Hi guys,I wanted to share my story in the hopes that maybe it will help some of you.I've put a list of specific things that helped me at the bottom of this post, but I highly encourage you to read my whole post to understand exactly how I reached healing from roaccutane.

My story:

I was on a heavy dose of roaccutane for almost a year when I was 19. I got all the classic symptoms; depression, dry & thin skin, hair loss.

After stopping roaccutane the symptoms began to slowly disappear. However, my body was weakened considerably, and the symptoms began to return strongly over the next 2 to 3 years.

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Over the next 5 years I tried a range of different supplements, researching and trying to do it on my own. There were hits and misses along the way, but nothing like a total reversal.

One of the biggest breakthroughs I had was when I finally gave up and went looking for professional help. I went to a naturapath (holistic, herbal remedy type stuff) - and while they didn't do anything amazing, they patiently listened to me, agreed with and supported me, and helped me to feel like I wasn't alone.

We underestimate severely how much stress and mental health is a part of post-accutane recovery. It is absolutely essential! If you aren't calm and at peace, how can you ever have the strength to do all the small things that it takes to care for yourself properly? Suddenly you aren't sleeping, then you're not functioning well, more stress on the body etc. etc. round it goes.

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The best advice I can give anyone in this thread is tobe patient. Consider that there may not ever be a 'total cure'.

There's a really good chance that there has been permanent damage done to your body, and the best course of action you can take is to learn to care for your body, and enjoy the best quality of life you can, without things that you may used to have had and taken for granted.

There is no silver bullet. But there are things that you can doslowly.Consider that you will have to spend the rest of your life not researching for an instant cure, but building the foundations of a new, personal health lifestyle, which gives you the best health, by, in part, taking the least amount of effort to uphold.

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The second biggest breakthrough I had was when I recently visited a dermatologist. I know that this can be a shocking thing to do, considering that for most of us this was the person who we hold directly responsible for all our problems. It took me 10 years...a decade, to decide to go back to where I started.

The final catalyst for this decision was that I started only recently to develop very, very dry hands. This had never happened before, so I went to the dermatologist, and was prescribed an ointment. However,this is the important part.While I was there, the dermatologist told me thatmy skin barrier was weakened from roaccutane, and that I ought to moisturise my entire body daily, to support it.

Up until this point, like many of you, I was fighting constantly against digestive related issues, candida, inflammation.All of this started to disappear almost immediately after I began to daily moisturise my entire body.

The dermatologist hit on something that I had never considered was a part of my problems post-accutane.The immune system.The immune system, he said, essentially 'lives' in the skin. Our skin is our first defence against the outside world, and without a proper barrier, it cant help but be overwhelmed and taken for a 'joy-ride' by any sort of bacteria or invader. For me,this was largely why I had so many digestive-tract related issues and went away almost immediately after beginning to build up the skin barrier with daily moisturising. Also, moisturising is crucial tohydration, which is another big issue when you have no skin barrier post-accutane. You lose the majority of your body's water (which it needs for everything, especially to fight inflammation) through a poor, thin skin.

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Okay. It depends who you are. My problems aren't your problems. But seriously, please try and give your immune system a break by providing it with a thick, moisturised barrier each day. The dermatologist recommended a 'cream' level moisturiser (thicker and oilier than a 'lotion' but less thick and oily than an 'ointment'), however you can use an ointment too.

As soon as I started doing this, my burned out, confused immune system, which without a proper skin barrier had for years been on 'attack mode' all the time, finally started to quiet down and only activate when it actually needed to!

What does roaccutaneliterallydo? Make the skin unable to oil itself. So the skin breaks down, it can't support itself. Then your immune system has to be constantly activefor years. So your digestion and entire health suffers.

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So to summarise - seek professional help from others. Ignore those that don't treat your condition seriously, and keep searching until you find someone who does.

Understand and accept that even though it may not feel like it - you are under a lot of stress, and your mental health is probably in need of support. Nobody can do it alone, and we are living in sickness. Be kind to yourself. Care for yourself.

