I’ve been using Botox for 16 years — here’s why I’ve given it up

It came to me, as all great epiphanies should, on the floor of a church hall, surrounded by a pack of 22 golden retrievers. If, like me, you love those big, soppy dogs, then you can pay for something called a Golden Retriever Experience, which will easily be the most joyous two hours of your decade. If it sounds a little odd, it probably is, but as with most things nowadays, blame TikTok.
When I saw the photos from the day, my smile was ecstatic, my cheeks flushed with happiness, my eyes sparkling; however, the top third of my face registered an expression of ennui usually reserved for someone schooling me about why I should choose Android over iPhone, or why I must buy an air fryer. It had crept up on me: the contrast between the from-the-eyes-down normal face of a 44-year-old woman who was lazy with SPF and skincare (more of this later) and a forehead seemingly untouched by life, as smooth and taut as a five-star hotel’s bedsheets. I decided there and then that Botox and I were over — and it seems I’m not alone.
“We are definitely seeing a reduction in people using injectables,” says the skin and laser expert Debbie Thomas. “They are either stepping away completely or they are opting for less being done. People want to look like themselves, they want to recognise the person in the mirror or photo.”
I’d been having Botox since I was 28. My first foray was the fault of Dannii Minogue. It was the era of The X Factor as event television and I was the beauty editor on a celebrity magazine. My boss was in the habit of sending us off to “live like the A-list” for the day, which was sadly more “pretend to be Cheryl Cole being papped in an acrylic dressing gown in Tesco” than “fly to Beverly Hills in a private jet”. Living like Dannii apparently consisted of hanging out in the Soho Hotel for a bit before heading to Harley Street to have my face frozen. I’m not entirely sure if Dannii did either of these things, but who was I to question a couple of free cosmopolitans and a smoother forehead?
It’s important to understand the context of Botox in 2007: we were at the tail end of the Trinny and Susannah What Not to Wear and Snog Marry Avoid? TV show era, Bridget Jones was still considered “chunky”, and kindness had yet to come back into fashion. This meant my doctor, at the time a celebrity in his own right, examined my face with the kind of disgust a sewage worker might express upon discovering a fatberg. He brusquely told me I also needed my lips doing, an “urgent” breast lift and definitely lipo in the next five years, then scribbled on my face with a Sharpie and warned me that I “might hear the crunch of bone”, before jabbing me all over my forehead and around my eyes.
I walked out bleeding and deflated, sure I wouldn’t be doing that again. Two weeks later, and I’d already booked my next appointment; scorn, pain and judgment were a minuscule price to pay for skin that looked like a beautifully candlelit boiled egg.
After Mr Celebrity Doctor I went to someone a little more discreet who, rumour had it, tended to the faces of Euro royalty. Here I’d get the smooth skin and the first-class treatment, surely? Nope. This time the doctor wouldn’t do anything as demeaning as his own prep work, leaving the Sharpie to a minion before whisking in like a sinister magician and without so much as a “Bonjour” stabbing me multiple times and leaving the liquid running into my eyes. I lay there after he’d gone, wondering if it would freeze my eyelids open or shut and which I’d prefer.
What followed next was a decade-long tour through the cosmetic doctors of London. There was the one who had clearly never heard the mantra “don’t get high on your own supply” — either that or he slept in a windsock. The one with a receptionist who wouldn’t have needed a prosthetic to play the part of the cowardly lion, so feline were her enhanced features. The time I was left with a brow so heavy that I had to use roll-on deodorant in my eye creases (don’t try this at home) to stop my scrunched-up eyelids sweating off all my make-up. The doctor who gave me deep purple crescent-moon bruising around my eyes the week I was a bridesmaid. The occasion I had it done when I was drunk at a party and my boyfriend told me it made me look like Lesley Ash (again, don’t try this at home), and the time I paid a luxury minibreak-sized amount of money for two tiny jabs that didn’t do a thing.
Finally I settled on someone who came with none of these issues and who kept my wrinkle-free forehead topped up nicely — and, had I not had the golden retriever realisation, I’d still be going to now. The dermatologist Dr Emma Craythorne says this can be a common realisation for people who have had Botox for a long time: “In our forties we start to see a shift in other ageing aspects of skin, like glow, tension or pigmentation. If you’re having Botox you might start to see a disparity between where you’re having it and the rest of your face, especially if you’re not supporting your skin with skincare and good lifestyle behaviours such as protecting your skin in the sun, a healthy diet, exercise that doesn’t cause too much strain to the face and good sleep.”
As someone who was guilty of all this, stopping Botox has required a shift in my habits. I realised I had been relying on it to mop up my laziness with skincare and an unhealthy lifestyle, and would need to make some changes instead. It’s now 18 months on and I’m mostly happy with my un-Botoxed face. I’ve stepped up my skincare routine and cut down on alcohol and late nights — and although I still get a pang of jealousy when I see that gleaming boiled-egg forehead of some freshly settled Botox on a friend, I won’t be rushing back.
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Never skip SPF“Daily SPF with good UVA protection is the single best thing you can do for your skin,” Craythorne says. Anthelios UVMune 400 SPF 50+ Invisible Fluid sits well under make-up and doesn’t cause my rosacea to flare up. £20, boots.com
Embrace retinolThis was recommended by my dermatologist as being effective enough to make a difference to my eye area but gentle enough not to aggravate my rosacea. Redermic R Eyes Intense, £31, lookfantastic.com
Wear an eye maskPost-40 my morning “squish face” can take till lunchtime to settle. This mask means there’s less pressure on my skin and fewer morning wrinkles. Silk sleep mask, £69, drowsysleepco.com