My name is Alexis, I’m 25 years old, and I have adult acne. (Aka, acne vulgaris you get when you’re older than 20. Yay me!)
Today’s post is going to be a little different. As a beauty and skincare blogger, it’s all well and good for me to post about products that work for my skin while it’s all lovely and smooth, and my acne is under control. But today, I really wanna show you how exactly how my skincare journey has gone, and how I manage my acne. I’ll include acne before and after photos, including Differin before and after photos plus retin-a before and after photos so you can see my whole acne story. To list it out in full, the treatments (script or otherwise) that I’ve ever tried for my acne vulgaris (what a beautiful phrase!) are:
Lemon Juice, Benzoyl Peroxide, Differin, Tretinoin, Topical Clindamycin, Oral Doxycycline, Lactic Acid
I can STILL remember the sting—this was the most torturous treatment ever, and I can’t help but wonder how much permanent skin damage I actually caused by doing this. This is one of the worst acne home remedies out there—please do not EVER do this to your skin! Some other awful acne home remedies I’ve seen include baking soda and cinnamon.
After a few years of regularly getting facials to help with my congestion, my mom took me to the derm and I walked away with a handy little script for Clindamycin and Differin. These two were great for managing my acne vulgaris (although I probably STILL didn’t use enough recommended SPF with Differin oops) and I used them up until I moved to New Zealand for university and was no longer covered by my parents’ health insurance.
The Benzoyl Peroxide Era
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| February 2014 |
I ended up switching to the Acne.org method, which was 2.5% Benzoyl Peroxide twice a day applied to the whole face. This worked really well for me (as you can tell by the photo) until I fell down the rabbit hole of benzoyl peroxide as a pro-oxidant. I couldn’t find any concrete information about negative effects of the long-term use of BP on one’s entire face, but I wasn’t willing to be a guinea pig either. So I stopped using BP and began to look for something else, and of course, my acne vulgaris returned with a vengeance.
Before people come in perpetuating the myth of “ur skin gets addicted to BP that’s why u broke out gal” let me just ask you something – if you took a medication to manage the symptoms of a disease, then stopped taking it and the symptoms came back, were you ‘addicted’ to the medication?
No.
I stopped using a product to manage my acne, and therefore it came back. The thing with all topical acne treatments is that you need to keep using them to keep seeing results because of how the skin is constantly renewing itself. What an amazing world we would live in if we could only use BP ONCE and be rid of our acne forever! Sadly, the skin doesn’t really work that way.
Starting Differin: Before and After
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| July 2014, August 2014 |
So I struggled along for a little while, trying various acid toners (which didn’t work as well as I hoped for me) until I realised that under NZ’s national health care scheme, I could get Differin prescribed for acne! I don’t know why I didn’t realise this when I first started uni, but whatevs.
My first time around using it, I still used harsh salicylic acid-based cleansers and scrubs which were completely unnecessary and hurt like hell. Turning to the internet, I heeded various warnings about the peeling, sensitivity, and dryness I would experience due to the Differin purge, and began to fall into the rabbit hole that is Asian Skincare. I learned about things like sheet masks, watery lotions, and uber-lightweight sunscreens. I learned how to push through the Differin purge for better skin.
Something that helped me get through the Differin purge was with an app called Day One. It really helped me monitor my skin’s progress then, and I still use it now. It’s actually where I’ve been able to download all these progress shots from!
