Try sleeping with some toothpaste plastered on it. Sometimes that helps dry it up quickly, but the best thing I’ve found to reduce redness and swelling is Preparation H. Ten thousand supermodels can’t be wrong.
For another, it doesn’t work - Cecil did a colum about this recently - the ingredent that models used Prep-H for (they used it for eye-bags, BTW) is no longer in it.
Anyhow. I’ve been treating it. It’s just really stubborn.
try some triple antibiotic ointment or cream. apply as often as you can. Pimples are infections, albeit small ones. Antibiotic ointment also speeds up healing if the growth comes to a head and explodes.
There is also a great face mask by Queen Helene (no, really) called “Mint Julep Clay Mask” . Try covering the offending spot with the mask, and leave on over night.
that’s all I’ve got.
Is it one of those deep, deep ones that seems to be nudging a nerve? I hate those ones. Can’t squeeze 'em – got to wait for them to emerge to some degree and attack them with an X-acto knife and a warm wash cloth.
Personally, when I pop one of those “deep zits” where you have to press super hard and it finally pops I find it to be as emotionally satisfying as sex, almost more so.
I kid you not, the first time I got one of those, I thought I had cancer of the cheek. sigh I was young and naïve and diddnt realise that you could get “underground pimples”.
Try what I used to do. Get a hot washcloth and dab a tip in as hot of water as you can possibly get. Then place the hot tip in the zit. It wont work right away but if you do it a few times a day for a day or two it should surface…then the popping begins!
I know this sounds horrible, but what I do now is stab it with a needle. I have a trust zit-poppin’-safety pin in the bathroom. If I make a little scratch right where the zit is and squeeze, I’ll get some blood, but it speeds up the pus comming to the surface, so that in 6 to 24 hours, its right there ready to go away. After I pop it, you cant even tell it was there or a scratched it. I also heal scars/scabs/scrapes at an alarming rate, so I dont recomend anybody else try it.
I have one of those on my chin right now-I just squeeze them a bit a day until they get ready to come to a head.
Then I dab alcohol on them constantly until they go away.
What’s weird is, since I started using plain ordinary bar soap on my face (Irish Spring), I haven’t been getting NEARLY as many zits as I used to using those facial cleansers.
No squeezing! No squeezing! Leave it alone and it’ll be gone much sooner than if you abuse it. Next time, if it’s feasible, have your skin doctor take a look at it. He can give it a shot with steroids and the pimple’ll be gone in a day or two. A godsend for pimples-from-hell that inevitably crop up right before important events like weddings. Otherwise, for the love of Mike, don’t do anything to make it angry.
I never do anything involving poking or proding. I almost never get zits (lucky me) - usually only in the winter, when my skin gets really dry, over produces sebum to compensate, and blammo - the mother of all zits.
This one wasn’t really zity. It was just sort of a red bump that swelled up on my face, and then unswelled. Now it’s red, and sort of bumpy, but mostly just dry, and not sore at all.
Sorry guys. I just don’t have any gross zit stories to share.
Would you be interested in the time I pulled the Wood-Tic of my grandma’s dog? That was pretty gross.
Sometimes I can understand why people don’t squeeze. Sure, they don’t want scars. Sure, they don’t want oozing red craters on their faces.
But for the love of god, the squeezing part MAKES UP for the oozing blood and the scars! There ain’t nothing better than a good zit-popping to cheer one up.
Oh, and those “underground” zits are the WORST. Though…those seem to have the best popping quality, as Sock Munkey said.