I learned a valuable experience from using steroid creams, doctors do not know everything. Now with the internet, you can conduct more investigative research than your doctors can. Most of them learn from their patients just like mine did about the steroid cream.

can you describe your ‘flareup’. does your face get red or hot? i experience heat, redness, then a few hours later I have a pustule breakout.

It will get better, but don’t get back on the steroids. I also went from .5% to 2% and that was it for me. No good news comes from those creams or eye drops. This withdraw would be easy if you lived out in the country where no one can see you, but we all have to continue with our routines. By the way most of his patients affected with this addiction came from higher end educated income people.

It took 6 months of severe redness, itching and painful flushes to finally overcome the addiction. I applied cold packs every night on my cheeks that helped, but at the end gradual withdraws and finally a complete withdraw is the only way to solve it.

If you have been using the steroids for a longer period of time, it may take even more time to overcome the symptoms.

I highly recommend you do not apply steroid creams unless directed by a doctor for no more than 2 weeks. I think most doctors now know how serious steroids are.

I gradually get flare ups, but not to the same degree with the steroids and/or after the withdraws. On a scale of 1 to 10, with steroid use it was a 5, withdraws was at a 9 to 10 and now its down to a 2 or 3 depending on the humidity of the place I’m staying at.

Good luck. Take some time off at home if you plan to do the withdraw. One of his patients took 6 months off at home and studied for the bar.

hey, i recently bought some thin white cotton gloves, which might help me to stop rubbing my face . when my face gets itchy, then i rub, and it makes it worse. it escalates to the point that my face is bright volcanic red. Then i get depressed and want to die.

the gloves may help me to remind myself not to rub my face. Sometimes i will start rubbing when i am sitting and reading, or going online. starts rather innocently, feels good at first.

all my life ive been picking, chewing my fingers, nails, and now recently i have been rubbing my face. this is making it difficult to heal. i now have a strong compulsion to rub, of course triggered by the itchiness. But its much easier to not start rubbing the itch in the first place, like making a mosquito bite worse.
And its addictive in its own right, i start removing the layers of dead skin, i can make little grease balls of dead skin (disgusting).

but i am getting depressed because my face goes through these fever flashes, my face becomes a bit red, i feel dizzy. i dont know if this is another ‘stage’ of healing. or maybe im succumbing to some other disease or illness.

patricia is right, youre going to have to live with pimply skin for years. But the steroid cream just makes your skin worse (it makes it thin, and damages it). So you really have no choice but to go cold turkey.

If you want to talk about this at length, you can email me

Just like to share my journey so far with a history of skin problems. It all started in highschool when I had severe acne and had tried proactiv, antibiotics etc but no luck. Eventually I was recommended to go on a course of accutane as my skin was extremely oily and accutane will reduce the oiliness on my skin. After a year it had cleared up my skin and it stayed great for about 5 years before my face had another terrible breakout. The derm then prescribed me with a second course of low dosage accutane and after a year it had cleared up the acne but it had caused my skin to dry up excessively. It all started on my chin and upper eye lids so I was given hydrocortisone cream (0.5%) and worked great at first but then it stopped working and I had to up the dosage to 1%….big mistake. Basically it caused all sorts of funkiness on my skin if I had stopped using it my face would dry up and breakout with loads of tiny dots on my skin that has yellowish clear fluid. Sometimes I would also get big red bumps which was extremely itchy and I had to constantly scratch my face which made it worse. So I became dependent on the cream for a while and couldnt ‘live’ without it. Just a few months ago I realised even the 1% cream wasn’t working so I was searching frantically on the web for answers..and then I came across the Addicted Skin website. To my horror everything I read was exactly what I was going through. Wanting desperately to get off this cream, I knew the tough road ahead so I stopped the steroid cold turkey. After a few days all hell breaks loose and my skin has been terrible ever since. Its been about 2months now off the cream and my skin is red, crackly, itchy, flaking and bleeding. I would unconsciously scratch it while I am asleep at night and wake up with a bloody face in the morning. It’s almost 5am now and I just woke up scratching my face again and its a bloody mess. Moisturizing just doesnt work as the skin is constantly dry and thirsty. Sometimes it’s so hard and you just want to throw in the towel and start using the cortisones again but you need to stay strong. I just hope all this suffering will be worth it in the end!