It was around this time that I started forming my Best Skincare Routine Ever, and there’s a good reason that that’s a proper, capitalised title. My own Differin before and after shocked me. Let me show you how I looked six months after starting it:
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| January 2015 |
I love looking at my Differin before and after because it really shows how far I’ve come! Here’s how my routine looked at this time:
- Rinse with water
- C20 Vitamin C Serum
- Hada Labo Shirojyun Toner
- Snail Bee High Content Essence
- Sebamed Clear Face Care Gel
- Biore UV Aqua Rich Watery Essence
EVENING ROUTINE
- Neutrogena Fresh Foaming Cleanser
- Differin Gel 0.1
- Hada Labo Shirojyun Toner
- Snail Bee High Content Essence
- EltaMD PM Therapy
However, because my skin was finally GOOD, I got lazy and stopped documenting my skin (this is always a bad idea… Trust me!). I also decided to try too many new things at once. Not my best thinking, I’ll admit. Fast forward from January 2015 to June 2016 and I’m having skin that is just as bad or even worse than 2014. I think it was a combination of a couple of products, specifically CosRx BHA Lotion and a L’Oreal sunscreen that set my skin off. I panicked and went back to my GP, who sent me home with a script for Retin-A (called Retrieve in New Zealand).
The Tretinoin Era
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| June 2016 |
I cut out C20 (as my skin would go through another period of becoming extremely sensitive) and went through the purge again. At this point in time, I actually had incredibly low self-esteem about my appearance (possibly the lowest I’ve ever had due to a crazy haircut I got plus the state of my skin) so I didn’t document my skin/take any photos of myself from July 2016 until January 2017.
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| January 2017 |
MORNING ROUTINE
- Cleanse with water
- Thayers Witch Hazel
- Hada Labo Shirojyun Toner
- Hada Labo Shirojyun Milk
- Biore UV Aqua Rich Watery Essence
EVENING ROUTINE
- Neutrogena Fresh Foaming Cleanser
- Thayers Witch Hazel
- Tretinoin
- Hada Labo Shirojyun Toner
- Hada Labo Shirojyun Milk
Witch hazel toner* is a pretty controversial ingredient at the moment, but I really enjoyed using it at this time. I have a full review of the Rose Petal Thayer’s Witch Hazel on my blog, and to be honest I only stopped using it because it’s annoying to travel with—the bottle is a bit leaky! You can also see that I made the jump to using the matching Hada Labo Shirojyun Milk as well as the toner, and I feel like this combo actually did a lot to stopping freckles from forming!
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| July 2017 |
And this is how my skin looks now (sorry about the lighting discrepancy):
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| April 2018 |
At the time of publishing this post, my current routine looks something like this:
MORNING ROUTINE
- Cleanse with water
- Wishtrend Mandelic Acid (every other day)
- Hatomugi Skin Conditioner
- Naruko Rose HA Aqua Cubic Jelly Lotion
- Naruko Raw Job’s Tears Night Gelly
- Biore UV Aqua Rich Watery Essence
EVENING ROUTINE
- Cetaphil Gentle Cleanser
- Tretinoin
- Hatomugi Skin Conditioner
- Hada Labo Gokujyun Premium Lotion
There currently is a little bit more swapping out in my current routine, as I’ve gotta make do with what I can on the road, but it’s all working pretty well for me so far. I don’t have my mind made up about the Wishtrend Mandelic Acid* (pr sample) yet, but it definitely leaves my skin smoother than without any exfoliation at all.
I’m slightly intimidated by the Hatomugi Skin Conditioner because it’s SUCH a huge bottle, but challenge accepted! I’ve emptied it into a spritz bottle to use as a face mist. You can see that I don’t use anything after the Hada Labo Gokujyun Premium Lotion*—I just found it so nourishing in a humid climate for my skin and didn’t really need anything else after it. For my full thoughts on Hada Labo Premium for oily skin, I’ve got a review for you here!
I also sheet mask pretty frequently, but the jury is out on how much these are really making an impact on my skin other than temporary hydration and brightness – I’m hoping they make up for the fact that I don’t have a permanent, strong serum like C20 in my routine right now.
So there you have it! I hope you’ve enjoyed following along with this post and gotten to know me a little bit better, and where my opinions come from when I review skincare. Feel free to ask me ANY questions about my skin, my routine, and the products that I used! I’ll be writing about a few of them in-depth in some upcoming blog posts.
A xx
