How to stop a zit FAST?

do you have overnight? try taking oatmeal and rubbing it all over your face- that gets rid of the dead skin or boil water on the stove, stick a towel over your head and lean over the steam

pop it.

Crush an aspirin, put it enough water to dissolve, not much water, until it gets mushy, and then put it on the zit. Aspirin in an anti inflammatory and has a small amount of salicylic acid in it, the salicylic acid is an antibacterial. Leave it on at least a minimum of 5 minutes, or as long as you want.

Or simply, dab a small amount of toothpaste on the zit, if you have sensitive skin though, don’t use it.

pop it till it runs clear with blood, course then you’re left with a scab, not sure if that’s really what you’re looking for. My wife uses some sort of salicylic acid scrub every once in a while and says she thinks it helps.

I agree with smashbox. Asprin will help. So will applying toothpaste. The white pastey kind, not gel. Let it dry and sleep with it on. Clean it off in the morning with just water.
Another thing is you can use rubbing alchol. It may dry your skin but pimples come from oily skin. If you don’t have any of those things than try witch hazel. It will at least clean it and reduce the swelling and redness.

Windex.

you should ice the area. salicylic acid acid can help with inflamed zits but for the most part it isn’t broken down to the molecular level to penetrate the skin (my girlfriend the esthetician is telling me this from across the room).

Seriously though: ice. If you had a swollen ankle everyone would be telling you to ice it. Inflammation is inflammation. Ice it, yo :D

@scruffpuff, I don’t know where your girlfriend got that information, that salicylic cannot penetrate the skin, because it most certainly can. This is why it is in, many, many, many acne medications. It’s an acid, that can unplug the pores of the skin, and take the top layer of the skin off, depending on strength level. It is considered one of the most effective treatments for acne.

Sorry let me rephrase my answer a bit…

Salicylic acid, when used in a chemical peel, can totally penetrate the skin and is a very popular ingredient in acne medications. However, those peels are formulated to penetrate the skin whereas grinding some aspirins into a paste is not going to provide that same formulation. Instead the paste is going to sit on top of the skin much like a band-aid. It’s like if you rubbed an orange on your face… Sure you would be getting citric acid on the skin but it’s not the same as a citric acid peel. That’s what I was trying to get across, apologies for my poor paraphrasing.

It’s been my experience from watching her that she often recommends people ice their skin if areas are becoming inflamed so I figured that would be the most practical approach to the asker’s question.

Aspirin does work, for reducing the inflammation and swelling of a pimple. Scour the internet, and you will read where thousands of people state that it does, or ask any dermatologist.

I myself have done it, and am living proof that it works. It will reduce the size and redness of the pimple. It’s an inflammatory, and it will reduce the swelling of the pimple, from getting any larger? People do aspirin masks all the time, to keep their pimples at bay.

Go to any acne forum, or health forum, or just google aspirin for pimples, and it will give you 100’s of sites. People will vouch as I do, from personal experience that it does work.

Heck, I even seen it being touted on the Today Show, as using it as a mask, to keep pi
mples at bay. Just do some research, and you’ll see that it is effective at working on a pimple.

Ok well then make an aspirin mask and ice your face and you should be good to go :)

:) ice is good too

I was referring to the person who asked the question.