Don't kiss a frog, ever! :HOW I GOT RID OF STUBBORN ACNE(holy water, anointing oil, mud,etc?)

Me currently reminiscing about how i almost ended it all because of acne(i kid of course)

Let me start of by saying something i know a lot of people might not agree with; ACNE IS THE WORST! ok maybe not worse than period pains, paper cuts or bumping your hip on the edge of a table, but its own kind of worse. 
If you've never struggled with any type of Acne in your life you are very blessed but you probably won't fully understand the story i'm about to tell you...(i never used to get it when my siblings would tell me about their pimple problems...you never do until it happens to you)

When i was a teenager i used to have a clear skin while my older sister and brother were struggling with pimples and scars. The first time i got pimples was at the end of the year in 2014, a week after someone complemented me on my smooth, blemish free skin. I thought to myself "It must be a curse to be complemented because here i was now with pimples that were never there until someone noticed my good skin"...

In 2015 my pimples vanished until my graduation day(don't bad things always happen at the least convenient time ever?) when i got a huge zit on my face. I thought it might have been all the graduation preparation stress so i didn't worry myself much about it. Luckily my graduation was only in the afternoon that day so i had the whole morning to nurse the zit.
I tried a warm compress using a hot cloth, i used toothpaste and even attempted to pop it using a small needle. By the time graduation started it had shrunk in size and it was less noticeable.

When i told my sister that i had a huge zit on my face the whole morning she responded like i made the whole thing up, like i might have hallucinated it. Mind you at this time my sister's acne was a memory in the past, i bet she'd even forgot there was such a thing as acne.

The rest of the year i got pimples here and there. I also got what the doctors are calling 'Cystic acne', i just called it bumps. Look at this picture below(WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT) i took last year in July. My skin was not co-operating to any home-made treatment i was using. The pimples had become a legion. I had initially considered selling my liver on the black market then use the money from that sale to pay a dermatologist to fix my skin.

 But not having the courage to let a shady doctor butcher one of my internal organs i decided to settle for cheap treatments. I tried everything i could think of in order to get rid of my pimples. First i thought of Gentle magic and pond's products but those things only worked to puff up my skin in previous years, they never made any changes to my skin. I was convinced store beauty lotions don't work at all.
I watched videos online that suggested alternate methods. YouTubers suggested things like 'Tea tree oil', 'Cinnamon and honey paste', Egg whites mask', Calamine lotion and many other things that i tried and failed. At some point when i would use these suggested "remedies" i had lost faith in everything, it was just trial and error all the time.

I started wearing foundation everyday to cover up the scars on my skin. It aggravated my condition all the more because my skin couldn't  breathe. Coupled with eating junk food all the time, it felt like my skin had gone on an extended strike. It was not about to get back to work anytime soon.
My friend Sihle who also struggled with acne used to console me by saying "When we die we will be with Jesus, pimples won't be a problem anymore", We'd laugh and laugh at how realistic that is, the only cure that could work for us is death, haha!

If you look closely you will see some Calamine lotion on my skin. I wore it all the time, indoors and outdoors, Yuuuh!

Anyways that brings us to October 2017,i saw a YouTube video of some British woman recommending ways to get rid of cystic acne, i thought "yooh another one", nothing else had worked efficiently before so i was tired of suggestions but i decided to watch the video just to give this fight one more shot.

The lady suggested 1. No sugar diet 
2. Drinking lots of water 
3. Quality/No makeup 
4. Changing pillowcases every other day 
5. Washing face twice a day

I decided to give it a try, assuming that it will fail like all the million things I've tried before but i was never ready for the results!

I stopped eating sugar on the 15th November and after a month or so i hadn't gotten any breakouts. I continued to drink lots of water, i lacked strength to change my pillowcases that regularly i decided to just ditch pillows on my bed altogether. I wash my face twice a day and wear less make up(i've been told by some self-appointed beauty critic that my skin is better without it)
I ate less junk and fatty foods. At the beginning of the year i saw an online review of products that actually work for acne. Ponds's pimple clear was one of them. I was skeptical because i've been on this road with Pond's before.

But  look now, Good diet and Pond's pimple clear turned out to be the only things that worked. I'm glad i gave both a try. But hey, different remedies for different people. Give this a try, its not an over-night solution thou. It might take a while to see results. All in all, if it doesn't work, holy water and anointing oil are alternatives- i can't say i didn't consider those options, haha!

My skin currently. My scars are almost gone.