Epiduo : Forte Gel

So a little background on my acne... I have struggled with it since middle school, was prescribed yasmin BC and antibiotics as a teenager which worked wonders and I was finally clear. In my late teens my OBGYN switched my BC because of warnings against yasmin and yaz to a different less risky BC. It was still doing the job of keeping me clear but I would occasionally start to get a cyst near that time of the month. Within the last 9 months (I'm now almost 27) I made the decision to get off of BC because my friend who had been having migraines since starting BC told me that was what had caused them. Now I had been having pretty bad migraines with aura for the past 10 years and just attributed it to genetics since my mom suffers from them as well. Turns out it was the estrogen in the birth control! I have not had one migraine in the past 9 months! FYI if you experience migraines with an aura and take BC with estrogen you are putting yourself at a much higher risk for stroke and blood clots, something I do not want to risk. But unfortunately getting off the birth has wrecked havoc on my skin. I went to a new dermatologist (after having a terrible experience with trying accutane with my old one and ending up with severe anxiety attacks and having my left arm become numb) and I was prescribed epiduo forte. I did not want any sort of antibiotic because of the damage they can do to the good bacteria in your body so I opted for something topical since I have never really been consistent with any topical creams I was prescribed in the past. So I am currently on week 7. Now the first few weeks were absolute HELL with the peeling and itching and burning of my skin. After a few weeks the peeling went away but I'm still struggling with new break outs. In fact its much worse than where I was before starting epiduo Forte. But from what I have read online at least from people reviewing the less strong version (just regular epiduo) they have said to wait a full three months to decide if its working. Honestly this is the hardest thing I have done regarding acne treatment because I have had to stay consistent with it and go through terrible peeling and this so called initial breakout. I do feel that the small skin colored bumps around my jawline have started to disappear and that I have been having less and less cystic bumps popping up as of the past week so I'm hoping I am nearing the end of this "gets worse before it gets better phase". I am however going to stick this out until the full three months is up and then update my review.