Since age 12, I’ve had an epic battle with acne. I was on tetracycline in high school, and Retin-A, which made me so sensitive to the sun that my face would fry off, leaving a pulpy, gory, raw mess where my nose used to be. I used tinted Clean & Clear and really believed it covered up my zits, though I probably looked like I had a pigment disorder since it came only in ‘tanning bed orange’.
I spent the year I was 17-turning-18 in Italy. Not only did my host family members, teachers, and—hey!—even strangers on the street tell me I was fat, but my advisor’s husband looked at my face at one point and said, “Brufoli!” (That’s “Pimples!” to you and me.) And he ran to the pharmacy to get me some medicated face cream.
I’ve tried a number of Neutrogena products:
I’ve tried stuff As Seen On TV:
And knock-offs of stuff As Seen on TV:
Alas. I’m 35, and I break out like a high school sophomore.
Last weekend, I caught part of The People’s Pharmacy, and this dude was saying that, in cultures where the people don’t eat refined sugar, even the teenagers don’t break out.
First dairy.
Then gluten.
Now I’m going to have to stop eating sugar.
Don’t mind me, I’ll just be over here eating my salmon and alfalfa sprouts. Crying.
Goddamn you, Joe and Terry Graedon!
P.S. Look up their podcast on iTunes. Some are labeled “clean”, which others are “explicit”. Hahahahahahahaha.
this is margo. poor baby. i’ve been gluten and dairy and sugar free for years.
a little dark chocolate now and then is ok, and you rediscover fruit.
xxoo
m
sadly, if i eat sugar i also break out again. i haven’t been able to maintain the gluten/dairy free thing but sugar has made a huge difference. and the cravings do eventually go away.
Man. I’m right there with ya. My dad and I were in the car one time, and he swerved out of traffic impulsively and pulled into a pharmacy at a speed that would make you believe he was about to expload from both ends. Ten minutes later, he came back out of the pharmacy with a tube of Clearisil face soap and told me, “that acne will clear right up if you wash your face twice a day with this stuff.” Fucker had perfect skin his whole life and he thought I was negligent!
I am still a sucker for an anti-acne product. Tried ’em all. I’ll have to listen to Joe and Terry, maybe they’re onto something. Let me know if you want to come over for a vegetarian, lacto-gluttard, sugar-free, free-range, organic, home-grown…glass of water sometime this weekend.
my brother insists that soap and all store-bought products provoke break-outs. i have always enjoyed a good zit popping/squeezing session that ends with a little stingy alcohol treatment. but… sometime while i was living with him, i came out of the bathroom with a face full of freshly-squozen welts and jarret was all, “um. don’t do that anymore.” you know how he is kind of yoda-like… and he has this weird power over me… so now i just wash with water and sometimes dove soap … in an effort to restore the ecological balance (or something. jarret says it a lot better than i do.)