In Which I Am Vain AND Reckless

But also thrifty! I wanted to start using Retin-a or some tretinoin product like Renova on my various fine lines and wrinkles, since it's the only "cosmeceutical" that is proven to work. I mean, I love all my Origins stuff and I am using that too, but as the poet says, at my back I always hear time's wingéd chariot hurrying near. So I decided to step it up a notch. I had an expired tube of Retin-a, but I thought that it might be so old that it would be like that scene in Raiders where the Nazi looks at the ark after Harrison Ford told him not to.

So why didn't I just make an appointment with a dermatologist and ask for a prescription for a tretinoin product? We have an HMO that doesn't require referrals to specialists. And we have prescription drug coverage. Somehow, though, it just seemed like a lot of hassle. And do you know how expensive that Renova stuff is? It's basically the same thing as Retin-a or generic tretinoin, just packaged and marketed to the cosmeceutical crowd (rather than the acne crowd), and the price is redonkulous.

I decided to try an experiment and order some tretinoin from one of those shady online pharmacies. I looked at some websites for Canadian pharmacies, but they're not shady enough--they're sticklers for the whole prescription thing. So I went shadier, and found a website for a big operation in some undisclosed location that seemed like a real business, and that offered 20g tubes of Retin-A .025% for about $8. The only catch was that it seemed like I had to buy 10. I thought, hmmm. Possibly I will pay for this stuff and never receive anything. Or maybe I will be sent some tubes of relabeled hemorrhoid cream. I would NEVER order anything this way that I was actually going to put inside my body. I mean, some of these outfits sell botox, so you can BYOB, I guess. Hard to imagine buying an injectable that way. But what keeps them in business is Viagra, it seems. Too big a gamble.

Buying things with a credit card, though, gives you a lot of protection. I decided I'd give the stuff 2 weeks to show up, and if it didn't come, or if it seemed sketchy when it arrived, I'd dispute the charge. In my experience, CC companies are very helpful in that area, for some reason. So sure enough, they emailed me that they'd shipped my order, and today it came, all the way from Mumbai.

When I opened the box, I was like, "OMG it's so cute and foreign looking!" The tubes have some Hindi writing on them. But they say Johnson & Johnson, and they're all sealed up and everything. I opened one, and it feels and smells the same as the stuff I had, so I'm gonna declare this a success. They expire at the end of 2010, and I don't think I'll get through ten tubes before then, but maybe I can give them as hostess gifts? It's still cheaper than the generic copay would be if I had bought them the normal way.

So that's a thing. I am not trying to push you into a life of trading in the black market, hiding from the light, looking over your shoulder, never knowing when the long arm of John Law is gonna reach you. Or maybe you're all shooting bovine collagen that you're buying from Thailand? I just thought you might find this interesting, and I tell y'all everything anyway.