So, what's your pimple/acne story?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I had terrible, horrible nasty acne all over my face and back. From the age of 12 to the age of 22 I was a walking oil and pus factory. Absolutely nothing worked until I finally got a dermatologist to stop prescribing me stupid antibiotics that always stopped working and give me the g-damn Accutane.

Which cleared up everything in six months and I haven’t had a significant problem since. And if a dermatologist had prescribed it 5 years sooner, instead of “seeing how it goes” with the useless antibiotics/ prescription-strength creams/birth control pills - I wouldn’t have all these scars.

22

I had what appeared to be moderate acne when I was 15 - 16. However, my dermatologist correctly figured out that it was genetic and was resistant to everything but severe measures. He put me on the highest dose of Accutane for a few months. If you don’t know about Accutane, it is an incredibly powerful dermatological drug that could use a nuclear bomb as an analogy. It will take care of the acne problem in one fell swoop but it causes lots of other problems in the process. The list of side-effects is a mile long and deadly serious. My lips cracked open over over the place for months, my vision faded in and out, and I became suicidal. There is still a controversy over whether Accutane causes suicidal thoughts in teenage males but I am pretty certain that it does.

It is an interesting drug though. It is more of a rapid cure than just a maintenance treatment. I have been almost pimple free after I took a round of it 18 years ago.

23

Mirena is an IUD. I’m interested to read irishgirl’s comments as one of the side effects listed is increased acne. It’s been recommnded for me but I’ve been loath to try it as I’m freakin’ 40 and I’m still having acne issues.

I’ve never stopped breaking out. I’ve never had the cystic acne, just the annoying occasional breakouts that aren’t bad enough for the dermatologist to suggest Accutane. Even as I’m getting older and my skin is drying out, I’m still breaking out. It’s mostly hormone related. The only thing that mostly works for me is a 2.5% benzoyl peroxide solution (I’ve been using benzoyl peroxide for 27 years now :eek: ) and Differin which works like a mild Retin-A and increases cell turn over.

24

I stopped washing my face with soap and my acne went way down.

I only wash with soap/shower-gel now if my face has grease on it from some reason, like I was under the car. For just general washing, I just rub thoroughly with water when I shower and go about my day.

I think a lot of my problem was the get-oily/get-dry cycle that soap causes.

YMMV, etc.

25

In junior high I had a “boyfriend” who broke up with me because I had a zit on my chin. I must, however, concede that it was the kind of zit that legends are made of. It was monstrous, hard, conical, and volcano-like, and turned from white to yellow to green before my mother finally could resist its siren song no longer, and popped it with alternating squeals of delight and horror.

26

This thread is both hilarious and horrifying.

I had horrible, bad acne when I was in elementary and junior high–I started puberty at about age 9, so it was just another freaking awkward aspect of that. I got teased a lot about my skin. It was horrendous because I knew nobody was capable of being attracted to me --and I don’t blame them, really.

After 8th grade my Mom gave me the gift of a dermatologist and contacts instead of glasses. Thanks to the healing power of dioxicyclen, I went from a pockmarked nerd to a reasonably attractive human being literally over the space of one summer. Some people didn’t even recognize me when I started high school the following year. And I had more than one, ‘‘Oh, I used to feel so bad for you…’’ comment. Uh, thanks.

I hardly have perfect skin, but the meds reduced outbreaks by at least 90%. The downside was, I developed an allergy to the sun, and could spend no more than 10-20 minutes outdoors without having a serious allergic reaction. I had to cancel many summer activities in high school and college – was even housebound for an entire month once – because of this medication. It was worth it.

I’ve been off the meds since I graduated high school, and my skin has remained more or less clear. Occasionally I have horrendous breakouts – right before I got married, I guess due to the stress at the time and possible medication compolications, my skin was wreaking havoc and no OTC stuff was working, but it cleared up substantially immediately after the Big Day.

I’ve learned to control my skin with non-comedogenic makeup (I use the Neutragena ‘‘Skin Clearing’’ foundation in fact, and it’s wonderful.) I also have learned to use the green pen to even out redness and really downplay the unevenness in skin tone when I do have breakouts.

And by the way, I’ve had a Mirena IUD since September 2007, and I haven’t noticed a substantial change in my skin one way or another. For the most part my acne is not noticeable any more. Oh, and now that I’m off those awful meds I can go in the sun now. A full day outside usually makes me sick in bed the next day, but I’m not nearly as sensitive as I used to be.

27

I used to get very painful pimples, on my back-in places inaccessible. My ex-gf enjoyed squeezing them-they hurt like hell! One was really bad-it had to contain a lot of pus and blood.

28

Accutane patient, 1982-'83. The stuff worked, I’ll give it that. However, I’m not sure it didn’t permanently wack my personality. I’ve suffered from depression since about 1990.

29

I turned 11 and was smacked with devastating, grotesque acne on my face, neck, chest, and back. I am a girl, and gnarly cystic acnes was the last thing I needed.

It continued pretty much unabated by antibiotics and dermatology treatments until I was 23. I then opted for Accutane, which cleared my skin up quite a bit (yicky side effects, though).

I’m 40 and still get acne, especially hormonal acne. It’s not even 1/10 of the horrors I endured for more than two decades, but I do get some doozies.

30

I recently started using a 10% benzoyl peroxide bar soap that seems to work wonders on whiteheads. I seldom get zits, but I look like a greasy skinned teenager at 30+! Thanks, Mom!

31

I used to get breakouts on my face and back in my teenage years. I’m 22 years old now and they stopped being so bad only recently.

I use the method described in acne.org. It’s basically don’t irritate your skin and use *a lot *of 2.5% benzoyl peroxide gel. Now I seem to have a constant rate of two or three noticeable pimples on my back. On my face I can never get rid of the black heads on my nose, and other random pimples flare up from time to time.

