I’ve been struggling with acne for about 7 years and have been seeing a dermatologist almost annually for 6. I went in last week and we had a talk about accutane. While I was unsure at the time, I decided to have my blood drawn and get the prescription written with the intention of thinking it over for a few days.
I wrestled with the decision all week. I did a lot of reading on PubMed (which was good for scientific, statistical information about side effects) and on the acne.org message boards (which was good for testimonials). Although there are lots of people who say it was the best decision ever, I’m just too scared of the potential long term side effects like liver damage, joint calcification, IBS, or hair loss, however remote they may be.
I called the dermatologist’s office on Friday to schedule a follow-up appointment to discuss my concern about accutane and find out if there’s something we can try that’s not so harsh. Unfortunately, the next available appointment is over two weeks away. Plus, I think grappling with the accutane decision all week only stressed me out even more. Now for two weeks I’m without the treatment I was hoping for last week, and my disappointment in that regard combined with the decision-related stress is sure to do wonders for my skin.
Talk about a week.:smack:
This was mundane (at least to everyone else) and fairly pointless and I just had to share it.
My daughter used proactiv and she might as well have used water. The clindamycin did little. I’m afraid after many years of trying other things we went with accutane. I agree, it’s not what you’d try first, but I regret we didn’t try it earlier. I hope whatever you decide on works for you.
Proactiv made my skin worse, maybe because I am probably allergic to one or more ingredients. Oral erythromycin seems to help, but my doc isn’t too keen on prescribing it, at least not long-term. It’s not bad enough that I want to go through the rigmarole of getting a consult for a dermatologist, but it is bad enough that I feel self-conscious when my face breaks out.
hobscrk777, keep us posted on what you decide to do.
Wow my Doctor didn’t even mention any long term side effects. Or give any indication at all that accutane was potentially dangerous. He pretty much just looked at my acne and prescribed a 6 month treatment. It was great while I was on it but the acne came back pretty much as soon as I stopped taking accutane anyway. Albeit to a somewhat lesser extent.
Shit, I’ve done three rounds of Accutane (at ages 15, 18, and 22) and now at 25 even though my face is pretty clear and has been for a while I still get it on my back and shoulders all the time and it does not fucking go away, ever. Absolutely nothing works, which is frustrating.
I did a round of Accutane in college and it did a good job. I now (at 30 years old) get a zit here and there which I can live with. From the time started getting acne until college when I started Accutane I never went more then a day or so totally zit free. Now, most people didn’t think that it was such a big deal, but these were the big, under your skin, cyst type zits that hurt like hell. I’m very happy with the results that I got. The only thing I suggest to people taking it is to try to aim for fall or spring to take it for two reasons. First, it’ll make you burn very very easily. So for that reason you’d want to do it when you can avoid the sun. Second, it’ll make your face so incredibly dry that you wouldn’t want to do it in the dead of winter. Random nose bleeds were very common. Smiling to big and having your lip split was kinda par for the course as well. I quickly learned to always keep a wad of kleenex in my pocket for those occasions.
It wasn’t fun, but I would do it a again if I had two. A few months of dry skin for not having painful zits was more then worth it.
I’m on a combination of adapalene and clindamycin, which is working pretty well, though I do still have an occasional breakout. It’s basically gotten me from the level of trainwreck awful to pretty much like a normal person’s skin. It does cause dry skin (which I use moisturizer to deal with) but not on the level that I’ve seen accutane do to people.
I did Accutane twice. The first time it split my right thumbnail from the bed all the way through the tip; the second time it split both thumbnails all the way. I got some minor nosebleeds but stopped those with saline spray. It is surprisingly difficult to live without the use of your thumbnails (you wouldn’t think so till you’ve tried it).
I have declined several suggestions to do it again. I’ve been on dozens of different antibiotics, and everything works for a little while. Then it stops working and I go to something else. Pai325, for me it was the clindamycin that might as well have been water. I use Retin-A, and I don’t know if it’s giving me any benefit or not.
OP, I don’t know if you’re a man or a woman, or your age. If you’re male, I would advise you to go for the Accutane. If your acne is such that other treatments have failed, you must be very frustrated and this likely will work for you. If you’re a woman, you’ll have to be on birth control and, though I had no intention of having children, if I had, the stuff I saw in the disclaimer brochure would have made me think twice about it.
When my ex-wife was on it, she had to be on birth control, plus confirm to the doctor that she/we were using a secondary method, plus she had to have a pregnancy test every month. Plus it came in a blister back and on the back of each blister was a picture of a pregnant woman with a big X over it.
Getting pregnant on Accutane is very very not good.
Right before I turned 30 my face was invaded by large, painful cyst-zits like Joey P describes. It was horrifying! I tried a lot of OTC stuff first and a lot of different wash solutions, nothing worked.
