So. My acne journey is not a short one. As an early teen, I had regular amount of acne. In grade 8 I used proactiv for a bit until I got older and started using birth control. That helped a bit. Then by grade 9 topical medication was in order. I used clindoxyl morning and night for like 8 years with no issues. If I forgot to use it in the morning or night I would IMMEDIATELY break out, but it worked pretty good otherwise. I still usually had 2-3 noticeable zits at a time and that's it.

Then about a year ago, at age 22, my skin stopped responding to the clindoxyl. I started to get skin like a 15 year old boy. So I stopped taking it. I spent the next 5 moths trying to treat my skin naturally. I tried doing oil cleansing, different supplements, cut out dairy, everything. and it just kept getting worse. I had really bad texture to my skin. It looked like it was covered in bumps and some pretty bad cysts as well.

So I went to my doctor and was prescribed epiduo (tactupump). I used it for a total of almost 3 months and over those three months, it got rid of the cysts, but everything else got so so so much worse. This stuff burnt my face. I have a super high pain tolerance and I almost cried every time I put on moisturizer. My skin would peel off every two hours and it looks awful with make up on. People say it usually takes a couple months to see effects with epiduo but my skin got so bad it wasn't worth it. I'll insert some pictures.

At month 2 into epiduo, my doctor prescribed me doxycycline. Again, my skin got even worse.

Now, I am two weeks into taking accutane to try and reverse all the damage that epiduo and doxy created.

My skin isn't good yet, but I am confident that accutane will work. If your skin is bad enough to be on epiduo or doxy, just spare yourself the waste of time and start accutane instead. It's not worth how bad makes your skin initially and the fact it will just come back if you stop taking doxy and epiduo. At least accutane is a more permanwnt fix.