BOTOX BACKLASH!
After 15 years of anti-ageing jabs, Kate Spicer’s fed up of having a frozen face — and she’s far from alone. So can a new detox treatment end her addiction to Botox?
Hello, my name’s Kate and I’m a Botox addict. I don’t do it all the time. Honestly, I’m trying to come to terms with the natural ageing process. But when I see the skin loosening over my 47-year-old face, I think, ‘Dr Feelgood could fix that’.
The name Dr Feelgood used to describe doctors who dispensed happy pills on demand in the Seventies. I use it to describe the countless needle-wielding men and women I’ve let loose on my face.
I first had Botox about 15 years ago for a magazine story, and since then a bit of needlework has always cheered me up. A jab or two makes me feel there’s a few more zippy years left before I throw out the dancing shoes and pop on some orthopaedic sandals.
And clearly I’m not the only one. last year, Allergan, the biggest producer of botulinum toxin, sold just shy of $2 billion (£1.6 billion) worth of Botox around the world, of which half was used for cosmetic purposes.
Wrinkle-relaxing injections are now the world’s most popular non-surgical procedure, according to ISAPS, the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, with Botox accounting for 39per cent of non-surgical treatments in the UK, while fillers made up 32 per cent. In 2016, enquiries for non-surgical facelifts increased by 106 per cent.
But while a fix of Botox and filler can turn back the clock, it does gradually wear off. Slowly your old face re-emerges and then it’s difficult to resist a touch up, much in the same way you’d visit a hairdresser every six weeks to get rid of the greys.
And while, at first, having a deadly neurotoxin injected into your body feels quite daring, a bit mad even; all too soon it starts to feel totally normal.
As with any drug, there are downsides. one not so skilful Dr, let’s call him Feelbad, gave me a ‘duck face’ — a stupid puffy mouth that made my sister-in-law snigger every time she saw me.
Which may well be why we’re beginning to see the beginnings of a backlash to the needle. over the past 18 months an increasing number of celebrities have admitted they’re over it.
Kylie, Cameron Diaz and Gwyneth Paltrow have all sworn they won’t do it again. Gwyneth, 44, told U.S. Harper’s Bazaar, ‘I’ll try anything. except I won’t do Botox again, because I looked crazy. I looked like Joan Rivers!’
MoST recently Courteney Cox, 52, told Bear Grylls, ‘I have done things that I regret, and luckily they’re things that dissolve and go away. So, now I just have a new motto: “Just let it be.” ’
Many of my friends, who had it regularly, have also stopped or cut right back. one, now 50, recognised she’d started to look weird: ‘Some bits were still, others mobile.’ And that ultimately, she’d ‘rather have £280 to spend on doing something fun rather than freezing my face’.
Proof this is more than just a fad, though, comes in the growth of a whole new breed of practitioner — the Botox detoxer.
Facial reflexologist to the stars, Ziggie Bergman, is one of the most high profile.
‘I see clients who’ve sworn off Botox privately after seeing bitchy newspaper stories pointing out they’ve had too much,’ she says.
She won’t reveal names, but assures me she sees supermodels, actresses, singers and news- readers. Her client list includes one singer in Texas who flies her out by private jet.
Women go to her for her ability to ‘soften and sculpt’ their facial features using only natural methods. Ziggie describes it as a ‘Botox detox’.
‘I will work with a doctor to dissolve fillers, but doctors can’t get rid of Botox. I can’t do it overnight, but my techniques speed up how quickly the Botox leaves the body by stimulating lymphatic drainage.’
She also addresses the underlying emotional reasons a person is turning to fillers and Botox.
Could Ziggie convince me to come off the hard stuff and embrace a less brutal regime than sitting in the doctor’s chair being stuck with needles? There was only one way to find out. Despite the time being right to call Dr Feelgood, I went to see Ziggie instead.
She claims she can not only cure me of my addiction, but ‘take ten years off in 12 weeks and lift my spirit for life.’
Impatient for results, I cram nine sessions at her Knightsbridge clinic into five weeks. At £175 an hour, I try not to think about the fact that injecting probably works out a little cheaper than regular visits to your DeBotox Guru (although Ziggie does hold £25 classes to teach women to use her techniques themselves at home in front of the mirror).
