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Breakouts following quitting alcohol 🙁

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(@seatlawyer)

Posted : 03/24/2017 11:31 pm

Hi everyone. My first post here and I'm desperate to understand what is going on. I'm a 37 year old male. I almost always used to have some acne at the cheekbones but nothing serious at all, and whatever little there was, was cleared by topical salicylic acid medications. I used to drink about 300 ml of vodka everyday for the past 5-6 years. Last year, in August, 2016, I went into rehab and quit drinking completely. That is when my troubles began; I started to have major acne breakout at the forehead and cheekbones. At first, I thought it might've been the anti-anxiety or anti-depressant medication I was put on. But my doctors did not agree with that, and secondly, the breakouts did not stop even after I stopped the medications since December. My liver enzymes were off-charts when I went it, but had normalized after about a month of treatment. I tried to rule out everything that was new to my lifestyle/diet after August, i.e. stopped medications, one at a time; changed cosmetics like shampoo and face-wash; stopped some cosmetics like moisturizer and after-shave; diet, as it always had been. Nothing seems to stop new acne.The salicylic acid creams are of no use. Worse, now I have an acne or two on my scalp, something I never had; something I didn't even know was possible! The weirdest thing happened when I started drinking again in strict moderation since February...the acne seemed to subside (though not stop completely). I'm baffled; isn't sobriety supposed to do the opposite and clean up the skin? It read somewhere that it might be a sign of the body getting rid of toxins, but, at the same place, it said that this should not happen more than a couple of weeks if it was a sign of detoxification; and mine is going on for months now.

Any ideas what is going on and what I can do now?

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(@josh_hockey)

Posted : 03/25/2017 12:35 am

I'm just taking a shot in the dark here.

You could have naturally high testosterone and alcohol does lower your test. Maybe when you stop drinking you get a spike it testosterone and therefore more acne.

Maybe you could drink apple cider vinegar. Seems to work for some people. Helps with digestion.

Stay strong.

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