My dermatologist had me switch to using only Cetaphil to wash with, then Differin and Duac as topical stuff. She also shot some cortisone in one of the cysts but she said she didn’t like to do that because it causes pits.
That all actually didn’t work right away so she put me on antibiotics. Only, I do not like to take antibiotics because of previous health problems so I asked her if there was an alternative…
She put me on this stuff called nicotinamide and I swear it was a magic bullet. It’s basically niacin, but tweaked a little to make it less harmful. After about 8 months of dealing with the horrible acne, I was clear and I felt like a new person.
I still use the Differin and Duac whenever I have little flare-ups but it’s been over a year now and my skin looks fantastic!
Good luck, I know what a pain this all can be. It always seems like there’s no hope, until something finally works.
Heh. When I was in high school, my boyfriend was taking Accutane for his acne. (He thought he was a total pizza face. I thought he was cute. Anyhoo…)
Apparently one day our “friends” were gossiping about me and my boyfriend’s sex life. One of his close friends swore we were having sex, and could prove it - he’d seen the birth control pills! They came in a blister pack and on the back of each was a pregnant woman with the “No!” symbol over it! Obvious!
Oh, how I laughed.
Both my husband (the boyfriend in the above story, now Mr. Snicks) and my brother took Accutane as teenagers. It really helped, but how much of it helping was due to their acne and how much was due to simply growing up out of the oily teen years, I’m not certain. Both have good skin now - Mr. Snicks especially is way handsome. Not that I’m biased…
My experience with Proactive was similar to that of Pai325’s daughter. Clindamycin and benzoyl peroxide are moderately effective, as are various oral antibiotics.
I haven’t tried Retin-A, although I have tried Tazorac, which is another topical retinoid. I tried tazorac for about two months, and it only seemed to make things worse, although it’s possible I didn’t maintain it for long enough.
I’m a male in my early twenties, so I don’t have to jump through all the birth control hoops. While all medications obviously have side effects, most are short-term and exist only as long as you’re taking the medication (or shortly thereafter). It seems to me that accutane has a number of harsh, long-term side effects.
Ask about Differin. It’s like Retin-A but waaaaaay less harsh. Try the .1 if you have sensitive skin, or the .3 gel if you don’t.
If clindamycin and benzoyl peroxide were effective, ask about Acanya, which is a combo of 2.5% BP and 1.2% clindamycin. It’s new, but your max out of pocket is $25 with the prescription card. If you have had success with benzoyl peroxide on its own, why not try NeoBenz micro, which is time-released?
Finally, do you have blackhead problems? Try Klaron.
I’ve wrested with acne myself, and the only things that have helped eradicate it were 1) oral antibiotics then 2) birth control pill (not an option for you, caused my lesions to be smaller but not go away) and 3) Klaron 4) 2.5% benzoyl peroxide and 5) Proactiv’s sulfur mask. Sulfur in Klaron and the Mask are similar and very, very effective without being drying. Excellent for sensitive skin. I’ve tried everything (literally, everything) but refused to go on Accutane.
Best thing for Bacne/Chest Acne is Panoxyl 5% bar. Should be able to find it in most drug stores.
Accutane is the nuclear option. I would wait and try out a few more options before going on it. Especially try a new option every 3-4 months, not every year (you said you see the doc annually, why not go every few months and try a new regimen?)
Accutane worked really well for me, practically a miracle. I started it after dealing with moderate acne for about 36 years, and it was the only thing other than systemic antibiotics that ever worked. I did a 4 month course of Accutane about 7 years ago, and the acne is back, but not as bad as it was before prior to the treatment.
I’m female, so I had to have a pregnancy test every month and swear that I was using two forms of birth control every time I went into the doctor’s office. This was despite being 50 years old with a husband who has a vasectomy.
I did the Accutane thing and may do it again. The birth defects caused by Accutane are only an issue while you are on it - as I understand it.
If someone knows different, by all means, please correct me.
I think some people may wait too long to try something like Accutane. It’s a harsh option, but it works for most and acne, while not usually physically dangerous, can be an emotional pitfall.
I was on accutane at 17 and had a mixed result - on the one hand it seemed to work wonders for me, but was quite painful. I was working at The Body Shop at the time, where everyone is supposed to be presented perfectly, and the accutane was making my lips basically peel off whole - the female customers were already questioning what a 17 year-old male could tell them about makeup, let alone one who looked like his entire face was about to fall off into their frozen yoghurt at any second.
So it made my skin very, very dry but my acne got much better. It was too painful for me to continue more than a few months, and I still have pretty unsatisfactory skin, but it did me well for the amount of time I was on it.
