My Story

How I went from pimple-ridden guy with no self-esteem to living healthy, happy and confident adult life with clear skin.

I’m honored to be mentor and guide on the journey to clear skin. Since you’ve given me this honor, I thought you might want to know your host.

My name is Seppo Puusa, and here’s my story. How I went from pimple ridden teenager with a no self-esteem to healthy, happy and confident adult with clear skin. I lay bare how acne broke my self-esteem and some of the painful memories along the road. I share my long struggle to clear skin and the pivotal moments along the way. And how, in the end, the solution turned out to be deceptively simple.

I’m sure you can identify with lot of what I say. If nothing else, treat this as an inspiring story; to show you that it can be done.

How acne destroyed my self-esteem

My struggles with acne started during teenage years. If my memory serves me well I got my first pimple when I was around 15 years old.

At first I didn’t seem to mind about acne too much. Until one day I got a huge pimple on the tip of my nose. It was one of those couldn’t be bigger, couldn’t be any redder and couldn’t be in a worse spot pimples; think Rudolph the Reindeer, and you’ll get the idea. A friend of mine at high school pointed it out. He was one of the more popular guys. Good looking, swimmer, funny, got all the girls; you know the type. He cracked a joke about my huge pimple. Thinking back, he wasn’t mean about it. It was just his nature to crack jokes and unfortunately my pimple presented an opportunity not to be passed.

After that acne started really bothering me.

Things started getting really bad when I joined university, at the age of 19. I moved away from home, into a different town, and it seemed like I had the whole life ahead of me. I was always the shy kid at high school and moving to a different town was my opportunity to start with a clean slate.

Alas, acne terminated those plans.

During the last years of high school I developed a massive, that’s the only word to describe it, back acne. My entire back was covered in huge cysts. Luckily Finland is not much of a beach country (too cold for that), but sauna plays a big part in our social life. Many of the parties at university include sauna. Cooling after sauna, we sit around half-naked (or just wrapped in a towel), drinking beer and socializing; in most cases in mixed groups of men and women.

You can imagine that my back acne didn’t make those events easy.  I was often the only one wearing a t-shirt or huddled in a corner.

Little help from Accutane or dermatologists

At the time I still had faith in the dermatologists. I tried anything they gave me; creams, lotions, ointments and antibiotics. You know how it is with those. They help you for a while, and light up that hope that perhaps the struggle is finally over, only to let you down shortly after stopping them.

The only drug that had a noticeable effect on my acne was Accutane. I got a 4-month prescription from a derm. Paid an arm and a leg for it that as a student couldn’t really afford. But I was desperate and scraped the money together. I didn’t suffer any major side-effects. Just dry skin and lips and some minor eye pain.

At first Accutane felt like a blessing. I can’t tell you how happy I was as my skin started clearing within 2 months of starting Accutane. After the 4-month treatment I was almost completely clear.

From hiding my back to fearing haircuts

Unfortunately that bliss ended in less than six months, as my acne came back with a vengeance. This time on my scalp instead of back. That was the only permanent effect Accutane had. Now I had a scalp full of pimples. I guess you could call that progress; at least it was less visible. But it didn’t make me enthusiastic about getting haircut.

The worst experience I had with scalp acne was when I got intimate with a girl after a university party (score one for beer and poor judgment on her part ). She put her hands into my hair, which felt really nice, but, with a jerk, drew them out as she touched on a massive cysts in my scalp. That didn’t feel nice. I also went through pillow cases at warp speed. Often the cysts popped during the night and I woke up with blood on the pillow cases.

But enough about my acne. We should focus on breaking free from acne. I just wanted to share my experience and show that I’ve been there and I know what it feels like.

Long struggle to break free from acne

A pivotal moment in my struggle with acne came when I read a book called The Tao of Health, Sex and Longevity by Daniel Reid. It was my introduction to natural health. The book talked about toxins, degradation of health by the foods we eat, and how to fix the situation. The Tao of Health, Sex and Longevity also mentioned acne. According to Daniel Reid, acne is nothing but toxins being pushed through the skin; because the liver and the kidneys can’t cope up with the toxic load. In retrospect a naïve and simplistic explanation, but it changed my view on acne.

