Hi guys,

Wanted to give a one month update to my previous post found here about obtaining taz in Aus.

Just want to give a disclaimer of course what works for me might not work for you. Always consult with your trusted health professional before making any changes. Skincare is also subjective and you should do your own research and trial and error to determine what works best for your skin. I hope I can keep updating my journey on this retinoid but don’t hold me to it! I also won’t be posting any pictures of myself as im not comfortable with that so I hope you understand and can take my word for it.

I guess I’ll start with a brief history of my skin. I’ve been acne prone all my life from early teens and into adult hood. My worse was around 10 years ago when I was stage 4 cystic acne. I’ve tried every medication, skincare product and treatment available to me for my acne and unfortunately for me the only thing that helped was a low course of Accutane around 9 years ago for 8 months at 20mg a day. I had great results and minimal side effects so would do it again in a heart beat. Since then my skin has been pretty phenomenal up until the last 2.5 years or so. I was on Yasmin BC for my skin and that was the only pill that worked for my body and kept things at bay until it didn’t.

I would say within the last 14 months my skin has started to get pretty bad. Xmas time last year I really started to get painful, angry pimples and deeper lesions again. Definitely not as bad as what I had previously experienced but they were prominent and consistent. This mainly affected my mouth and jawline. So this past year I’ve really tried to tackle my skin via skincare and was having minimal success with a few products I’ll mention below but still was obviously breaking out. I’ll also mention for the first time I think ever I also was getting lots of CCs and blackheads which I never really experienced before. I also don’t tend to scar easily, my previously bad acne left me with pitted scars mainly on my cheeks but after my roaccutane I started skin needling (x6 sessions) and I had amazing results, it wasn’t perfect but still an amazing improvement. I also stopped taking my BC around 4 or so months ago (can’t remember exactly) but it just wasn’t working it seemed for me anymore and I figured if im going to purge then im going to purge and stop wasting my time prolonging it any longer when my skin is already not having a good time.

So yeah basically leads us to now, fed up again with acne, tried other retinoids and tret about a year and a half ago to no avail and starting to dislike my skin again. I also started doing regular skin needling again in September so I’ve done 4 sessions to date and seeing good results already. I plan to keep this up in the new year.

So saw a lot of chatter about Tazarotene here, decided to just give it a go and if I purge than so be it.

The first week I started two nights on, two nights off. To ease myself into it. Really didn’t notice any extreme effects.

Week two was 3 nights on, one night off. I know my skin can handle it, it’s very resilient I was still being cautious but was reacting well to it. Again no side effects, thought I was potentially getting more CCs around chin and jawline which was annoying but couldn’t be helped.

Week 3 same as week 2, leading up to Sunday when I stopped Taz as I had skin needling on Tuesday the following week. Skin reacted normally to skin needling. No dryness, my skin needling post care is obviously different to my Taz routine and my therapist was aware of my change in routine.

Week 4- now I stopped using Taz for 5 days post skin needling. Skin was fine and no real changes post needling. Started back up and have been using it daily with no breaks and irritation besides one day when I couldn’t really be bothered doing my morning routine and just went rouge (didn’t even leave the house as it so hot here). Because of that I ended up having a slight flare on my mouth area which I would say looked similar to a peri oral dermatitis flare but not as severe. I managed to calm it down within two days with just being consistent with my TLC routine so I’ve learnt my lesson. I will also say this is the first week I’ve noticed the texture and CCs have subsided around my jawline. I may be too keen for results but it really feels like it’s starting to do something so im really pleased with that. I will say I feel like I had more actual pimples come up this week too. Not a lot but more than usual that come to ahead. I also had two deeper painful spots. One on my smile line that never really came to ahead and one under my lip slightly that did end up popping but was painful. Both are healing up fine and the one that didn’t come up seems to just be settling on its own.

I’m going to continue to apply daily as it seems to be working best for my skin and not irritating like tret was for me.

My TAZ routine is

double cleanse, toner, Mixsoon bean essence, Taz, wait 40mins- 1 hour then moisturise.

I found applying it like this works best for my skin. I have tried playing around with different applications initially but this seemed to work the best for my skin.

I’m gonna wrap it up here because I feel like I’ll just keep rambling. Feel free to ask any questions of course as I probably forgot to mention things. 🥹🫶