Tinnitus from a NYE Party — Extreme Anxiety & Depression

Hi all,

I signed up here because I am in need of support. I am 30 years old, I don't club or attend concerts that often... except this one time, 2 days ago.

I went to a NYE 2020 party with very loud music for ~3h (breaks in between). I have had tinnitus since, and I am very depressed about it... I blame myself because I knew the music was too loud, but I stayed anyway...

Now my ears are ringing a high-pitched tone, a little like what you have after a night out, but this seems to not go away. It feels like it will stay forever and I can't bring myself to live like this.

During the day it is pretty much non-audible, as long as I am focused on something and there is movement and sound around. But when night comes, I obsess over it. I've always felt like there was some sort of "void" noise when silence comes, I've had that feeling all my life, but this is slightly different. It's more pronounced. My hearing seems fine - but I am seeing an audiologist on Monday to take some tests.

I am not exactly sure how bad it is or if there's ever a chance for it to go away. I am just lost, sad and anxious - I am also dealing with suicidal thoughts now due to this. I am just not sure how I can live like this.

Thank you for reading through.

Best,

Spinks

 

If it's only been 2 days (well, not even 2 full days if it was NYE, right?) and was 3 hours, give your ears some rest from sound, it will (most likely/hopefully) be fine and go away, especially if you don't often go to these sorts of things. And protect yourself in the future.

I also had similar incidents where ringing lasted temporarily for a day, and then faded. It's repeat exposure over the years (and in my case, medicine) that did me in.

My coworker came into work and said he went to an electronic music thing and 3 days later he still had ringing, but it then resolved itself.. and since he had heard me complain about my tinnitus condition, he immediately went and bought earplugs like I told him to for the future.

Don't stress yet!

 

Doctors often don't tell new onset patients things, but a significant proportion of tinnitus cases fade to nothing over time. What % isn't clear. If you already find it's non audible during the day that's a VERY good sign. Most people who post here say theirs started off louder. It's proposed (though not certain) in some papers there's a link between the attention paid to the symptoms, stress levels, and whether it remits, so the best thing to do is ignore as much as possible. I HATED noise pre tinnitus and could hardly sleep for a month but amazingly your brain can get used to it and let you sleep again. When that happens you'll feel better. Then if you are lucky the tinnitus will reduce or go. Important to avoid further noise trauma.

 

Go to the ENT right now and see if you can get dexamethasone injected into you ears. Like right now as soon as you see this.

"Dexamethasone exerts reliable therapeutic effects when used to treat NIHL."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25894725

 

You got this, bud. Treat yourself to some self-care and whenever the anxiety flares up, take a few deep breaths to remember that your life is so much bigger than some stupid noise, and you are stronger than you could ever realize when it comes to overcoming the sporadic jabs that life throws at you. <3

 

You have suffered an acoustic trauma to you ears. The most likely outcome is you current tinnitus will fade over the next 6-18 months, probably to zero. Protect your ears from now on. you will re-injure your ears much more easily now. Protect them for the rest of your life.

 

To make matters worse, there is a medicine called HPN-07 + NAC that has been shown to heal the type of damage associated with tinnitus and it got stuck in clinical trials. It exists, it is out there but you cannot have it because the government said so.

 

Does it only work during the acute phase or not? Thank

 

No they showed evidence that it works on the chronic model.

Sauce:

 

So if I understand correctly:
1. It works in chronic phases
2. safety has been proven
3. according to the publication (which I have briefly read, I will look into it entirely tomorrow) that shows real progress and not any assumption.. (as I could read on drugs already on the market which we diverted the primary use and which was not really convincing)
4. WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE!

Potentially we have the keys in hand?
Without going too far, nothing prevents us from self-medication? Except the price of the excessive molecule which is already available.

If we can be sure that what hough ear is developing is absolutely that. Then there will only be the price barrier to be overcome ?

very interesting, thank you for sharing! I will read it all.

 

And the government said no because?

 

If you're resourceful and have enough money you can easily acquire the two ingredients to this medicine. You will only be in violation of the terms of agreement of the chemical supply company that sells it to you.

 

You are in the very early days yet so please give yourself time as your symptoms may still resolve themselves. It's very hard to absorb at first and it's common to have feelings of despair during the onset, I also felt that way and discovered others new to the condition who were quite reasonably coming to terms. Whatever happens next, don't worry, it may just be temporary and you can adapt. Masking tools really helped me at first. It isn't over yet!

 

sure, but it is necessary that alchemy works, we do not know the dosages for the combination NAC / HPN-07 on humans to be effective currently?

 

Are we really in a position to start recommending to members with no pharmaceutical training, to start brewing potions which have not been approved or recommended by the AMA or equivalent, which may be dangerous to their health?

To the OP, don't let yourself get worked up over this, it's a very common thing and as others have said, most of the time the noise fades, sometimes faster sometimes slower, but the odds are excellent, that you'll be fine. Good luck at your doctor appointments.

 

Working on it.

 

The rat-to-human dosing would be based on a pretty standard formula used in medical conversions.

@JohnAdams I believe you worked this dosing out based on said calculation from the rat trial. I’d love to take a look at that math problem again and compare my math to yours, you know, JUST FOR FUNSIES.

