Giving up Botox

My forehead is furrowed, my upper lip slightly resembles a bar code, and there are wrinkles around my eyes. I am thrilled.

It’s six months since I gave up Botox – seven years after I first became a human pin cushion. And here’s the weird thing: I swear my skin has never looked better.

I first started to think about quitting after a fellow beauty editor noted, just as I was about to book a Botox top-up, that I looked better without the jab. Was it possible, I thought, that one day this period in the beauty world might be seen in the same way as the endless cigarettes and lunchtime martinis of Mad Men: a moment of collective insanity from which, thank God, we have recovered? Later, looking around during a breakfast meeting at the various visages of gathered beauty editors, I realised facial movement was a rarity. Dannii Minogue, a judge on The X Factor, and Amanda Holden, of Britain’s Got Talent, have both gone public about their desire to give up Botox. Should I, I wondered, stop criticising their frozen foreheads and follow their lead?

It wasn’t until I read that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had decreed in April last year that a warning was to be put on the packaging for all botulinum toxin products (also known as Botox and not to be confused with botulism) that I had my Damascene moment, however. A statement such as, “The mat­erial [Botox] has the potential to spread from the injection site to distant parts of the body – with the risk of serious difficulties, like problems with swallowing or breathing,” will do that to you.

See, I like swallowing and breathing. And anything that has such a severe warning from the FDA scares me. Plus, according to a spokesman from Allergan, a Californian pharmaceutical company that produces Botox, it turns out the European packaging has carried a similar warning since 2007. (I was clearly far too intent in my pursuit of a Barbie-like forehead to do the necessary research.) So I stopped. Cold turkey.

It had begun insidiously enough. I was 30, and beauty PRs kept telling me about this wonder-stuff, and asking if I wanted to try it for free. I told myself that, as a beauty editor, it was all in the aid of research. And it didn’t really hurt. And, heck – it worked!  Before I knew it, like getting my roots done, Botox had become part of my life. But that was then. Now, as my wrinkles have slowly defrosted, my eyes have been opened –- literally and metaphorically – to a new trend in beauty: mobility. I have discovered I am not alone, and indeed, there is now an entire sub-section of the industry composed of facialists who specialise in getting people off Botox.

Nuz Shugaa, for example, has helped 47 women quit Botox. “Some clients don’t want to use a chemical like that or they are simply fed up with the look or the commitment, and often they don’t like the idea of it any more,” she says. “There are side-effects; it can look like someone’s had a stroke. Botox doesn’t give you a glowing look; it can get rid of visible lines but the skin can still look grey and dull. And that’s ageing.” The actress Rachel Weisz, one of Shugaa’s clients, even suggested in an interview with British Harper’s Bazaar that the treatment be banned for actors, “as steroids are for sportsmen”.

“Botox pre-ages the skin,” says Deborah Mitchell, the facialist and founder of Heaven skincare who weaned Dannii Minogue off the stuff. “If you reduce the blood supply to the area, then the area goes crepey, and you get Dr Spock eyebrows and lines above as the muscles try to compensate. Of course, a one-off trial of Botox won’t do that,” she notes, “but who tries Botox once?”

Perhaps because of this, Professor Laurence Kirwan, a plastic surgeon and former advocate of Botox, is changing his view. “Facial expression is normal,” he says. “We have become skewed in our concept of ageing by the phenomenon of Botox.”

Not everyone agrees, however. Dr Susan Mayou, a consultant dermatologist at London’s Cadogan Clinic, for example, says her patients have never experienced any pernicious side effects. “I have treated hundreds of women with Botox and they haven’t had problems and the majority come back repeatedly,” she says. “It’s totally safe in the right hands and I have it myself. Botox is here to stay. You feel better, you look fresher, brighter and we all want that.”

Still, I have decided my route to youthful freshness and brightness is through facial acupuncture instead. The process takes two hours instead of 10 minutes but at least it involves needles with nothing inside them. I have also renewed my commitment vows to skincare, and discovered that the new Estée Lauder Perfectionist Targeted Deep Wrinkle Filler (£32) works like a luxury grout. As for going back to Botox, I would never say never but as a member of the former front line, I feel a bit like Drew Barrymore: been there, done that, and not yet 40 years old.

www.nuzshugaa.com
www.heavenskincare.com
www.drkirwan.com
www.cadoganclinic.com
Facial Acupuncture: www.lifesmart.co.uk