Hey Everybody,
Since all the logs on this forum helped me allot when I was making my decision about going on accutane I wanted to contribute. My log may be interesting for some people because I do have a history of depression and insomnia. I went through it this year it took me about 5 months to recover I did not take any antid pressants during my recovery but my doctor described my depression as severe.
My doctor told me that accutane may be a good option for me because I have a wide spread acne on my back/chest and such a large area may cause increased absorption of topical treatments if used over prelonged period of time. I tried all of topical treatments before and I was on antibiotics for 2 months. They did help but around a week after stoping antibiotics my acne came back.
I will try to make updates weekly during the treatment and after I stop for couple months (probably less frequently).
So here is my log:
Days 1-2 : 40 mg
Side effects:
Moderate insomnia, I got around 4-5 hours of sleep
Skin state: No difference at all
Days 3-7 : 40 mg
Side effects:
Slight joint pain - I started taking Animal Flex as it helped me with my gym injuries before
Sleep got better
Single mood swing - One evening I actually started feeling little bit depressed but since I became quite good at dealing with this feelings I managed to keep it under control. I had evenings like this even before starting accutane so I can't make a definite connection here.
Skin state: No difference at all
Days 8-10 : 40 mg
Side effects:
Joint pain getting better the only thing left at day 10 was slightly stiff neck. I am still able to go to gym 3 times per week and go to my dance classes without problems.
Insomnia got little bit worse. It's actually hard to tell how much I am sleeping because I wake up 1-2 times during the night and funny thing about insomnia is that sometimes it's hard to tell if you'v been actually sleeping or not. Nevertheless I don't feel supertired so I must be getting 5-6 hours.
No anxiety or depression whatsoever I was actually feeling quite good.
Skin state:
My face look much better (I had very mild acne on my face that wasn't a concern for me but right now my face looks really good).
Lot's of dry patches on my face in the morning but after washing it and using moisturiser they become invisible.
Dry lips also kicked in but it kind of made me happy cause at least I know I am taking the right drug 
Day 11:
I am upping my dose to 80 mg today. I am going to have my blood tests done in 3 days.
After I get my tests back I will make a decision if I want to continue the drug (obviously as long as my doctor is ok with that too). The only thing I am concerned about right now is insomnia. If it's going to be 1-2 bad night per week kind of thing I will continue the drug but if it get's worse I will definitely stop.
Day 14 : 80 mg
Side effects:
1) Usual stuff like dry lips and skin.
2) Joint pain - currently only in my knees and getting better and better day by day. It may be from 2 things: Animal Flex or body just getting used to the drug
3) I did a heavy workout yesterday. Currently my muscles are pretty sore (workout sore) It will be interesting to see if there is any difference in recovery time.
Skin state:
Massive visual improvement. All my inflammation is gone. No more new pimples. No changes in blackheads but I can assume it's going to take much more than 2 weeks for them to get better.
Thanks Dude.
I'v found your log. Pictures look really encouraging. Lot's of people say that adding more fats to their diet helped them with joint paint so there must be something about it. To be honest mine joint pain is almost gone. What I found out made a difference for me is actually sticking to drinking 1 gallon of water every day.
Side effects:
1) Usual stuff like dry lips and skin still going on but it's very moderate and not annoying.
2) Joint pain - It's gone/at the level that I wouldn't notice if I wouldn't be looking for side effects on purpose.
3) I've caught a cold on Wednesday but it's almost gone today (Friday) so my immune system is probably in decent shape.
4) Insomnia - Sleep is much better though I can see that this drug is affecting it. Most of nights wake up after 4-6 hours of sleep and than need to wait 15 min up to an hour to fall back to sleep. But to be honest It's not a problem for me as long as I get 7 hours on average which I do. Also this is not "anxiety" kind of sleeplessness where I am going crazy in the bed trying to fall asleep.
Regarding regeneration after gym I talked about in last post. I don't see any differences yet. My muscle pain was mostly gone after a day as usual. No joint pain around areas I'v worked on.
Skin state:
Not much of a difference from Monday. Got one new zit. But to be honest at this point I finally feel comfortable taking my shirt of in front of people on the beach/ at the gym etc. Which is a very new and positive experience for me 
Day 24 : 80 mg - (20mg/day for next 10 days)
Side effects:
The cold I was talking about in last post became a massive sinus infection. I am not sure if accutane is to blame though because I'v spent the weekend in my home country and because I am not going to be there for a long while I didn't wanted cold to stop me so I walked it off, smoked few cigarettes with my old buddy which I know I am very sensitive to. So most likely it's my own stupidity. I had this kind of infection 4 years ago so it's not something completely new.
I'v been given Clarithromycinfor 7 days and it's helping alot. My doctor told me that I can keep taking Accutane because my liver tests came back really good but I will lower the dosage to 20mg/day for the time of taking the antibiotic just to give the liver a little bit of a break.
Apart from that no joint pain, no depression, no insomnia
Skin state:
Starting to see slow steady improvement on my back. Blackheads are falling out, I got like one new pimple over last 7 days and it went away in a day.
