Does it go away?? Ever??
I would be so grateful to hear from any long term retinoid users who experienced this pitted/orange peel-y texture.
I am 38, female and have hormonal acne. It was totally under control until my derm prescribed me Aczone for my monthly breakouts. After 12 weeks my skin was destroyed on that stuff - I hear it works great for some, but for me it caused insanely excessive oiliness and tons of jawline/chin pustules, etc. I went from looking okay to looking like hell.
So my derm switched me to tretinoin 0.025%. That was in early July. I ramped up slowly, starting at 2x a week, and after the first week I never saw any flaking or redness. I now use it nightly. I wash my face with an Olay cleansing brush and apply a tiny bit of moisturizer to only the dryness prone areas of my face (chin, upper cheeks). Then I wait a half hour and apply a small amount of tretinoin.
I never had any huge "initial breakout" but I did continue to break out at first. I'm almost 6 months in and just in the last few weeks have noticed I don't really have any 'active' pimples. So I'm hoping that's from use of the tretinoin.
However, I'm still pretty oily and have noticed that in certain lights I have what looks like pitted skin - only on my lower to mid cheeks. It looks like my pores are just very enlarged - no swelling, redness or irritation, just a look of pitted, orange peel looking skin in these areas when I get in the right lighting. My cheeks actually feel really smooth, which is great. But the pitted look is not what I was expecting.
I've been scouring the web looking for info, and I keep reading that this happens to folks, but mostly what I'm reading is that when it happens people immediately discontinue using the product. What I'm trying to find out is this: has anyone experienced this and continued using the product for an extended period, and did the enlarged pores/pitted skin/orange peel thing improve at all?
My hope is that I'm sloughing off all this dead skin at a much faster rate and I just have to keep doing so until I get to the smooth, even skin that (hopefully) lies somewhere below.
I have this as well, but I had it before I used the retinol. I just couldn't tell because I was too distracted by my pimples. Is it possible that these are just the size of your pores and you weren't aware of it before? Pore size is genetic, and there is no such thing as porcelain smooth skin unless you have exceptional (rare) genes.
I only have visible pores on my nose and the lower half of my cheeks. Theres also little patches just above my eyebrows, Otherwise the pores are basically invisible. This is genetics, not skin care.
that orange peel phase... I started using differin in april this year every night, all started off great, smoother skin, fewer breakout nice even skin BUT i was crazy oil. then around about 3 month mark i ended up with huge pores and some of them kind of connected together and made large indents, I freaked out start searching the internent for soloutions changing cleansers etc.
Like u said majoirty of people that get it stopped treatment but i came across a post on theses forums where a guy said a few months later his healed.
Finally my own experiance i'm 8 months in and this has also recovered for me, the oily skin has also calmed down a lot.
I think that phase only lasted about a month for me, i will still get some pores that look stretched out but they'll go away after some time.
That's just my experiance, everyone's skin is different 
Thanks so much for the replies 
As far as my pore size before, I did have some large, visible ones around my upper cheeks, at the top of the cheekbones (very genetic, as was noted), but I do definitely have now an entire cheek-full of pitted skin - much more noticeable when I'm really oily, but always noticeable in something like direct sunlight.
I'm going to wait it out, because I do feel like the tretinoin is doing its rapid exfoliating thing, and I'm not really breaking out anymore, so hopefully after it gets past all the layers of muck I might get to better skin. I'm not hoping for miraculously poreless, clear, perfectly even-toned skin, but I do hope for better than what I have.
Also, since I did only recently step up my tretinoin usage to every day, I might be experiencing the phases of worse-to-better skin slower, so who knows. Time will tell. I'll definitely try to update in case it will help others with this question.
I do have a couple of tips that might be useful. I notice when I use too much tretinoin (even just a tiny fraction more than the so-called pea-size amount), the next day my skin looks oilier and a little puffy. Less really is more with this stuff - I know everyone knows that, but it's easy to forget. You really do only need a very small amount.
For the oil slick that is our skin, I've tried so many things. Aqua Glycolic toner really helps if you can tolerate glycolic acid (and my derm said it's good to use in combo with the tretinoin as I'm trying to fade some melasma/hyper-pigmentation as well). It's a toner, and you just need a quick swipe after washing in the morning, so it shouldn't contribute to drying out the skin too much - shouldn't being the operative word there. Everyone is different and everyone's level of sensitivity has to be judged for themselves. My skin is pretty sensitive, and I tolerate it well, but I can't use other glycolic acid products, because it's just too much.
The other thing I've recently found is a mattifier called OC8. I've only found it online, and my derm actually had some samples that she gave me. It's a white lotion-y mattifier that goes on totally clear, and it really does help keep the oil at bay for a good part of the day. I've recommended it to both male and female friends who have oily skin - I even have a male friend who shaves his head and uses this stuff to keep it from shining too much. (There's the regular OC8 and one that's made for acne-prone skin, which surprisingly gets much worse online reviews. I've never used that one, but I've been using the regular OC8 for a few months and have never had a breakout or bad reaction from it). So just wanted to throw that out there for anyone looking for a decent mattifying lotion. It works good under makeup as a primer, but I actually put it on over mineral makeup as well and it works great that way too.
