Still Recovering From Minoxidil Nightmare

11:54 PM

I went on vacation recently with my parents to Seattle and Vancouver, and I just suffered from mental strain the whole time regarding my appearance.

The first set of photos is me today after I fully shaved, compared to a few days after dropping minoxidil, around 1.5 months ago. The second set of pictures is before I took minoxidil compared to today. From these static pictures, it could be argued that I’ve pretty much recovered, but I really haven’t.

This lighting isn’t harsh enough to capture how truly ugly I can look under certain lighting, and how stretchy, loose, aged in texture my face is. When I make even any kind of mouth expression, my face creases so much. This never happened before. I could at least make a grin or a slight smile without creating any creases at all, but now so many creases form at any slight mouth movement. Something’s wrong with my skin still.

The problem is that I took all these before/after photos in very good lighting, it doesn’t capture any flaws or imperfections that well, but they exist and are plentiful.

Any time I take a selfie or look in the mirror, my face also looks weird to me. It’s not easily visible in these before / after photos when there are two photos side by side, but when looking at just one face in one photo at a time by blocking one side, like my prior to minoxidil photo compared to today, then the face can look weird or normal.

My face now does not look normal, whereas prior it did, again covering up one face and looking at one photo at a time shows this. I don’t know if there’s any recovery to this. ChatGPT says it takes months for collagen to rebuild, especially from minoxidil damage. Even with microneedling for example, it takes 2-3 months after microneedling to see any change.

12:21 AM (of Monday, June 2nd, 2025)

I just finished washing my face and it’s so nice and smooth, good texture, at least under the perfect bathroom lighting, but it is still stretchy and loose.

At least I have recovered from some of the damage. My eyes used to be squinted, lips were longer, wrinkles were heavier, skin was stretchier believe it or not, skin was saggier, skin texture was worse, face looked dry, face looked tired, emotionless, and dead at all times. It’s hard to see due to the perfect lighting, but my eye bags were dark and puffy too.

Keep in mind that in the first photo, I am using a neutral expression in the before and after. I am not making any weird faces or emotions, my lips really were like that on their own. Though I am not perfect, especially in the side profile photos, I try to take all the same facial expressions, lighting, angles, in every photo, I try to keep things consistent in my before/afters. People take before / afters in completely different lighting and that ruins the point.

Anyway, a lot of things happened but my mind is so pre-occupied with this that I haven’t been able to think about much else. I’ll write an entry for those events soon.