My personal faith in God as a Catholic has helped me more than anything else that I've written above, and still continues to help me to this day. It's the only reason I've been able to find answers, to continue walking this path, and to find peace, acceptance, joy and healing.

Keeping our eyes on a guiding light while we take small steps every day is the only way to heal from the damage that accutane has done. If we are hyper-focused and looking only at each step that we make, we will never make it. We simply won't have the strength or the patience.

Our bodies cannot heal in the way we try to force them. They aren't build for radical swings and changes. They are built forhomeostasis. Constant equilibrium. For every new supplement you take, your body will react to it totry to reach balance. Consider that your body is smarter than you give it credit for. A lot of the 'bad symptoms' you get are the body's way to avoideven worse ones and simply to keep you alive.

Love the body. Work with the body. It alone is the vehicle for your healing. You have to take it with you, not aggressively chop out parts of it you want to leave behind.

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While I benefited a lot from seeking help from a naturapath and other professionals, the responsibility for my healing remains on me.

It's up to you to take care of yourself. The only healing that truly began for me was in the following phases:

1.Acceptingthat, like it or not, I was to blame for how I ended up, because I was my own responsibility. But that because I accepted responsibility,I was free and had the power to change.

2.Trust in God or a higher power. What is your life for? Figure this out. Maybe your accutane story was meant to happen to bring about a higher purpose in your life, and to force you to progress away from meaninglessness and emptiness. It is unavoidably one of the defining parts of your life. Accept it and gear it toward good.

Healing is a spiritual journey into your own life and trauma.You have to heal not only the body, but the mind and the soul. They each lead into each other. E.g. exercising thebody, leads to calmermind,better decisions and less stress for thesoul, more acceptance and kindness, and so awareness and healing in thebody -and on and on, each leading into and building up the other.

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By simply following the above two points you will have the right mindset and disposition to make good, rational choices, like allowing yourself the right amount of time to see if a new change of diet is working etc. Without this, you will have no way of making actual progress. We need to be sensible enough to be patient, to not want a quick fix, and to learn to live a holistic lifestyle of change that will take years, but will actually have effect. And along the way we will still be human beings, and have joys and sorrows, and live life fully, despite our sickness. That is life. This is what we are living and all that we can live.

Does a person born blind have any "less" of a life than one born healthy? No. They have a different one, but no less beautiful and significant.

We were healthy and then made sick, but how are we different from someone diagnosed with cancer, or who loses their legs?

Life is bigger than us and our desires. It's bigger than what we want.

I believe that God made us for a reason - wanted us to be sick for a reason. For the same reason that the person gets cancer, or a boy is born blind. To learn, to grow, to accept life and to realise that we dont have any answers, nor any claim to life. It is a gift, every day of it. Any day without pain or suffering. Any day that we can simply eat some sort of meal, and feel the sun on us, is more than many have or will have. We "deserve" none of it, and so can never be ungrateful nor unaccepting of any thing, good or bad.

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For my part, I'm accepting of my past of accutane, and my future beyond it. What else can we do? I'm so glad for the pain and struggle of coming through ongoing accutane recovery, because of who it has made me. Accutane made me a better person, because it knocked me down and showed me that who I was, was wrong. And I saw that behind it was God and his will, and that that was the only thing that truly mattered.

Before accutane I was a drug user (class A recreational and very frequent marijuana), a chronic, frequent masturbator and sexual deviant, incredibly vain, arrogant, mean and evil.

It happened to be accutane, but it could just as easily have been cancer...it's whatever was needed to wake me up.

And I'm so glad I did. Because of God's "punishment" (more like the only way he could get through my stubborn walls and thick head) I have saved my relationships with my family, I have a truly blessed life where I have joy every day just being alive. AND, God's faithfulness meant that I am even slowly healing now from the accutane damage, by following his word and spirit in my life, in patience, kindness, and love to myself and others.

