Hello everyone. I am 35 y/o and struggled with acne since I was a teenager. As an adult, my acne has been mostly hormonal and cystic. Not huge break-outs, but when I got them they were painful, under-the-surface pimples. It was frustrating because they would take weeks to go away.

I used to use OTC products and found that benzoyl-peroxide helped a lot with keeping the breakouts from lasting as long, but they were just as frequent so the dermatologist told me to use Differin. I have been using it in the morning, and then the BP at night. It was going really well until after a few months when my break-outs started coming back. So the doc said to use tretinoin .025% because it was stronger.

I didn't have much irritation with the Differin , but the tretinoin is making my face itchy. I am also breaking out A LOT and I don't know if that means I'm "purging" or if it means I'm having a bad reaction to it. I didn't have much of a purge phase with the Differin, but now I have acne in places I never even used to break out.

Anyway, all of my research makes it seem like treinoin and Differin have basically the same effectiveness for acne. Should I just go back to Differin since I had no issues or does this new purging mean I should hang in there? I don't get why the doc prescribed it if the only difference is the level of skin irritation.