No more was I content with leaving the faith of my skin to ‘greedy’ dermatologists who just want to push drugs. I was determined to take charge and cleanse my body of toxins and other noxious substances. Aaahhh… the naivety.

The 7-year slog through the natural health jungle

What followed was a 7-year slog through the natural health field. I gorged books and websites about natural health. I wanted to know it all. Short on experience and knowledge and full of naivety, I took it all in. And I believed it all.

My mindset was that anything promoting natural health and healing had to be right, and anything opposing or questioning it was corrupted by the pharmaceutical industry. As I said, I was naïve.

I fasted, I detoxed, I cleansed my colon, I flushed my liver. I did several different herbal cleanses, I took supplements, I alkalized, I juiced, I cooked supposedly healthy foods that tasted awful. You name it and I’ve probably done it.

Don’t try this at home

Heck, I even owned a ‘colema board’, a contraception that allows you to take colonics at home. Using the device I proceeded to insert a plastic tube into my bum and flush several gallons of water through my colon. This was supposed to cleanse the years of undigested food and poisonous waste matter from my colon. I did this several times; often twice a day during a fast. Luckily I know better now and consider by butt as exit only.

In the vain attempt to cleanse my liver, I drank a cup of olive oil and lemon juice mixture, only to spend several hours the following night with my head in the toilet vomiting.

With mixed results this exploration went on for about 7 years. At times I managed to improve my acne a bit, but the results never lasted.

Starting to see the light

Another pivotal moment came when I bought The Perfect Health Program by Frederic Patenaude, a 12-CD teleseminar with Frederic Patenaude and Dr. Douglas Graham. Frederic and Dr. Graham are both well known gurus in the raw food movement.

The Perfect Health Program blew my mind and triggered another paradigm shift. It had a simple message. Health never comes in a bottle, pill, powder or a box. You have to earn it with your diet and lifestyle choices. Simple and commonsense advice, but something many people have lost in this the “age of quick-fix”. Dr. Graham outlined the 6 areas of health and how we must focus on each of them (see the six elements of health in Clear for Life for more details).

The Perfect Health Program finally allowed me to break free from acne. It blew right out of the water most of the BS in the natural health field. What I was left with was a simple lifestyle regimen that created the conditions that allowed my body to return to health. The program helped me to understand that it’s ultimately the conditions you expose your body to that determine your health – not how often you cleanse your liver. And these conditions depend largely on your diet and lifestyle.

My battle was still far from over, but at least now I was on the right track, or at least close to it.

But what should I eat?

To get where I am now, I still had to spend two years in dietary confusion. Now that I knew diet was a big part of the puzzle, the big question remained ‘what should I eat?’ The Perfect Health Program offered a simple and convincing answer to the question, and for the first year it seemed to be the answer. Unfortunately it blew on my face later (actually on my throat), and I painfully discovered that not all humans are meant to eat lots fruits – me being one of them.

After several hundred hours of reading diet books and websites, I’m at a point where I can say I’m free from acne. Am I 100% clear all the time? No, I don’t follow my own advice all the time. But for the most part I’m clear and the little acne I occasionally get doesn’t bother me at all. It has no effect on my life.

Clear for Life is the result of this journey

Clear for Life is the culmination of this research and experimentation. It contains the best practices and the most useful information about building health and getting clear I learned during these years. It is my sincere hope that I can save you the years of waddling through the natural health field, trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t; and in the process help you to get clear.

I have no illusions that Clear for Life would be the defining answer to health and acne. The human body is an infinitely complex organism, and we still don’t know all of it. Following Clear for Life won’t get everybody clear. But I do know it works for most people, and even if you are one of the few who won’t get completely clear, you should see a marked improvement on your acne. Further, Clear for Life serves as a platform for your own further experimentation.

