Hmmm. Which is worse? Acne face or crocodile face?

As I pondered this, I found a site that explained how horrible benzoyl peroxide was and that it took 3-4x longer for anything to heal because of the damage happening to the skin.

Oh. Okay, croc face was worse.

Back to the zits.

I put on oil-free moisturizer and wore SPF 20 everyday and yet…nothing. I also pretended not to care. On some level I’d accepted my fate.

One stone still to unturn…the natural health stores. I went in there and bought the Green Beauty book and invested $100s into Dr. Hauschka, and every other clean/green face products that lined the shelves. Let me tell you how much I hate the smell of tea tree oil. But for my face, I’d slather it. After months of these super clean chemical free products…nothing. I did a complete detox of chemical filled products from shampoo to soap and yet, the acne persisted. My first clue should have been the sales girl at the health food coop who was also covered in acne and who said she hadn’t found anything that worked. I even bought the Dr. H’s Rhythm Conditioner for $90+ a box and I swear I thought it was filtered water and I was a suckah.

I even bought a water filter for my bathroom faucet and shower incase it was toxic chemicals from the city water causing my facial distress. But alas, no.

THEN, one magical sunny beautiful day when the universe determined I’d suffered enough I walked into a spa office and a tech there looked at my dry, acne covered face and said, “Hey. You need to buy this!” and she handed me a little jar with a black lid. She said it was called bar of soap in a jar. I responded, “I don’t do chemicals.” She said, “Oh this is clean. It works. Try it. You know when you have a bar of soap and it falls apart or gets hard, well this won’t because it’s in a jar.” Hell, what did I have to lose except $40? So without thinking, and definitely without hoping for an acne cure, I bought it. I didn’t even know what it was called.