I gave up on the creams and started drinking bitter tea instead

When the store-bought ointments stopped working

It started on my forehead, just these small, stubborn bumps that wouldn’t go away. I figured it was just stress or maybe I changed my shampoo, so I picked up a tube of something generic from the pharmacy nearby. It cost me about 12,000 won and promised quick relief for localized inflammation. For a few days, I thought I had it under control, but the redness would just migrate down toward my jawline. It felt like I was playing a game of whack-a-mole with my own face. After three weeks of putting on various lotions and watching them fail, I felt kind of ridiculous just staring at myself in the mirror. You start to realize that maybe whatever is happening on the surface has something to do with everything else inside, which is exactly the kind of vague, annoying answer you don’t want when you just want clear skin.

Walking into the herbal clinic without a plan

I ended up making an appointment at a local clinic that specializes in skin issues. It wasn’t because I suddenly believed in ancient wisdom, but because I was tired of spending money on creams that only seemed to mask the problem for an hour. The place was quiet, smelling of dried herbs and wood. The wait time was nearly forty minutes, which gave me too much time to look at the posters on the wall explaining how internal ‘heat’ can manifest as skin problems. It felt a bit abstract, honestly. I just wanted a quick fix, but the practitioner kept asking me about my digestion and how I sleep, which felt like a massive detour from the fact that I just had a red patch on my cheek.

The reality of drinking boiled roots every day

They handed me a box of herbal decoctions that cost around 350,000 won for a month’s supply. It’s not cheap, and frankly, carrying the heavy box home on the bus was a chore. Drinking it is even worse; it tastes like earth and burnt bark. I found myself setting an alarm for 8 AM and 8 PM just to make sure I didn’t skip it, which made me feel like an old person. There were days I definitely missed it because I was out or just too lazy to heat it up. Did it work? That’s the thing I’m still not entirely sure about. The redness subsided a bit after about two weeks, but whether that was the tea or just the fact that I stopped using all those harsh store-bought scrubs, I can’t really tell you.

Comparing the effort to the results

My friend uses a laser treatment at a standard dermatology clinic downtown, and she seems to get immediate results that last for a few months. It costs about the same as my monthly tea habit, but she doesn’t have to deal with the bitter taste or the weird daily routine. Sometimes I look at her skin and feel a bit of regret that I chose this long, slow route. But then I remember how reactive my skin gets to everything now, and I’m terrified of trying anything aggressive again. It’s an uneasy sort of peace. My face isn’t perfect, and those tiny bumps still pop up if I eat too much chocolate or have a rough week at work.

Stuck in the middle of a process

I’m still going for these acupuncture sessions once a week. They take about an hour, and while the needles don’t hurt as much as you’d think, lying there in a dark room with music playing is a very strange way to spend a Tuesday afternoon. I keep expecting someone to tell me exactly when this will be over, but the answers are always things like, ‘it takes time for the body to rebalance.’ It sounds nice, but it’s hard to live with when you just want to wake up and not check the mirror immediately to see if the rash is still there. I suppose I’ll keep going for now, mostly because I’ve already put too much money into it to stop, but I honestly don’t know if I’d do it again from the start.