Topic moved to prescription medications forum

Just wanted to send you some love and more patience. It took me a full 4 months for things to chill out. I have had consistently clear skin since May and for May- July maybe one or two small hormonal unnoticeable. It was one of the most challenging 4+ months of my life. But it is SO worth it. I started at 50mg and ocella for the first 3 months then upped to 75mg in addition to ocella. I was also on Doxy as an antibiotic and carefully weened off w no issues. Feel free to reach out, but hang in there!

Hello,

I am 18 and I have been taking Spironolactone for almost 3 months now. I take 100mg a day in addition to an antibiotic called Acticlate once a day. I wash my face with Cetaphil, and I also use Tretinoin cream at night, or I use a wipe with clindamycin phosphate. ( I had to stop the Tretinoin for a while because it was so drying.) I also use a Cetaphil moisturizer in the morning. I have been told that this all takes a while to work, but I am getting really discouraged. I'm hitting the three month mark soon with little to no improvement. I go to bed every night worried about what I'm going to wake up to. My derm just says that I will grow out of it, but I am extremely unhappy. It's drastically taking a toll on my self esteem and my life. No matter what I do, my skin will not stay clear. I don't have extremely bad acne, but there are always a few active spots on my face (always on my chin), and they are always big and not easily concealable with makeup. I'm curious to know if starting a birth control pill may help speed up this process. I definitely know the risks, but I've read several reviews of people saying pills like Yazmin and others have cleared them up. I'm actually desperate. I'm willing to be patient, but it's very difficult when my skin is actually keeping me from going to school or out. I'm fed up with dealing with bad skin. I know it will never be perfect, but it would be nice to be able to focus on other things and not have to worry about my skin every second.

Hi!

Spironolactone definitely takes a very long time to show improvement, that is why it is often recommended that other treatments be used in conjunction, like antibiotics and topicals. A birth control *may* help, depending on the birth control. Yaz/yasmin contains a similar ingredient to alactone (spironolactone), which can boster the effect of the spiro. The con, however, is it increases your risk for high potassium. As long as you are getting your K regularly checked you should be ok. Unfortunately, there really isn't much you can do to hurry the process along with spiro, but I would say that if you aren't seeing improvement in 3 or 4 more months, it's time to move on to something stronger. You may also consider looking into another dermatologist's opinion. You may grow out of it, but then again, you may not. In the mean time you are dealing with acne now, so being dismissive is not super helpful.