Acne & Ignorance- A Dangerous Combo

I’ve joked before about my Terminal End Stage Acne Disease (TESAD), and while that was a bit of an exaggeration (and perhaps a made up disease) I’m still a thirty-one year old with the complexion of a fifteen year old.

My dermatologist has opted to put me on Accutane, which is a medication with serious implications to a fetus, should you become pregnant. I’m not at risk for pregnancy for reasons that are none of your business, but the FDA wants to make doubly sure that no one gets pregnant while on this medication. In addition to the rigorous hoops you have to jump through to prove you aren’t pregnant, you are also required to sign more paperwork than required for buying a house.

My favorite part of this whole process is making sure that everyone knows what causes pregnancy in a booklet called, Separating the Myths from the Facts. I do realize that the majority of people who take this medication are teens, but I was greatly disturbed to realize what some of today’s myths are. I’ll share a few with you. Keep in mind the language used is targeted toward teenagers.

Myth:

• You cannot get pregnant if you do it standing up.
• You cannot get pregnant if you have sex underwater.
• “My partner said he is sterile because he had mumps, and he hasn’t gotten anyone else pregnant.”
• Sexually active means you have to move during sex. If I do not move, I cannot get pregnant. (My personal favorite. This particular myth makes me want to find a teenager and punch them in the gonads.)

If today’s youth actually subscribe to these myths, then they have problems far worse than acne to attend to. This is why there is a show called 16 and Pregnant. Maybe somewhere there is a chemist coming up with an acne treatment that also causes sterility.