When some of my students were being prescribed a particularly nasty drug for acne, and the side effects started looking more and more as if chronic fatigue syndrome had hooked up with mononucleosis at a viral sex club, I did some work on my own.

Admittedly the drug was often recommended by dermitologists but it was also scribbed on the tab by GP's too. Still is today.

So for one student who had clearly cornered the pimple market for his entire grade, I said hold on before taking this powerful drug.

Give me a week.

Hard to counsel a teen when one pimple on a Friday night before the dance is the end of the world.

But he trusted me.

One interestinging descent involved parrots in Columbia, their love of unripened and therefore toxic fruit and their twice daily visits to mineral rich clay deposits.

Seems the clay neutralized the toxins.

Then this dermatologist in New York City, where else, thought, "Hmm, wonder if this parrot protecting clay can help the skin, our largest organ, from ridding the body of toxins through pustules?"

Turns out he was on to something.

Now of course this is just one scenario...I also asked his parents if they had done an allergy test, check out the diet, while you're at it, do a test on the chemicals lurking in the laundry detergent and fabric softeners...after all, he does rest his face on the old pillow all night long, does he not?

Both my student and his parents agreed to exhaust all other options before taking the drug. Got rid of tomatoes as he was allergic, took the clay treatment and used other hygienic solutions.

Although he still manifested the odd Vesuvius, he did not need to further the stress by adding a drug he did not need to take.

There are other options...not always, but at the very least do some exploring.

Boils down to advocacy in the face of those who expect patients to bend the knee to the lords of the all-knowing.

And that's not even getting into the other mega-over diagnosis of ADD/ADHD and Depression and Anxiety and the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical profit prescription mania.