Mini Setback| My experience with white vinegar

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Hi hairlistas!!! This post describes a mini setback I’ve just experienced. I call it mini; you’ll see why.
So, shortly before Easter, I was grocery shopping and I spotted white vinegar while grabbing some ketchup. If you’re not new to the hair care world, you’ll probably heard (or read) about vinegar, particularly Apple cider vinegar (ACV) being used for hair (Google it). It is known to remove build-up, reduce itchy, flaky scalp and add shine and bounce to hair. You see, before I started my hair journey, I battled with dandruff and itchy scalp. When I began my hhj, the dandruff disappeared but the itchy scalp persisted, though not as bad as before. I read about ladies using ACV to get rid of itchiness and I longed to try it. Unfortunately, finding ACV is quite difficult in Naija. After reading that white vinegar is just as good, I decided it give it a whirl. So I mixed equal part vinegar with equal part water and used as a final rinse after rinsing off my DC. The itchiness reduced drastically!!! Boy was I pleased. But that’s not the end of the tale.

A few days later, I travelled home for the Easter break. I had done Bantu knots (see my last post) for my trip home, but once I got home I detangled the knots thoroughly and put my hair in a bun. For a few days, I completely forgot about my hair. I mean, it was in that bun, I didn’t even moisturise and seal daily like I usually do (slept with my satin scarf though). Then after about four days, I finally took down the bun to M&S. And I got a shocker!!!! First, my hair was a clumped mess!!! And I say clumped not tangled coz these were much bigger than normal tangles. And it was so unbelievably dry and breaking!!!! After screaming to myself “what happened???” I thought of what I’d done differently. First thing that popped in my head: VINEGAR!!! So quickly, I grabbed my phone and asked my trusty friend Google for answers. Turns out white vinegar is much more acidic than ACV so IT CAN DRY OUT THE HAIR. When using for hair, the quantity should be way less.  Boy was I schooled.
After learning my lesson (a lil too late), I proceeded to detangling. All I had for detangling was a lil coconut oil and castor oil (I only carried a few hair products home). I didn’t want to use up all my oils so I grabbed my mom’s anointing oil (aka olive oil, Naija peeps understand this) and started detangling. It was the longest detangling session I’ve ever done; I used a lot of oil. But the good news was I didn’t lose as much hair as I thought I would. Since I had so much oil on my hair, I proceeded to pre-pooing and a full washday to restore moisture to my hair. The breakage continued so I had to dust a little, and it reduced.
But my hair was still dry. Since then (it’s been about 3 weeks now) I’ve been washing and DCing TWICE a week and M&S TWICE daily. Yep, it’s extreme. And even after two weeks of doing this, my hair is still dry but slowly recovering.
So I call this a mini setback because since I was able to identify the problem and tackle it on time, the damage was not so drastic. I’m gonna have to give my hair a lot of TLC if I’m going to make APL by June. I will still do the vinegar rinse (since it worked in combating the itchiness) but with a lot less vinegar next time. If you’ve ever used white vinegar for your hair, please do share your experience in the comment section.
Cheers, Fatee