I have moderate acne with oily skin, and my skin has been pretty fine this year except now that summer is over and school has started, these past few weeks (especially) I’ve had really severe acne (large cysts) all over my forehead and a few on my chin (I realized I break out like crazy during this time of year for some reason). I’ve had bad acne since 5 years ago and I’ve been using the 3-step Proactiv system ever since about 3 years ago…but I’ve minimized the use because my bad acne has mostly cleared up since about 2 years ago so I just used mild cleansers like St Ive’s Apricot Scrub or other drugstore brand cleansers with Salicylic Acid in it instead of Proactiv’s Benzoyl Peroxide, and its been working fine. I’ve had pretty clear skin as far as I can remember until around this year mid-August and my face started breaking out, and especially now its really bad. So I went back to using the 3-step Proactiv system morning/night everyday now for about 2 weeks. And the thing is, it has been helping my cysts and acne…but my skin is terrible! After I wash my face with the cleanser (1st step in Proactiv), my skin is SO dry, especially my forehead! It seriously looks like after a severe earthquake and the ground has cracked into a thousand pieces…that is how my skin looks on my forehead! It is so dry and flaky. I can’t help but use my tweezer and pick out all the flaking skin off. And of course I can’t pick out every single little piece so I just use the toner (2nd step of Proactiv) to smooth it out…but after my forehead if you look closely, can see lines of where I peeled the skin off (the skin is paler)…and it looks horrible! Also when I raise my eyebrows and my forehead wrinkles, I can see that there’s like this whole layer of what looks and seems like dead, tanned skin on top of my (healthy skin?) on my forehead. Some additional information, I tanned and went out in the sun a lot over the summer (only using a SPF 8 on my face..So bad I know) so I guess its also the tanned skin on my forehead that’s peeling? Plus with the use of the drying out effects of Proactiv…I don’t know what to do. I’m paranoid that if I don’t peel the flaking/cracking skin off, it will go into my pores and clog them up and cause more acne. But I don’t like doing that either because 1. It takes up a lot of time and 2. The tweezers are probably unsanitary. But I don’t want to discontinue using Proactiv because I need it to help cure my acne. Also I don’t remember it drying out my skin this bad when I used it in the past. I am suffering…PLEASE HELP!!!!

I have moderate acne with oily skin, and my skin has been pretty fine this year except now that summer is over and school has started, these past few weeks (especially) I’ve had really severe acne (large cysts) all over my forehead and a few on my chin (I realized I break out like crazy during this time of year for some reason). I’ve had bad acne since 5 years ago and I’ve been using the 3-step Proactiv system ever since about 3 years ago…but I’ve minimized the use because my bad acne has mostly cleared up since about 2 years ago so I just used mild cleansers like St Ive’s Apricot Scrub or other drugstore brand cleansers with Salicylic Acid in it instead of Proactiv’s Benzoyl Peroxide, and its been working fine. I’ve had pretty clear skin as far as I can remember until around this year mid-August and my face started breaking out, and especially now its really bad. So I went back to using the 3-step Proactiv system morning/night everyday now for about 2 weeks. And the thing is, it has been helping my cysts and acne…but my skin is terrible! After I wash my face with the cleanser (1st step in Proactiv), my skin is SO dry, especially my forehead! It seriously looks like after a severe earthquake and the ground has cracked into a thousand pieces…that is how my skin looks on my forehead! It is so dry and flaky. I can’t help but use my tweezer and pick out all the flaking skin off. And of course I can’t pick out every single little piece so I just use the toner (2nd step of Proactiv) to smooth it out…but after my forehead if you look closely, can see lines of where I peeled the skin off (the skin is paler)…and it looks horrible! Also when I raise my eyebrows and my forehead wrinkles, I can see that there’s like this whole layer of what looks and seems like dead, tanned skin on top of my (healthy skin?) on my forehead. Some additional information, I tanned and went out in the sun a lot over the summer (only using a SPF 8 on my face..So bad I know) so I guess its also the tanned skin on my forehead that’s peeling? Plus with the use of the drying out effects of Proactiv…I don’t know what to do. I’m paranoid that if I don’t peel the flaking/cracking skin off, it will go into my pores and clog them up and cause more acne. But I don’t like doing that either because 1. It takes up a lot of time and 2. The tweezers are probably unsanitary. But I don’t want to discontinue using Proactiv because I need it to help cure my acne. Also I don’t remember it drying out my skin this bad when I used it in the past. I am suffering…PLEASE HELP!!!!
ALSO I have not put any type of make-up on ever since I started breaking out with the numerous cysts, in hopes it would not worsen or agitate my breakout.