It's cozy season

Perhaps it’s my inability to go outside talking - I am on Accutane medication, and therefore hugely sensitive to the sun, but the autumn and winter months are truly the best. Short days, long nights, and cold weather. Since I am avoiding the outside as much as possible, the cozy feelings of this time of the year makes it less confining to be stuck indoors. Seasonal loneliness? That cannot be me!

As we head into the month of November, I am reminded that the year 2024 is almost over. Doesn’t feel like it for me, honestly. I’ve been sort of in a time lock ever since I started Accutane about two months ago. The infamous symptoms of the medication are so overwhelmingly constant that you kind of endure it until it’s over. It feels as if I cannot move forward with life until this cycle is done. I’ve not felt 100 percent since I started the medication.

I helped my aunt and uncle moved home last weekend, and it was extra tough due to being on Accutane. I was chugging water every so often because I knew that if I didn’t, I would probably collapse due to dehydration. The drug drys me out so damn much. Add on physical exertion and being outside for a time? It was a struggle for sure.

Three more months of Accutane - I can do this. The battle with acne for twenty years must end in my victory.

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Line for dumplings.

Chicken and Accutane

The rotisserie chicken at Costco remains one of the best food deals on the planet. Six dollars for two pounds of cooked chicken meat. Weightlifters looking to gain mass on the cheap should move next to Costco just for easy access. Have a hot dog and soda while you are at it, too.

It is somewhat bothersome that the chicken is put into a plastic bag. A piping hot roast straight out of the oven and into something entirely plastic. I’m no evangelist against polyurethane, but that cannot be completely healthy, right? I’ve stopped heating up food in the microwave with any sort of plastic container or wrapping a long time ago, and so should you.

Costco should use a paper bag alternative, or a compostable container. Raise the retail price slightly if you have to. I’d gladly pay for more for zero heated plastic.

Two months into the Accutane treatment for my chronic acne, and a new side-effect has materialized. Accutane causing intense dryness for the entire body is well-known and par for the course. I’d thought that meant my skin would become dry and cracked like on a cold winter’s day. I was wrong: my dry skin is showing up in the form of tackiness, a mild stickiness to the epidermis. Crossing my legs would cause the thighs to adhere to each other like velcro.

The skin is also fragile, too. Not just towards sun exposure, but impacts. Small abrasions that usually wouldn’t amount to anything can now wound the skin. I am definitely not going on mountainous hikes wearing shorts during this Accutane cycle.

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Snake oil.

We have food at home

You know you’ve had a good workout session when you wake up the next morning - after a solid eight hours of slumber - still tired as heck. That, or you’ve overworked yourself. That, or you did not eat enough the previous day to recover from that much output.

It could be all three combined for me today. That’s how tired I was for all of it. Accutane medication has got to be detrimental to recovery from weightlifting. I need a lot of water during normal times; the intense dryness from the acne medication just exacerbates that need. Who knows if the water I am drinking is even contributing towards muscle protein synthesis while I am on Accutane.

I can’t wait to be done with it by the beginning of next year.

With restaurant prices remaining high after the inflation of the past few years, the mantra of “We have food at home” is ever salient. At least it is for me. Even buying ingredients at Whole Foods (read: expensive) to cook is cheaper than eating out. (I can give myself the tip.) What I’ve been doing lately is expanding the repertoire of dishes I make. Trust me, the bar is extremely low. As of this writing, the only seasoning in my cupboard is: salt, pepper, sesame oil, and olive oil.

As you can extrapolate from that, the variety of food I cook for myself has not been very various. I am not a picky eater in the slightest: I’m perfectly fine eating the same damn thing every single day of the week. That said, with outside food being so expensive, if I want fried chicken, I’m incentivized to start making it myself.

And that means getting an air fryer. (I don’t even have a toaster oven.) No way I am frying chicken the traditional vat-of-oil method in a tiny studio apartment. The room would smell of chicken for the next week. Black Friday is coming right around the corner…

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High five.

Week four

A quick update on week four of going on isotretinoin, colloquially known as Accutane. Good news is, of the somewhat notorious list of symptoms, mine remains only the constant dryness, and a mild blanket tiredness. No suicidal thoughts; the only muscle pain stems from me actually lifting weights, rather than caused by the medication.

The dryness is unavoidable: that’s how you know the medicine is working. As someone who is not fond of the feeling of chapstick on the lips, having to apply every two hours has been rather bothersome. Bad news is I have at least four more months of this before I can go back to having lips au naturel.

It’s not all bad though, the dryness. My oily face and scalp has decreased in sheen dramatically. It’s kind of emotional to now be able touch my face without needing to immediately wash my hands of the grease. My hair is no longer matted down with oil after only a few hours into the day. In fact, the follicles are so dry that I can wash my hair twice a week, instead of every other day.

The constant application of lip balm is so worth it for that.

As far as acne goes - the whole reason for going on Accutane, it hasn’t really subsided just yet. I think my face is still doing its purging of the bad stuff before the new healthy stuff can replace it. The pores on my nose still resembles a strawberry (they are suppose to shrink). At least my original acne isn’t so severe that I can afford to be patient with this.

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Flower power.

Getting my ass kicked

What really counts is when you do the thing, even when you absolutely do not feel like it. It’s the first week of school at university, so on the support side it is the usual extreme busyness. The last thing I want to do after work is to then lift some weights. It would be all too easy to skip this one, because the excuses practically write themselves. But no: I got the workout in after I got off work yesterday. Felt like shit during, felt great afterwards.

The times when you feel no motivation, but you do it anyways? That’s where the gold is. Motivation is fickle, you cannot count on it for consistency. And it is consistency that will get you where you want to be.

Speaking of which, I am going to be in a consistent state of crazy dryness for the next five months. After antibiotics failed to resolve my persistent acne issues last year, I finally decided to go for the sledgehammer: isotretinoin, better known to the public as Accutane. It will solve any and all acne issues once and for all, but the reason it is to be avoided if possible is because of the arduous process. The side-effects of isotretinoin are not trivial.

All users will experience dryness to varying severity. That’s how you know the drug is working. I am actually looking forward to it drying out my oily face. You ever wash your face and then it becomes oily enough to fry an egg in about an hour? That’s me. The equation is simple: oily face plus bacteria equals chronic acne.

My degree of dryness is this: chapstick and eyedrops application every two hours. Full body lotion every evening. I am chugging water constantly like I am on a mountainous hike. Anything less and I would feel super dehydrated (and probably am). From what I can gather, these symptoms are comparatively not so bad. That said, I definitely do not feel normal. It’s as if a very thin layer of sickness has been draped over me. And it’s going to be like this for five months?

Worst: I think they up the dosage after the first month. One week in and I’m already getting my ass kicked!

Say no more, fam.