Raise your hand if you were personally victimized by a certain apricot scrub.

As a Senior Editor at BuzzFeed, I cover lifestyle topics including books, work and money, health, and home.

"I didn't start until I was 41, and my skin looks better at 46. Just protecting it allows the skin to repair, and treating it with whatever blend of retinoic acid, AHA, and other skin-repairing ingredients help it along. Don't worry too much."

"The '90s were a wild time to be a teenager, weren't they! If I didn't feel the burn, I'd do the whole thing a second time. Yikes!"

"Perimenopause has brought regular breakouts, and I usually slap a pimple patch on it and leave it alone. The picking urge remains strong, but my vanity has grown stronger 💪."

"Baking in the sun to the point of severe second-degree burns, just to get a tan for summer."

"I showed her my routine and my skin. Told her my dryness and rationale behind my strategy, but lamented that my skin was so dry it felt like nothing was even penetrating enough to hydrate. All she had to say was, 'Okay, but where is your exfoliant?'

My classmate did a superficial peel with microdermabrasion, and I PEELED, which is just unheard of for the gentle approach she took.

For years I was so worried about upsetting my skin barrier I skipped exfoliating. Now I know the key words ‘I feel like it doesn’t absorb, it sits on top of my skin’ means there are too many dead layers for product to penetrate!"

"I did the same with the benzyl peroxide. It was the cycle of getting acne, then applying it, then it getting redder and me thinking it's more acne when it's just my skin dying, and then I apply more benzyl peroxide. Until it looked like I had a horrific sunburn."

"I put toothpaste on my face all night, multiple times (I hadn’t learned from the first time, where it literally burnt the hell out of my poor 12-year-old skin)."

"In high school, I did the ole put toothpaste on your zit as an overnight mask, and I gave myself a chemical burn like three times the size of the original pimple."

"May I ask - what was your misunderstanding of it? Did you use too much or use it too frequently? Did you not realize you had to apply more sunscreen because you were UV sensitive after use?"

"Yes, sunscreen, I was way too relaxed about it. I was also using it with other active ingredients 😅."

"I used Retin A and went out in the sun for like 10 mins without having reapplied recently. It caused a massive sunburn that lasted three weeks, and I still have rosacea flare-ups from the sun after three years. Sooo that’s great. I think I ruined my skin barrier."