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Truly my journey has been an overwhelmingly spiritual one, which has only at the end of it led to bodily healing. I hope everyone who reads this decides to start at the real, true beginning of your healing journey, by dealing with the trauma and inner turmoil you are facing and have faced, and discovering what your life is really meant to be about. I pray that you can let go of your pain and begin to heal by opening yourself up to the true immensity and beauty of life, with full surrender.

Post Script:

Please feel free to message me directly if you want further information or guidance. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear or skimmed over important sections. I'll try to respond to direct forum posts quoting areas of my text, so I can help clarify.

Below I am posting a short appendix of behaviour/diet that has helped me with healing from roaccutane. This is of limited importance because of what I've already noted abouthomeostasis(the fact that the body will always seek balance) and also that different actions are impacted by a huge range of different factors such as time (weeks, not hours), interaction with other foods and supplements, behaviour (e.g. exercise), supplement quality, part of the world etc.Ergo, it is almost impossible to be completely sure that one particular cause was responsible for one particular effect.Which is why a holistic, patient, slow approach is required.Also, of course, your symptoms and problems may be different since we are different people.

Also please note that there are different phases and orders of healing from roaccutane.For example, if you have an inflamed digestive system you will not digest the nutrition from food properly. That has to be dealt with first, before a good diet can be effective in treating other, higher order problems.The below list is not separated into phases. Each listing was effective at different stages for different personal symptoms at that particular stage.

Things that helped:

• A steady, varieddiet of mostly meat and vegatables and only some wholegrains (e.g. brown rice).
  Some standouts noted for their liver and healthsupporting properties:
  beetroot, broccolli, pumpkin, kale, radish, celery, avocado, white onion, turnip, cabbage.
• Large, continued doses of Vitamin D (4000IU daily)
• High quality multivitamin supplement with a focus on essential macrominerals, microminerals and B vitamins
• 30 min daily exercise, especially aerobic (heart rate increase)
• Moisturising whole body once daily (with a 'cream' level moisturiser) for hydration and immune support
• Avoiding Omega-6 and increasing Omega-3 (very slowly, via diet)
• Low carb / Anti-Sugar diet (generally low carb, avoid all refined sugars)
• Anti emulsifier / Soy diet (avoid any and all soy)
• Apple Cider Vinegar (in meals and a bit just after meals)
• Natural Yoghurt (no sugar, and as natural as possible for good bacteria)
• Probiotics (temporarily when needed)
• Curcumin (reduce inflammation)
• Coconut Oil
• Olive Oil (not too much)
• Green Tea (detoxification, cytochrome assistance)
• Fasting (intermittant and/or 24h once weekly)
• Praying / Meditating (purposely allowing self to relax and avoid stimulation, lower stress)
• Dopamine fasting (particularly deleting social media and using phone less)
• Reduced light at night time (no computer or phone after sunset, down lighting. Helps sleep).
• Focusing on oral health i.e. flossing, brushing morning and night (big site of bacteria)
• Reducing phytoestrogens in the environment (BPA plastics, petrol fumes etc.)
• No smoking or drinking alcohol (maybe a bit of red wine okay, dependant)
• Considering the impact of radiation (distance yourself from radiation emitters)
• No porn and notmasturbating (reset your hormones, sex drive)
• Gelatin (repair gut)
• Fennel Seeds (anti bacterial, good fibre)
• Dandelion tea (good for liver, but will make you pee, so remember to rehydrate)
• Sleeping earlier (research suggests the earlier you start to sleep, the more effective it is, even if its the same 8h)

I've also tried Ashwaghanda and other adaptogens. They're okay here and there but not an effective solution over time in my opinion. But every now and again they might help to pick you up a bit.

While the above is my list of what worked for me, yours will inevitably be different.

As I've already stated, the most important thing to do, and the only thing that will truly help you to develop an effective personal treatment lifestyle for yourself, is to set yourself right spiritually and refocus yourself on what really matters.

God bless, best of luck.