birth control pills etc. Nothing got rid of my acne - the birth control pills did reduce it at first, in conjunction with an antibiotic, however it just came back a few months later. I have had acne since I was about 12, so its been quite a long, miserable and embarrassing battle.

I recently was chatting with a friend, who is a doctor, and she asked me 'why don't you just go on Roaccutane? I did, and it was the best thing I ever did'. I have only known her for about a year and had never seen her looking anything less than flawless - I had been thinking about Roaccutane anyway and she gave me the final push I needed. I made an appt with my doctor who was more than happy to give me a referral to a derm (since we had tried everything already) and the derm took one look at me and my referral and said thats exactly what he would do if I was his daughter.

I started on 20mg tablets, 3 tabs the first week, 4 the second, 5 the third, 6 the fourth, and finally every day starting at the second month. I have now had 27 x 20mg tablets. I go back to my derm in about 1 month and will (hopefully) get bumped up to 30 or 40mg/day. He is extremely cautious and prefers a low dose over a long period of time, he thinks my course will be 8 months long.

So far I've had a lot of side effects considering how low my dose is. For the first few weeks I was sleeping constantly after never being able to nap before in my life. My face got extremely painful and dry last week, so much so that it was cracking all over my face, and constantly tight. Any moisturizers stung my face. I have had dry lips but I have been able to keep that under control with a multitude of lip balms. I have most of the side effects under control now with diligent product use. I guess I just wasn't expecting it to be so intense considering my dose.

If you have any questions, please let me know I will be updating regularly in case anybody wants to follow, and just for myself so I can look back and hopefully see some changes. It would be great to have a support system of people who actually understand what its like, and how obsessive you can get over every little thing when you have acne and are treating it like this. I can already see an improvement in my skin when looking at photos from before I started so fingers crossed that it all works out and I have perfectly clear skin!

I know it's going to be a roller coaster ride but I say bring it on! I keep telling myself its worth it for clear skin