My Acne Story

For anyone who's cried over their skin and still showed up

Hi, I’m Radhika - the skincare nerd behind the 1 am skincare club! In the past I’ve been a VC, consultant, Economics student, jigsaw puzzle addict and a full-time crier about acne woes.

Over the last few years, skincare has become a passion for me - it’s a feeling of self-care, but also self-preservation. My acne pushed me into skincare, but my love for experimentation, fun science, and midnight impulse shopping kept me addicted. So here it goes - the story of my acne, how and why I became a skincare formulation fanatic, and what my 1 am skincare club is all about.

---

Angry red acne that refused to budge

Throwback to my acne filled face

Let me take you back a few years. I had great skin through my school and college years. Then through my 20s I moved across 5 cities and 3 countries, worked 15-hour days as a financial consultant, and wasn’t as prudent with my drinking as I maybe should have been (sorry mom!). The result? Angry red acne that refused to budge.

By my 25th birthday, my cheeks were covered with acne. They didn’t physically hurt, but they were very, very visible. Each ‘bulby looking’ pimple would stay for months - no face wash or home remedy would affect it. But worse still, the scars left behind would stay for years. My mom went from saying “it’s hardly visible, you’re still beautiful” to “let’s find a good dermat”.

And so I did - many dermats, across the multiple cities I lived in. This kickstarted a series of unhappy adventures. From being told I have acne because I have PCOS (even though my blood tests reflected no such thing), to being given Accutane without being explained its serious side effects, to being put on hormonal pills without adequate testing, to being pushed into buying expensive chemical peels, to being told “this is adult acne, you can’t do anything about it”.

I wanted none of it – no chemical peels, no messing around with my hormones, no birth control pills, no harsh ointments. And so, I gave up on trying to find a solution.

I went down a rabbit hole to find the root cause of my acne

My emotional struggle with acne started once I gave up on trying to treat it. My acne and scars became even more visible to me, even more intrusive - they were all I could see when I looked into the mirror. My sister would be horrified at me putting makeup for just a grocery run - “it’s so bad for you, it’ll ruin your skin!” (older sisters are always right). My mom felt helpless when I broke down over just looking at the mirror.

That’s the irony of acne — it’s visible to you more than it is to anyone else – makes you feel like the ugliest version of yourself. Someone without it can never fully understand the feeling of having what I used to call “polka dotted skin” (I really did think I could have been cast as the 102nd dalmation…).

A few years later I finally said ‘enough is enough - this needs to be fixed’. ‘Why the F do I have acne in the first place anyway?’ So I scoured the internet for everything acne - the whys, whats and hows (before ChatGPT was even a thing; thanks Google Scholar). I ran at-home experiments on myself to brute-force diagnose the root cause, changed my lifestyle, experimented with dozens of products, and eventually started seeing the acne go away.

Me in my experimentation phase

The scars were harder — the skincare products that I knew of just didn’t work on it - they either burnt my skin up, made it dry and flaky, or did nothing at all. Fellow acne-prone friends told me that only ‘pharmacy brands’ work for acne-prone skin, but I had no clue how to find or use them. This kickstarted round 2 of experimentation - loads of research and finally figuring out what I need to do.

Where am I today? I’m in my 30s - I don’t have acne (or scars)! YAY! I do still have sensitive acne-prone skin, so I take a lot of care to prevent the acne from coming back. Like many fellow acne sufferers, I am overly critical about my skin - any mark, pigmentation, or texture change on my face bothers me more than it should. But I’m working on accepting my skin with more love :)

‘Mainstream skincare’ just wasn’t designed for me

My skin looked nothing like that of the skincare models. Products from big brands only made my skin worse. Nobody ever helped me understand what I can or cannot use on my sensitive skin. Online blogs suggested toothpaste as the solution to pimples. And most dermats pushed me to buy expensive in-clinic procedures that I just didn’t want to.

And so I educated myself, learnt about skincare actives and ingredients on a deeper level - which to use, which to avoid and how to use them. I finally found a dermatologist who looked at skincare as healthcare, not aesthetics. I started focusing on functional goals and skin health, not trends and celeb endorsements.

Welcome to the 1am skincare club: My love letter to scientific skincare

A fellow skincare geek friend recently told me - “I hated chemistry in school, but now I can’t stop researching skincare ingredients and formulations”. I have never felt more seen :)

Showing up for my skin - I finally know what works for me!

For decades now, skincare has been seen as vain, cosmetic, and driven by unrealistic beauty standards. To me, skincare is health, personalized, driven from within (your gut, hormones, stress), and deeply scientific. It’s the story of your bathroom shelf, morning and night routines, and unbridled confidence.

So I wanted to create a space to talk about how I see skincare. You’ll never hear me talk about glass skin (unless I’m referring to a new art installation) or pitching injectables so you can look 30 years younger. But you will hear me talk about how to help your skin via your gut, what good dermats and R&D experts recommend for different skin types, and what different ingredients and products do - scientifically. You’ll hear me talk about real skin and hair issues, and the very real emotions and solutions that come with them. Once in a while, you’ll hear my general observations about the world, with skincare-tinted-goggles of course.

This is called the 1 am skincare club because that’s when I usually think about skincare. At the end of a busy day, while doing my night-time skin routine. Sitting on the bed while scrolling Reddit and INCI Decoder, and adding more things to my skincare cart than I should be.

Welcome to the 1am skincare club - welcome to the world of purposeful, no-BS, scientific skincare. You can sit with us.