Neatly laid out beside the bed in her treatment room are an armoury of tools: little bumpy rollers, a metal chopstick, a small chilled crystal ball and a jade paddle. over 45 minutes she rolls, sweeps, prods and strokes using
these tools or her fingers: slapping, pushing, pinching, all in an effort to encourage blood flow to the skin and speed up the time it takes for your body to get rid of the toxin.
Despite the slapping, it’s an infinitely more pleasurable experience than Botox. Lying in a dark, fragrant treatment room, listening to Sanskrit chanting while Ziggie paddles, strokes and rolls my skin sends me to sleep; that never happened lying in a dentist’s chair under strip lighting while a doctor shoved needles into me.
When she’s finished she encourages me to make lifestyle changes — all her clients are encouraged to be actively involved in their De Botoxification. She urges me to go to yoga, sleep more, drink more water and find more peace: ‘You must write down the day’s worries and then tear them up.’
A crucial part of Ziggie’s treatment is helping you to build up your emotional resilience to ageing. We all know that getting older and ‘losing’ our looks is not easy, but Ziggie believes we must make peace with the process.
I first tried to give up Botox about a year ago for three distinct reasons. First, the heavy blocked feeling Botox gives, especially in the early weeks before it starts to wear off, is a bit of a headache, often literally.
I’d feel conscious of going to smile or frown and my face remaining immobile in the place where it was meant to move, while sort of twitching as other places tried to compensate. If I smiled, odd contortions happened in the muscles above my lips but my smile looked tight and odd. Yes, I looked better. I definitely looked better. But every day is a poker face day when you have Botox. Second, my good friend Kim’s brutal honesty: ‘I’m getting a bit sick of not knowing what any of my girlfriends are thinking,’ she told me one day. ‘You’ve all got too much rubbish in your face and look weird.’
She had a point. Botulinum toxin is a powerful neurotoxin that binds to a protein that enables nerves to send commands to muscles, and in the process cuts off the communication, causing paralysis. This means the brain might think smile or frown, but the face cannot put those feelings into visual effect.
Ziggie is a sworn enemy of Botox for the same reason. ‘My number one problem with it is that people with Botox aren’t able to communicate truthfully. It inhibits a woman’s ability to effectively show her feelings.’
Filler is something I’ve always found harder to ditch. It’s not the wrinkles I hate, it’s the collapse of my skin as the soft natural collagen of youth is depleted.
Ziggie describes filler as the ‘lesser of two evils. It has less of an impact on the body, but as the skin ages it gets thinner and you can see the little dollops of filler products like Restylane or Juvederm under the skin.’
BuT perhaps the most significant reason I want to give up is a social one. Despite having injectables myself, I can feel myself starting to look down on women who’ve had noticeable work.
The more frozen their faces, the more vulnerable and silly they look. This even includes clever women — I’ve started not to admire them, but pity them.
Maya Rasamny, 48, is one of the first of her social group in London to break free from Botox. She moves in the sort of circles where the use of injectable medical beauty solutions is widespread.
‘I used Botox until I was about 40 and there are still times I look in the mirror and say, “Gosh, I want some”,’ she explains. Maya’s now on the Ziggie detox. ‘The contours of my face have changed for the better. Some people think I’m crazy, others tell me I look amazing. I like to have expression. This is the way forward, the future, it’s more holisitic.’
The pendulum does seem to be slowly shifting. After a few years throwing everything cosmetic medicine had at her face, wellbeing consultant Inga Theron didn’t like who she’d become. ‘I looked “done” and older after certain procedures, deformed even.’
She went on a mission to discover an alternative to needles, eventually coming up with her ‘FaceGym’ technique. Her treatments, which start at £45, use massage, muscle stimulation, radio-frequency and lasers.
‘Thirty per cent of my older clients want to deBotox, while 60per cent of my younger clients want to avoid having to try the stuff in the first place.’ Theron now has four FaceGyms in London with 20 more set to open worldwide over the next two years.
And as more celebrities go Botox-free in 2017, there’s every chance more of us will follow suit. Will I be one of them? After my five weeks in Ziggie’s hands, I tot up the total time I’ve spent on my face: 24 hours!
Do I look ten years younger after my Botox detox? No, I don’t think I do. Do I look better, yes, even after a month of colds and the worst hangover of the year after the American election, I definitely look better.
Did Bergman instil some good habits that have improved not just the quality of my skin, but my life, too. Yes! Yes! Have I been cured of my weakness for filler? That is less clear. I haven’t deleted Dr Feelgood’s number quite yet.