Animal flex,Vitamin K/D/Calcium
By now I have taken total of 1740 mg of Accutane which equals to 20mg/kg
By old standards I would have to take 6times as much to achieve cumulative dose of 120mg/kg, but most of the
doctors I talked to told me to keep the dosage high till I achieve acne clear/almost clear skin and than lower the dose to
20mg per day or even 20mg every other day for 2 months and if my skin stays clear over this time finish my course.
There are some studies showing that this approach is basically as effective as taking full dose over whole course but
amount of serious side effects is drastically lowered. Ones are found are:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4037971/ (20mg per day for 3 months)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16546586 (4 groups comparisonwith different regimens)
Side effects:
Sinuses are back to normal and I am off antibiotics so around Wednesday I will be back on 80 mg.
Will see if there will be no relapse of this problem. Hopefully not cause it would be scary to know that Accutane is weakeningmy immune system especially that my white blood cell count is ok.
Dry skin patch on my left elbow.
Apart from that no joint pain, no depression, no insomnia
Skin state:
No changes from last post.
Animal flex,Vitamin K/D/Calcium
Tough week on Accutane battlefield. I went to my usual doctor (one who is watching my accutane treatment, he is GP trained to prescribe accutane). He told me that 7days ofClarithromycinis likely not long enough for Sinus infection and he was right as I still had some infection going in my left sinus.
From good news it didn't go wild as soon as I stoppedClarithromycinso my immune system is doing it's work
From bad new I was prescribed a course of Amoxicilin for 10 days. After making a pledge to avoid antibiotics 4 years ago it's a pain to have to take them again especially for so long.
Anyways I got another blood test. My GP wanted to make sure white cell blood count is ok and check the liver just in case after the first antibiotic.
Also insomnia is back stronger than at the beggining but I won't blame it on Accutane yet. Because I was sick I started drinking
allot of coffee (4 americanos per day) with last coffee by around 5 PM. Maybe because my liver is occupied processing isotretinoin it does not eliminate caffeine as fast as it should and that's why I can't fall asleep. I'll stop drinking coffee at all see how my sleep is.
On Monday I will have my blood test done and sleep evaluation after lack of caffeine in my system. Will seewhat's the next step.
I am trying to stay positive because it looks like I am on of this unlucky ppl to have some extra side effects but I am also one of this lucky ppl to respond to Accutane very quickly so maybe I won't need a full 120mg/kg cumulative dosage to achieve long term improvement. My GP is still hoping that we can keep 80mg/day for next 3 weeks and than lower the dosage to 10mg per day for 2-3 months if I won't have any new breakouts.
Skin state:
At this point I have no single active large/medium pimple or cyst. I have couple inflamated pores on my chest and back but this are very small so comparing to the beggining of the treatment improvement is massive.
Animal flex,Vitamin K/D/Calcium
Starting week 6 : 80 mg
I got my blood results back, luckily they are very good.
Insomnia wise, I had plenty of sleep on Saturday but today I had none/few hours of very light sleep.
I am going to keep taking 80 mg for now but if insomnia doesn't get better by the end of the week I agreed with my doctor to lower the dose
to 20mg every other day (10mg per day) and than see how is my insomnia.
Finishing week 6
Hey everybody,
Sadly last week (Thursday) I had to stop accutane. My sinus infection kept coming back which never happened before (not after 2 antibiotics).
The other reason for stopping was insomnia which on it's own wasn't that bad but along with the infection made me feel badly enough to affect my
life and work way more than acne did.
By the time I stopped I'v taken 2400 mg of Accutane in total which equals to ~30 mg/kg (25% of the recomended dose).
Also at the moment of stopping I am basically fully clear.
I will try to resolve my sinus infection. Sleep already got slightly better, this night I had a full night of sleep without any wake ups.
I have a visit at ENT today to get a proper care for my sinusitis (before I got my stuff randomly prescribed by GP). I am also going to use Adapalene cream, my derm hopes that it will allow to preserve the effect of Accutane to at least some extent.
I will try to make couple more updates on my skin and general side effects. Generally I don't regret taking a shot with Accutane but also at this point squeezing my teeth and taking it even though I can see my body is not tolerating it very well would be just plain dangerous.
I am moving to California in 2 weeks I will have a new derm there I may try to continue the course on much lower dose but only when my side effects resolve in full.
Short update:
I'v stopped accutane around 10 days ago.
Joint and back pain which started to be pretty strong at the end is already pretty much gone
Sleep started getting much better after around 7 days from stopping
Sinus infection seems to be healing itself on it's own (we decided not to use antibiotics with the ENT as that would be allot of different drugs in short period of time and just observe the situation)
Generally my body seems to recovering pretty well.
Skin wise I am still pretty much clear but it's been just 10 days so probably small amount of accutane is still in my system.
Regarding the depression and accutane. I could see a reasonable way why some people may experience this.
Because of insomnia, slight joint pain, cracked lips I basically became less and less social over last weeks. Not because I wouldn't take interestin social activities but just because I couldn't enjoy them as much. Playing football etc. is not that much fan with joint pain. Kissingwith lips pealing off also pretty much not possible.
I could see that this on it's own after longer period of time could trigger depression if you are prone to it.
Nevertheless I don't think that over my 6 weeks course my mood got affected at all.