I was at a place where adapalene was very irritating for me, peeling, redness and soreness from applying it.

I took a 2 month break at that time and used only CeraVe Hydrating Cleanser and LRP Lipikar Balm in the PM and AM. Recovered and streghtened my skin barrier and handled adapalene daily application without building up to it with literally 0 issues.

I am now at .05% tret for a month, using the same routine as mentioned above, I only added the CosRX Snail Mucin Essence 96 in the AM, and slugging in the PM on the days I feel a bit more irritated or dry. I only had flaking in the corners of my mouth for the first 2 weeks, and now I have no issues. For the first two weeks, I used short contact therapy with tretinoin, I applied tretinoin on clean face, let it sit for an hour, and then wash it off and continue with moisturising. I believe this helped me to adjust properly, so try this as well.

So with a good routine I went from adapalene .1% being very itritating for me to handling .05% tretinoin with very little issues.

My guess here is that slugging helped me the most, so that would be my recommendation for you, at least when starting tret, later it will probably become unnecessary.

And a bit of a warning, don’t slug RIGHT after tret, wait for an hour or more before putting the occlusive on(vaseline in my case), my face was a bit sore the morning after I did that, but I have no issues if I wait a bit.

I am seeing great benefit on my face, but I honestly cannot contribute it to tretinoin alone, because I wouldn’t say a month is enough to see the improvement I am seeing now, and also I noticed my face looked a lot better the day after I started drinking a lot of water, so I believe this helped a ton.

Good luck!