My Unusual Vodka Treatment for Acne

Many people don’t believe my vodka cure when I tell them about my unusual childhood treatment for acne.

You have to understand, when I tell my much younger friends about the treatment for acne I had been exposed to as a kid and further, the process I went through to undertake (or undergo) that treatment for acne, they laugh in astonishment. They dismiss the particulars because they don’t believe I had access to such advanced treatments for acne over 30 years ago. Or maybe they simply determine I am making up particulars to amuse or shock them. Anyway, here is my story.

Here is the treatment for acne in the early seventies, a time when such a treatment for acne was highly experimental. (Caution – Much more advanced treatments exist today – so please do NOT try this at home):

I washed my face with soap and water.  (I used Ivory, my Mom’s choice of soap, one I still use today—with no acne, mind you.)  

I steamed my pores open further by dipping my head over (not INTO) a pot of boiling water, with a towel tenting my head and the pot.  (Do not do this at home unless someone is with you, to make sure the towel doesn’t catch fire, etc..)  Then, I opened an amber 3 or 4 ounce bottle of Retin-A, prescribed by our family doctor-recommended dermatologist.  I mixed a part of the bottle’s contents with Vodka.  Yes, Vodka.  I then applied the mix by way of cotton ball.

This substance burned like a %$@#!!%.  The next morning, my face was bright red and begin to peel.  By the second and third days after the treatment for acne that few knew about or used at that time, my face skin was sheeting, shedding in embarrassing cascades.  I still had to go to school, and would resentfully wonder whether acne wasn’t less a subject of teenage derision than this treatment for acne was.

But then, by about the seventh day (if I recall correctly what seemed like months having passed so creepingly slow), my face was absolutely clear.  My skin was as perfect as that of the high school’s homecoming queen.  It was as shockingly lovely as it had been under treatment for acne hideous.

Now today’s treatment for acne includes Retin-A, or a derivative, I think, though I also remember some laws against it a few years back.  But this treatment for acne (now, in the 00s) is likely safer, less concentrated, less explosive…as, I would hope, more tests have been done on victims, I mean patients, like myself.

Still, regardless of the cruel anguish of such a sadistic, caustic chemical treatment for acne as Retin-A plus Vodka, swear by the magic of it. And magic is a rare and blessed find…if you ask me.

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