I finished two months of the Tetracycline paired with Benzamycin (a topical gel that lives in the fridge, containing erythromycin and benzoyl eroxide). They both worked pretty well up until the last week. During the last week, I broke out in about five nodules. It was working so well, too. Oh well...
I wasn't really using the tetracycline properly, anyway. I had to eat something with it or I would throw up as I always did whenever I tried taking it as ordered -- 1 hour before food or three hours after food, never within a close time-frame of diary/calcium-rich or iron-rich foods.
The benzamycin gel worked alright... I really hate that it creates a large dependency on consistent use. You skip a morning or a nightly application and you will break out, without a doubt. When you are on a flip-flop schedule like mine, you can't really work a product like that into your schedule very easily. Not to mention the severe drying it does to your skin, the fact that it bleaches all hair it comes into contact with (eyebrows, surrounding hair line) and it discolours most fabrics... Uhg. I don't want topical solutions anymore. I'm sick of them and how much they limit lifestyle... I won't even get into the time I tried camping and came home with a polka-dot face, ha.
So now... I'm getting myself back onto the health wagon. It's time to stop eating junk food and restart taking my main vitamins; vitamin E and vitamin B (complex). I'm on day three of this, so we'll see how it goes. I want to exhaust all methods, even though I've tried most of them before. Last, last resort will be acutane which I would really love to avoid.