 

Spinks- You’re probably going to be fine. Protect your ears, take some anti-inflammatory supplements like Curcumin, NAC, and Glutathione, stay away from excessive noise, take care of yourself (rest diet etc). Mask the sound a bit to give yourself a break, and try to keep your fingers out of your ears checking for the noise. Your life isn’t over.

Give us some periodic updates too, we are rooting for your recovery!

 

Yeah it's gone Funny that.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4804402/

I figured it was about 4 grams for a 150lbs person. 1 gram, twice daily, for two days. But there is also the NAC. You can probably load up on that stuff.

 

Thanks @JohnAdams.

Funny that. Yeah my calc was pretty close, adjusted for fatness of my human in the math model.

That puts each dose around $10k. So $40k for the treatment course. Woof.

 

My math put the whole treatment at about $10,000 not $40,000

 

NAC is not only useful during the acute phase (which is why the pill was initially developed) ? In any case it is not the most expensive component
In phase 1 they used 1200mg of NAC by allocating the maximum dose of Hpn - 07 (which was not quoted)

 

Hmm my math make not so good maybe. Probably some error of mine.

4g aka 4000 mg (right?) and I think this stuff is $8+ per mg, putting the course at $34k. I used a bigger human to get my $40k.

 

yeah

May want to recheck that.

 

150 lbs * 0,453592 = 68.04 kg

300mg/kg * 68.04 kg * 0.162 /4 = ( 3306.7 mg )/4 = 826.7 mg twice daily for 2 days ?

edit : 300 mg/kg is according to the publication the combination of nac + hpn-07 so we should know the ratio

 

Hi all, thanks for the support.

Quick update. I’ve seen an ENT, I’ve two general doctors, and an audiologist. Hearing tests are fine all round, no hear loss in any frequency, same on both ears. Ear pressure fine on both ears. My cochleae are fine on both ears too, slight loss on my right ear in very high frequencies but apparently normal at this stage (we start losing cells in our 20s apparently).

The docs think it’s a “temporary shift” overblown by my very high anxiety, and believe the annoyance will fade. My annoyance is clearly only present in pure silence, ie at night time. During the day or while I’m focusing on tasks I can’t hear anything. I’m actually starting to question whether I hear anything at all, and or is this just my anxiety acting up. I could always hear some sort of “pressure” and “ringing” in silence even before the party, but didn’t obsess over it. Not sure if my anxiety is making me crazy - I tend to have a unique ability to focus on symptoms and almost make them true...

I start CBT therapy next week too.

I am not very optimistic and still quite depressed. I’ve ended up at urgent care on the weekend because of lack of sleep and dark thoughts...

I have a bad history with health-related anxiety though, so I’ve been in such distress before (but for other symptoms).

Best,

Spinks

Edit: going forward, I’ll never go to any party or concerts again. Bars are ok, but will bring ear protection just in case.

Edit edit: I can’t help but take this unfortunate event as a sign. I knew for a long time I needed therapy, and now I’m forced to go and get better. I’m also forced to reassess my personal life: if I had a significant other, or a family of my own, or even a pet, I wouldn’t be in such distress. My happiness revolves WAY too much around my own little narcissistic persona... there are worse things than having tinnitus (I hear 15% of the population has it...), and it technically shouldn’t cause suicidal feelings to a balanced and healthy individual.

 

@Spinks

Sorry that this has been mentally difficult for you.

Sounds like therapy is a good idea for you, and that your anxiety snowballed things to make things seem worse. Be smart about your ears, but go overly paranoid protecting yourself when you’re not even sure if you have tinnitus. It sounds like it was just the temporary ear ringing that pretty much everyone gets after loud events, which is a warning sign that you should be aware of, but doesn’t mean you’ll have chronic tinnitus.

I think it’s smart to have ear protection for places that are loud, so that’s good - I wish I’d started protecting my ears more when I was younger - but since you’re pretty much fine, don’t limit yourself from socializing and fun events. Just bring earplugs. Don’t stop listening to music, just be careful of the volume.

Most of the warnings on here are for people that already have tinnitus or hearing loss, and so their ears are more sensitive. You only had one loud night with some faint ringing afterwards, which isn’t a good thing, but it doesn’t mean you’re broken yet - it’s pretty common, and the vast majority of people are fine. Take common sense precautions - now you know that your ears are delicate - but don’t limit your life yet due to your anxiety.

Hope therapy helps, I totally understand over obsessing with a problem, or every mistake - but it can often make things worse. Take your ears health seriously, but don’t despair and don’t panic.

If you’re not even sure if you can hear the sound, does running a fan or something like that at night help?

 

My body my choice right?

 

Hi all,

Thank you all for the support.

As an update - I’m still distressed psychologically, I don’t feel like it would ever go away. I’m having difficulty coming to terms with it, I still need to figure out a way to deal with and manage it.

I can still feel a pressure and hear a ringing in both ears when no other sound is around (ie night time or noise-cancelling headphones). I think that something definitely shifted from pre-party vs. now.

Man it is very hard, probably the hardest thing that I’ve ever had to deal with... hopefully I’ll be able to adapt and see life in a new way.

I started taking medication for sleep and anxiety to be able to cope, and doing CBT therapy. I can’t believe how much life changed...

 

It'll back off, I'm sure of it. But you need to rest your ears and not attend loud places in a while.