I’m grateful it is not as bad as it used to be. Once I get my health insurance back, I’ll be sure to visit to a dermatologist to see if we can get rid of the blackheads.

32

The ones I get get don’t bother me much. A little topical treatment, extra time at the gym, and things are okay again. Stress and hormones can cause the occasional breakout.
The thing is, I work in Physical Therapy, and other people 's acne occasionally freaks me the hell out. Not the normal cystic acne, but the mutant growing-a-third-arm blackheads. I have swiped a towel over a patient’s back, had a “mole” pop off, and realized they had a blackhead bigger then an eraser just fall off. (akk! AKK!) Some of the chronic smokers have freaking POLKA DOTS of giant clogged pores. I want to order out for emergency dermatologists. I understand it in the hospital; if you have poor health, circulation and nutrition, your skin will pay a price. There is no Meals on Wheels style traveling cosmetologists for the homebound.
But on someone who appears relatively healthy and mobile, blackheads the size of fingernails are disturbing.

33

If you ever need to feel better about your acne, I recommend reading the above linked thread. It makes me feel grateful for my skin.

34

Huh. Wish I’d known about this a few months ago; my fellow student mentor was put on Accutane at the beginning of last semester, and had a pretty serious personality change several weeks through-- depression, anger issues, and more-- that ended up costing him his mentoring position, and I believe he dropped out. Our coordinators, professor, and I were all baffled by the inexplicable behavior that was a severe contrast from how he’d been the year before.

Anyway, to address the OP, while I didn’t have acne that required medical intervention, for a few years my nose had a big, tender pimple somewhere on the surface, or even worse, sometimes inside a nostril. To this day, I have a continued problem with clogged pores on my nose, and once a year or so, I’ll get a deep throbbing pain that warns of an impending mountain of a pimple to come in a few days. When it decides to come to the surface, it does so quickly. I’ll prepare for work and see a clear nose in the mirror, only to have to dash to the bathroom to lance the offender before lunch break.

35

I had facial acne until I stopped wearing makeup totally, using any sort of moisturizer, astringent, notion potion or lotion. I wash my face with plain dr bronners castile soap [liquid]. No black heads, white heads or seb cysts. I will occasionally get blackheads on my back in the area the bra straps rest on from the skin oils being pressed into the skin for 14-16 hours a day. I have one bertholin [? the ones near the vulvar opening] that impacts every 2 or 3 years. On the other hand, I am an accomplished pore miner of mrAru who before the alopecia hit was a gorilla and had all sorts of ingrown hairs, and a motherlode on one shoulderblade that went away when the hair went away. sob he might get 3 or 4 blackheads in the folicals that had a hair trying to grow, the hair dies off and impacts and I have to convince it to come out.

36

Similar to my daughter. She’d get a zit and attack it with soap and toners and scrubs and then cover it with foundation and powder. It seems counterproductive, to try to cover acne or zits with something that’ll clog pores and irritate the skin.

37

I had terrible acne in high scool. I hated it, but loved loved loved sitting in front of the mirror and popping zits. It was great. I still get a bit excited by a gigantic whitehead that goes ::splurt::. It’s satisfying.

But I still hate the bastards. I lost all pictures of myself during high school years in the Great Hard Drive Crash of '04, but suffice to say that it was bad. Real bad. I tried all sorts of topical creams and antibiotics and nothing worked. Then they put me on accutane. Hot damn, that stuff is amazingly potent. It dried my face out like crazy, though. I would go through a tube of lip balm every couple of days–I remember one day in lunch, I had forgotten my moisturizer, and my face dried up so badly that it was too painful to open my mouth wide enough to eat my chicken sandwich.

I’ve usually got one pimple somewhere on my face, but since I’ve switched to this Neutrogina facial scrub twice a day (I used to never even wash my face. No wonder I had acne so bad), my skin has looked fantastic.

And the best part? No acne scars. None. They’re gone. I’m freaking wolverine, I heal so well.

38

from about the ages of 10-17 I used to get megazits, never had like total face breakouts but I’d get one or two that were just plain monsters, my football coaches used to refer to them as “goiders”, deep and painful they were but around 13 I became expert at lancing them with a needle, which would produce a head of pus so enormous and hard that it is beyond words to explain, but got rid of them, and I never developed a scar.

39

I had a bad, but not severe case of acne as a teen. It was bad enough to be on Accutane. Until then I fought the problem with the usual remedies, including those circular pads that came in a jar of alcohol (Stridex?) I was always amazed by how much dirt and grime came off of my face after using one of those pads.

I was already hopelessly unpopular in school and thought of as a socially awkward dweeb (I was often called “pizza face”), so getting acne at an early age and at such a degree did my fragile self-esteem no good.

40

I had terribly greasy, irritable skin throughout high school and college. Combined with glasses and braces (in the early years) it wasn’t a pretty sight. Medicines and creams didn’t seem to help much and only made my skin dry, cracked, and flaky. Some days I couldn’t even smile without the corners of my mouth bleeding.

Who knows which is more embarrassing - walking around with reflective whiteheads on your face, or dabbing at the bloody ruptures in class after popping them.

Even now, at 28, I degrease my face multiple times a day with a toilet paper seat protector (great tip for those of you who suffer from shiny face).

A few years ago I decided to order Accutane off the internet and took it for a few months because no dermatologist would prescribe it for me (my acne wasn’t severe enough). An incredibly irresponsible, reckless, and stupid thing to do, of course. I made sure to get frequent blood tests to make sure I wasn’t killing myself, and my skin got better. No bad side effects except for dry lips.

Acne sure is a bitch for some people.