This will be long, but please set aside a little time to read this as it may help you!

I just read the thread titled "only people with acne will understand" and I was moved to the point of tears and decided to make an account and post my story and more info about the process of acne and how to stop it. I found what worked and just moved on, but I didn't realize how much pain others were in. I'll start with my story.

I grew up as a girl with dark skin. My skin was always fine otherwise, even in my teen years I never really had even mild acne, I got the occasional hormonal bump near my period and that was it. However, I had another problem. I was 'too dark' and for this offense, girls in my culture suffer greatly even here in America. I was kind of always left out of things that are really emotionally important for a young girl. This story is not about me being dark so I'm going to speed through this part. Basically when I got older I got into some online skin forums and discovered corticosteroids and that they can lighten the skin a few shades. So I bought in....and I got the result I wanted but shortly after that my skin EXPLODED... there are really no words to describe this experience. Literally every spot on my face that could have erupted into a painfully red then blue black scarred blistery pimple DID and the corticosteroids make the skin heal slowly and continue to break out so neither the scars NOR the acne went away. I couldn't go back to life being dark (literally that's how psychologically damaging it was) and I couldn't tell my mother WHY I had gotten the chronic acne so I wouldn't let her take me to a dermatologist. I was left on my own to figure it all out.

Speeding on, I was trying to find something that would stop or slow my body's process of making melanin without the side effects of corticosteroids and I stumbled upon a formula that did something else. I noticed that after the first day all of my huge bumps were about 80% reduced and after the second day they were completely GONE and the redness greatly reduced and absent in many areas, except the dark scars had to fade over time. Not only did it remove all the nasty flakes that my skin just decided to start producing, (how great, right?) the bumps are gone and are still gone even though right now I'm still using the corticosteroids to lighten my skin, until I can find something else that will lighten me as much as corticosteroids can. My skin is smooth now and feels like actual skin now and it hasn't felt that way in years. I still have some light scarring but makeup can easily cover it now and they can finally fade because my face is not constantly blistering every freaking hour of the day.

Here's what I learned. Chronic acne is not caused by bacteria people, hopefully many of you already know this. That is BS. The same bacteria that is on your perfect skinned friend's face is the same bacteria that is on your face. In fact, we're all covered in trillions of bacteria. The difference is you have an inflammatory condition. See, when I decided to start using corticosteroids I induced an inflammatory condition in my skin. Topical corticoids mimic your body's stress hormones, adrenaline and noradrenaline. The thing is these compounds over time stimulate the production of free radicals and damaging inflammatory cytokines and interluekins, normally these are the body's healthy way of dealing with stress or pathogenic invasion but if something is stimulating them chronically, they actually become the problem instead of the solution.

This is why the medical community is officially beginning to say that chronic "stress' is bad the for health and study the mechanisms behind it, even though we've all kind of known this, this is because chronic stress => chronic inflammation. But anyways if you have chronic acne you definitely have an allergy to something in your environment, it could be a food or it could be a product or chemical you can't really avoid. But you can definitely stop inflammation in the skin topically, that's the good news.

I hope this helped, Just know that I love you guys and believe me I know what it's like to be insecure about your skin in ways you can't even imagine and I know how cruel and inconsiderate people can be. But now you know how to get rid of it!

Now let me explain to you why most of the crap they sell you is ineffective. Peroxides are strong oxidizing agents, all they do is kill bacteria and destroy your skin, cause premature aging , dryness, redness they don't actually do anything about the inflammation, which is the real reason why your skin is always blistering and so easily infected by common bacteria, the inflammation in your skin is weakening your skin's natural immune system so it's not the bacteria, it's your skin. Salicylic acid is an anti-inflammatory but when I tried to use it was way too weak and it actually irritated my skin pretty badly, I think its too acidic especially for skin that is already inflamed. Antibiotics will completely imbalance your body, there are plenty of bacteria in your body that are extremely important, long term antibiotics is a bad idea. The body is a holistic machine, imbalancing one factor can produce problems in other areas, I would avoid altering the body's balance for long periods of time, besides bacteria is not the cause of acne, so stop targeting it that way!

Just target the inflammation in your skin. That will get rid of it and keep it away for good! What I use on my skin now actually targets the body's mechanism of producing an inflammation response in the epithelial layer of the skin. There's an inflammation cascade that has to happen for your body to produce acne, and all my formula does is snatch a vital step in that process right out of the skin, so acne is kind of impossible. There is a cheap and very effective way to do this. This literally makes your skin pretty much unable to inflame. I would say exactly how to make it but I've only used it on myself, I don't want a bunch of people who don't know how to compound safely and sanitarily trying to do this themselves and it doesn't work or makes them worse, although it shouldn't I just don't want to be irresponsible knowing anyone could be reading this.

Besides, what I use IS NOT THE ONLY WAY to target your inflammation topically. A semi-effective topical I will tell you (bc its just a vitamin and readily available) is vitamin c powder. Get a non acidic form instead of ascorbic acid (because an acidic form will irritate needlessly), like magnesium ascorbyl phosphate and apply it to your face twice a day. It's not the best, the quickest or the cheapest but you should see a result over time. If you are young, ask your parents to help you whenever you are purchasing things over the internet or compounding a chemical for use on your skin and always purchase from reliable sources.

If someone wants to be a fellow guinea pig, I will totally ship them some of what I use, I'll even pay the shipping. It is not accutane, an antibiotic, a peroxide derivative, an AHA acid, a sulfur compound, a vitamin or an antibacterial -- its none of that. It is msds safe, non hazardous, non carcinogenic (otherwise I wouldn't be putting it on my skin). If it helps someone else out there I don't care. Life is too short to live in pain and be the butt of someone's joke or the punching bag for some insecure arsehole.

Just know that you are loved, and you are never, ever alone! Remember that.

<3