well, i am officially disgusted and fed up with my skin.
it seems like everything i try, my skin gets worse.
it fucking sucks.
i want my skin to be clear for my wedding in october, so i went ahead and signed up for proactiv.
it was on sale for $19.95, so i thought i'd give it a try.
has anyone on here used it?
if so, please tell me stories.
i did try a few years ago and it kinda hurt my skin, it made it burn a bit.
but i didn't really give it a chance, i only used it for like a week and a half.
i am totally giving up and running out of ideas here, so i am gonna give it one more try.
any proactiv stories would be great right now, thanks.

It worked great on me (although I forget how long that took) and then abruptly stopped working after about a year. I've read that isn't uncommon.

I think my skin was worse after that, but it's possible it just felt that way because I thought I was in the clear, so to speak, and it's also possible it was just going to be an exceptionally bad time for my skin anyway, for some reason.

I've had terrific results with the acne.org regimen, which I've been using for a couple of years. I even got lazy and barely did it during my recent vacation, actually, I was lazy enough to not even wash my face many days (it was too hot to go out much), and my skin hardly broke out at all. I don't know if the regimen actually fixed my skin, or if I simply was having a mid-thirties adult acne phase that has since passed.

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meh. it was ok, but not for severe acne or anything.

It's ery harsh though, after years of using hard chemicals on my skin I ow use a gentle cleanser (Avene Cleanance), rose water as a toner, and aloe vera as a moisturizer and treatment at night to even out skin tone, treat blemished, fade scars...

this has been working great for me. my skin hasn't looked this good i a long time!!!

hmmm, it just stopped working?
that is kinda weird.
i am still gonna give it one more try...a real try this time.
one thing that sucks is that as soon as i placed my order it told me that it is gonna take 2-3 weeks to come!
that sucks ballz, i sure hope that i get it sooner than that.

the aloe vera isn't too greasy for a moisturizer?

i just wonder how many of these before & after pics are real:

http://www.proactiv.com/stories/stories.php

Yeah, the gentleness was what seemed to make the difference for me as well.

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i've heard nothing but great things about the acne.org regime.. you should try that.

i have so many proactiv products but i've honestly never used them so i don't know how they work, i'm going to give it a try though.

LOL i was reading this as if it was a Painted Rose's post I wasn't paying attention to the name. iw as like whuuut wedding?

when i moved to florida my skin freaked out. i mean, i'd not ever really had a pimple so it was a bitch. i tried the proactive and noticed a difference almost immediately. didn't get past the 3rd package as i moved and didn't renew.

i choose to go to a dermatologist for what ails my skin now. which isn't much and not too often.

moving, stress, new/different water/air, traveling and change are all tough on your skin, etc.

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[ o ]==#

"A junkie is someone who uses their body to tell society that something is wrong.” - Stella Adler

tell me about it.
all of the changes in my life recently have really stressed the hell out of me.
i think that is why my skin has been acting the way it has been.
my skin has NEVER been this bad in my entire life.
hopefully after the wedding and visa crap, my face will calm down.

ew, their little tube of moisturizer is 15$. that's like almost the same price as the whole fucking 4-part system.

I used it for a while when I was younger, but I think I have an allergy to benzoyl peroxide or something because it burned me (when I was a kid, Clearasil made my face swell up. It sucks, because I would like to use it and have it work on me!). Now I used Clean and Clear gentle cleanser with their cooling toner, and it's working for me right now. Extreme stress is probably the biggest skin irritant for me, when I got a new job in May my skin broke out for a month until I chilled out.

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Here's a spoiler for you: Chinese Democracy is shit

DOES NOT WORK.

Used it off and on for five years..hoping that it would work. NOTHING HAPPENED.

Then I discovered the (expensive) yet highly effective retin-a.

WORKED. Cleared my skin up in three weeks. After years of acne, I finally found something that worked.

Either use retin-a, or accutane/roaccutane. These are serious solutions for serious problems.

The pro-active didn't work as well for me as Retin-A. My dermatologist gave me some samples for Duac gel which worked great. Too bad my insurance wouldn't pay for it and it was too expensive out-of-pocket.
I have to force myself to drink loads of water and that seems to make a difference when it comes to breakouts.

I have a feeling a lot of those people were probably taking medication (accutane,etc.) and using Proactiv at the same time. I used Proactiv about 5yrs. ago when i was around 13/14 and it didn't help me at all and just burned my face, but then again I have very sensitive skin so I think it all depends on your skintype if it works or not.

I think there's probably a large 'results may vary for individuals' factor in all of this.

Although I do tend to think that the gentle over harsh treatment is probably generally true - there's a big tendency in our society to think harsher harder MORE is the answer to everything, and it does make sense that your skin will just overcompensate by producing more oil. But in terms of specific products, different people are going to react differently. One of the things I like about acne.org is that it's not limited to certain products - Cetaphil is recommended, and probably the most popular cleanser among people doing the regimen, but the regimen isn't actually 'start with Cetaphil..' it's 'start with a gentle cleanser' They sell bp gel, but don't insist that you have to use that one because it has some revolutionary original mixture of ingredients - the claim is simply that you should use a 2.5% strength. Most (but not all) otc gels and creams are of a higher strength, and the one they sell is cheap for the amount you get. But the regimen is still simply 'gentle cleanser, 2.5% bp gel/cream, and moisturizer.’

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Proactiv is just fabulous. I use it to clean the bathtub and toilet, and to disolve whatever is clogging the sink.

sucks cunt
dries out my face
hate it
hate it
and its all lindsay lohans fault

hahaha


I used ProActiv when I was around 13 or 14 (when my skin was at its worst) and I didn't really notice any big changes...I eventually gave up on it.

I too have heard (from a facialist who had some additional certification in acne regimens...forgot her actual title) that ProActiv stops working after awhile, too. She had me buy the Obagi Nu-Derm facial cleanser and the toner, as well as a benzoyl peroxide solution. My overall skin tone has improved dramatically and it's almost glowing. I still get some breakouts, but it's not bad, considering my family history of acne.