Alijah Johnson was 24-years-old when he had his first botox injection, at an aesthetic clinic in Virginia Beach. “A woman I used to be dating said I should probably get Botox to eliminate the tremendous lines on my brow,” he says. “I never thought it was an enormous deal, but when she pointed it out I believed possibly that is bringing my attraction down.” 

Since then, Johnson has gotten 30 units of botox every three to 4 months, at $330 a pop. Why is Johnson, a paramedic, firefighter, model and Youtuber, willing to fork out for such an invasive procedure before his twenty fifth birthday? “You simply wish to look youthful. Your skin is a canvas and you wish that canvas to be clean,” he says. “Lots of people get noticed due to their appearance nowadays. That’s why I’ve began making investments in anti-ageing procedures.”

Johnson will proceed to get Botox often now to stop further wrinkles: a standard occurrence since aesthetics clinics began marketing botox as “preventative”. Within the UK, it is prohibited to advertise prescription-only medications like Botox, but taking one have a look at TikTok shows you the way ineffective that ban is. Aesthetic clinics promote Botox using trending sounds and claim that the younger you begin, the higher, while young influencers echo this rhetoric once they film themselves getting their very own “preventative” treatments.

The issue? Botox doesn’t prevent wrinkles. “That’s not how it really works,” says Dr Amina Ahmed, a cosmetic dermatologist and aesthetician, who once turned away a 19-year-old who got here in asking for Botox. “All botulinum toxin does is paralyse the muscle. So since you’re not moving the muscle, the skin shouldn’t be getting creased and features don’t appear.” As botox starts to wear off, those wrinkles will appear.

Nevertheless, the chase for everlasting youth is driving young people of their droves to Botox. The Department of Health estimated that as many as 41,000 botox procedures were carried out on under 18s in 2020 (the UK has since banned the procedures for minors). And those that can’t afford the skilled treatment are turning to DIY methods. Learning from YouTube, where beauty influencers teach their followers the best way to inject a full face of botox for $45, individuals are buying Botox online, illegally, and injecting it into their faces at home. 

It’s illegal to purchase Botox with no clinical licence in countries just like the UK, US and Canada – a prescription from a physician or a nurse is required – but that doesn’t stop people buying it online, often from web sites based in Korea. Attributable to the risks of self-injecting, the UK government is planning to crack down on unregulated cosmetic procedures – however it’s unlikely this will probably be enough to discourage people. 

33-year-old consultant Eryshka and her friend, 25-year-old addictions counsellor Tyler, have been injecting Botox at home since January 2020. Initially, they went to doctors for his or her treatments (the one technique to legally get the procedures done of their Canadian provenance), but found that the trained professionals “were just getting bodies out and in as quickly as they will” and claim that some would “upsell”, telling clients they need more units of botox than they did. 

Watching these clinicians, Eryshka thought “this isn’t that arduous.” A friend within the DIY beauty scene gave her “backdoor access to information” and he or she learnt the best way to use the hyaluron pen, which you’ll be able to buy alongside Hyaluronic Acid, a legal filler used to smooth wrinkles, from platforms like eBay, Amazon and Aliexpress. Feeling confident, she then moved on to needles. Tyler “possibly watched a few YouTube videos and a few TikTok reels,” he says, before self-injecting his lips. After seeing the outcomes of Eryshka’s DIY botox, he began that too.

“At this point in my life, I’m excited to consider looking youthful, however it is form of depressing how entrenched I’m on this culture, where youth is a type of currency” – Eryshka

Injecting yourself with cosmetic dermal fillers and toxins puts you susceptible to allergic reactions (Eryshka had this the last time she self-injected), inflammation, infections, and even everlasting tissue death, blood clots and blindness when administered incorrectly. The web is brimming with diagrams showing you where to inject botox, but facial anatomy is complicated and it’s easy to get it incorrect. Eryshka once gave her boyfriend “Spock brow”, a standard injection result where the outer eyebrow tilts sharply upwards. 

Botox available online often isn’t regulated – just like the Korean brand Nabota Botulinum, which was seized from Toronto-based clinics by Health Canada amid fears it was unsafe. There’s also no guarantee that you just’re going to get what you paid for. “There’s just so many fraudulent vendors on the market,” Eryshka tells Dazed. “They take your money and also you never hear from them, otherwise you get something random.” To vet her vendors, Eryshka requests a photograph of what she’s ordering to see if the timestamp aligns with the time of her order. She also avoids anything that influencers are promoting for a commission, a standard practice within the scene, because “they aren’t doing it for the suitable reasons”. 

Rehema, a 26-year-old digital marketing manager, gets baby Botox injections. “I’m very expressive and I do know that this will cause lines in your face, so Botox is my technique to prevent them,” she says. After getting the treatment done professionally she felt that the $400 price tag was too expensive and decided to start out self-injecting. “I looked so a lot better after I had it that I couldn’t imagine going without it and this was a technique to save quite a lot of money.”

Recently, Rehema posted a Youtube video of her injecting Korean Innotox, which she found through a Youtuber who was also self-injecting. She was blissful with the outcomes as, like Eryshka, she felt professionals overfilled her face. “Sometimes, injectors over-Botox me to the purpose where I don’t appear like myself,” she explains. “I do know my body one of the best, and I like how after I do it I know the way I’ll look [afterwards].”

Does she worry concerning the risks? “No. Whatever happens, happens. And at the top of the day, it’s a part of life, taking these risks,” she says. She also doesn’t worry that her videos might influence any young viewers: “I’m very honest about my experience – the professionals, the cons – and I give people as much information as they should make a call for themselves.” 

The risks haven’t dampened Eryshka’s confidence with self-injection either. She injects around 40 units of Botox into her face every two months and has an 18-month back stash to be certain that she doesn’t run out. Working as a sex employee has taught her to see her face as an investment and he or she’s prepared to make financial sacrifices to maintain up her anti-ageing routine. “At this point in my life, I’m excited to consider looking youthful, however it is form of depressing how entrenched I’m on this culture, where youth is a type of currency,” she concedes. 

Johnson thrives off the pressure to ward off wrinkles, Rehema is blissful doing anything that makes her feel beautiful, and Tyler gained self-confidence from botox after drug addiction damaged his skin. Eryshka, nonetheless, admits it may feel like a jail – once you begin, it’s very hard to ever bring yourself to stop. “Whenever you’ve at all times been more complimented for a way you look than what you say, your inner and outer self grow to be inextricably linked. Clinging on to that last bloom of youth because it fucking fades off the rose is just trying a way of exerting control over that.”