Do not make the same mistake I did. Go natural.

Ooo, the vinegar rinse is wonderful. My hair has never been so shiney and soft. I am going to experiment with diffrent scents soon. The peppermint tea is nice but, it does not last long. I am thinking patchulie and vanilla. As far as washing your hair goes, wash it when you like. People might say it locks better when you wash it once a week. But, everyones hair is different. Even when my hair was not dreadlocked i was only washing it once every two weeks.

Esjay said:

I have used a salt spray every now and then - and had to rip em apart as i dont want huge chunky ones but thats about it.

I have been only washing it weekly or as long as poss in between as it seems to loosen the locks alot.....however iv been getting mixed feed back on that.....gonna go get some apple cider vinegar today and some rosemary and tea tree to make my own wash up

updated by @audrey-bowdan: 07/27/15 12:55:49AM

I had done pretty much the exact same thing. Only I used twist and rip method and crochet.I purchased wax after a couple of weeks - waxed up then read this site the next day. I freaked and while I was camping I just went into a little gas station (cause they didnt really have stores) where I was at and bought some Dawn.

I washed teh crap out of my hair let it dry and washed again. Some of my tiny dreads fell out but, my head feels so much better. I laughed so hard when I realized I had purchased my products from DreadheadHQ. Prettyupset about the waste but thankful for this site!! Suprisingly though my hair seems to lock up really fast and I dont think I would have ever used any product if I knew how smoothly this would go for me!

This post helped me out so much! Congrats & I definitely learned the same lesson.

I honestly wonder what the percentage of the people on this site did something bad to their hair originally. It seems like the short time I have been here half the posts have been about recovery. It really is sad how many of us get tricked, me included. I will have to admit it is all part of our own faults though, we grow up in an instant gratification world, we all want dreads now, so we allow ourselves to "believe" the lies even though common sense tells us things don't make sense.

I work with the beauty industry and I'm pretty sure that a lot of the misconceptions are based on trust. Cosmetologists pay an exorbitant amount of money for their educations and I know that natural hairstyles were not apart of my cost but there are some schools that will teach it to some extent or another. With that said, what a student pays for with regard to education they trust that they are getting the most current and best information available. This transfers to customers because when you pay someone to do your hair you trust that they are going to do the best and most up to date techniques. Through trust the industry has trumped you out of your money and honestly I don't believe it is always the locticians fault because they were trained a certain way that happens to be based in a popular misconception.

On the plus side, there are sites out there now that help to trump that misconception because when I went to beauty school and waxed my first set of dreads, this information was never found.

Thats a pretty valid point Valerie. I think most people equate education with knowledge, that's just the way our society works. Truth is we all know people with tons of "education" who are clueless about things. In most aspects of life experience definitely triumphs any form of formal education. The apprentice system worked for thousands of years. Why? Because it works. That is why SE should at least be heard out: 20 some years of experience with dreads.