Martin like countless Reclaim Your Skin readers left an excellent heartfelt comment about his experiences with Acne and Roaccutane treatment. We felt this excellent comment might help people who are currently deciding whether or not to take Roaccutane:
Acne is a serious skin disease all too often trivialized in the media. Unless people have suffered themselves they will never know just how depressing and debilitating it can be.
Because it has associations with gawky teenagers and hormones it is all too easily laughed at or dismissed but it can carry on to last all of an adult’s life which therefore makes it a horrible and life ruining condition.
Because Acne is serious it needs a serious medicine to deal with it and Roaccutane is the only answer. I have suffered from bad acne since the age of 12 and like everyone else tried everything in the antibiotic and cream line I could get my hands on but nothing worked.
I felt the acne affected every aspect of my waking life including school, college, work and social life and what often makes it worse is that it is perceived as being your own fault. You are somehow less clean than other people or eat the wrong foods or something.
As those reading this will know, people with acne are actually far more likely to be cleaner than most people and have better diets because they are trying so hard to get rid of it! Anyway it wasn’t till my mid thirties that I was finally given Roaccutane which I had never previously heard of and finally something worked.
It was like watching a dream unfold as my pores gradually closed up, the ever present grease started to dry up and suddenly I felt like a presentable human being for the first time in my life.
I was so impressed by the results I wanted to stop other victims in the street and tell them but the potential for embarrassment was too great so I am pleased to have the opportunity now.
Yes there are side effects as with all medicines and yes spots and grease do return but not like before. I took two courses in my late thirties which kept me relatively clear from acne for fifteen years.
It really helped and besides what else is there for chronic sufferers?
P.S Thank you Martin for a great post and thanks Abi for writing a heading.