I never had bad acne, so it took so little time! I used this when I was younger and it worked great. About the flakes, yeah, nothing you can do about it. I tried to get rid of them too, but nothing worked. I just used it at night, so I never had to worry about flakes in the morning. It is really drying, but it's good.

You need to rub it in and leave it on.

...and as for mosturizer, you should use Cetaphil. I'd give the Benzamycin a few minutes to sink in and then put on the mosturizer.

=)