But we are not done yet.

We still haven’t touched on the other pillar of breaking free from acne: emotional freedom

Emotional freedom from acne

– or the art being happy no matter what your skin looks like

Everyone wants to be happy, and I’m no exception. It’s just that for the best part of the first 30 years of my life I wasn’t very happy. Like most acne victims, I was riddled with bad self-esteem and very bland and quiet life. It didn’t help that I was the small kid at school and was picked on by the ‘big boys’; or that girls hardly paid any attention to me.

How being miserable helped me to become happy and confident

In other words, I had issues. And I’m glad I did, because they fueled my addiction to personal growth and self-help. I’m a self-confessed personal growth junkie, and I mean junkie, my bookshelf is littered with self-help books and audio programs.

As a result of this addiction, I had a huge realization. I’m in control of my happiness and emotional state. I don’t have to be at mercy of external circumstances. For acne victims this means your happiness doesn’t have to depend on how your skin looks like. Mine doesn’t, and, I believe that with dedication and work, anyone can do this.

Unfortunately the “age of quick-fix” made this realization far harder than it had to be. Like the natural health field, the personal growth field is littered with promises of quick results and other non-sense. Few authors emphasize hard work and persistence.

As a result I spend several years and thousands of dollars getting absolutely nowhere. Most of the books I bought amounted to little more than what I call mental masturbation. I got a warm and fuzzy feeling from reading a new book, but had no results to show for it. In the end I was worse off, because I had yet another failure in my track record. After several of these, a toxic doubt started creeping on me; why didn’t I get any results, is there something fundamentally wrong with me?

I started accepting that nothing works for me. Anytime I started on a program, I had that little voice in my head saying ‘here we go again; another failure coming up’.

Hitting the bottom and bouncing back

This went on for several years, and several thousand dollars. Until, truly hitting bottom (I had no money, I hated my job, I lived in a place I detested, and had no hopes for a better future), another pivotal moment changed my life.

I started an online course called The Life Principles Integration Process (LPIP) by Bill Harris. Like in The Perfect Health Program Dr. Graham explained how to create physical health, Bill Harris thoroughly explained how to create emotional health and happiness in LPIP.

The Life Principles Integration Process triggered a massive change in my life and emotional health. For the first time I understood how I created all those negative emotions I so passionately hated; and I had the tools to get over them.

During the next few years I examined my beliefs and values. I got rid of the ones that were not congruent with living a happy and successful life, and replaced them with more empowering beliefs. It wasn’t always easy and it certainly didn’t happen quickly – it’s been more than two years now; but it’s rewarding work, and I enjoyed every step of the way.

The mental and emotional chapters in  Clear for Life explain how you can take charge of your emotions and start living a happy life – no matter what your skin looks like. I use the same tools in my personal growth work. I know they work once you get comfortable with them. I also know it’s possible to ok with yourself no matter what your skin looks like. I did it, and I’ve helped many other people do the same.

Clear for Life: before and after

Learning everything in Clear for Life has truly been a marvelous journey, and it’s easy to say now that acne was a huge blessing in disguise.

I went from being a miserable victim to truly breaking free from acne. As I said, I do get the occasional pimple, but they have zero effect on myself self-esteem. I forget them by the time I’m out the front door. Acne is simply a non-issue now.

Physically I went from being on track to diabetes and heart attack to excellent health. Mentally I went from not thinking much of myself or my capabilities to knowing in my bones I can achieve anything I set my mind on. I went from hating my job to building a business I truly love. Work is no longer work for me. I love working now. In the process I also moved from a place I detested to place I love to live in.

What it comes down to is that, I went from living a miserable existence to being happy, joyful and positive most of the time. Just because I wanted to get over acne.

I believe you can do the same, and Clear for Life maps the journey for you.

Best of luck on your journey to clear skin and happiness. You truly deserve it.

Seppo Puusa