I recently started a course of Isotretinoin, a strong med­ica­tion used to cure severe acne by alter­ing DNA tran­scrip­tion. For some rea­son, my acne has really flared up in my late twen­ties. I would get huge cysts on my face that would last for weeks, not to men­tion the hyper-pigmentation that would last even longer after the cyst went away. Needless to say, it was mak­ing me very anti-social when I was talk­ing to peo­ple and felt like there was a huge dis­trac­tion on my face.

I was referred to a der­ma­tol­o­gist, who gave me a pre­scrip­tion for “full strength” (accord­ing to my body weight) to see if I could han­dle the side effects. The phar­ma­cist asked me if she made a mis­take because they don’t offer a dosage that strong, so now I take a com­bi­na­tion of two dosages.

Due to the potency of the med­ica­tion, there’s a huge list of side effects. The scari­est is the mood changes. I’m sup­posed to stop the dose if I start experiencing:

• changes in my mood such as becom­ing depressed, feel­ing sad, or hav­ing cry­ing spells
• los­ing inter­est in my usual activities
• changes in my nor­mal sleep patterns
• becom­ing more irri­ta­ble or aggres­sive than usual
• los­ing my appetite
• becom­ing unusu­ally tired
• hav­ing trou­ble concentrating
• with­draw­ing from fam­ily and friends
• hav­ing thoughts about tak­ing my own life

As a per­son who’s suf­fered from sui­ci­dal thoughts in the past, this was quite a fright­en­ing propo­si­tion. I asked my friends to be aware, just in case I don’t notice any changes in myself.

So far though, the only side effect has been extremely dry skin, espe­cially on the face. The lips have been the worst; I can’t eat or drink any­thing with­out apply­ing a thick layer of mois­tur­izer on them, oth­er­wise they peel like mad.

Prior to this, the only time I used Vaseline was as a sex­ual lubricant.

Now I get aroused every time I breathe in.