If you have a big problem with body acne I'd go back or try another doctor. I did accutane this past year after many years of months on and off antibiotics. I do think you need to kind of run the "antibiotic gauntlet" of at least a few different milder medicines to see if you can't get through your youth/20s without having to do the accutane.
Accutane isn't really the best medicine to take. I had strong body soreness the first few weeks, extremely dry lips for the entire time I was taking it (5 1/2 months; I brought lip stuff with me everywhere, used it at least once an hour and in the middle of the night multiple times), itchy skin later in the treatment especially my shoulders and back of arms (the back of my arms also developed these little splotch things that look like small bruises, which are going away slowly - I think they may be a sign of the medicine deposits in the skin), and finally was getting a few rashes on the back of my ankles/heels at the end of the treatment when I finally decided it was time to stop.
The doctor had told me he thought I didn't need any more at 5 months but I said I wanted to keep taking it because my "pores were still emptying." When the rashes started I said ok I'm done.
But that doesn't even count the most brutal aspect of the medicine. The fact that it makes every single pore in your skin empty. It doesn't matter where it is, the accutane does something crazy and your pores just start emptying. So this means lots of zits especially early on, and the more buried the pores are, the longer they will take to empty. When I first start it I would get up in the morning and sit at my table and just rub dead skin off my face and shoulders for minutes. I hadn't had a zit on my shoulders in 10 years since high school but it made the skin on my shoulders just shed like it was nothing. And the face, yeah it's really not fun at all. The label says it might make your acne worse for the first month.
Nah, it was worse for me for all the months on the drug and then finally about December this year after starting March I am getting to a point where I would say the volume of zits I have is better than anything in many years since I had good effects on the antibiotics.
That said, almost an entire year after starting treatment I am still getting emptying from the most stubborn pores that were just stuck under my skin (I had thought they were acne scars, no they were pores stuck way deep down). But I can easily tell the difference it made, a literal reconstruction of my skin (I haven't seen the tiny blackhead pores in my nose for months, for example), and it will have been worth it. Hehe, I do feel a bit of unjustice here because I left the most brutal detail of the medicine's effect off my list of stuff. Just remember, if you take accutane and you have any sort of pore on your skin anywhere, even if the pores are really small and never turn into real zits and you never even really suspected anything in that area of skin, the accutane will make them empty and you will suffer.
So my off-topic railing ends by restating the point that accutane treatment is generally a painful experience, but some people need it.
