JaneyMac

I am a fifty year old woman. Until last year I had no idea what it meant to suffer tinnitus, despite my father having lived with it for over fifty years as a result of industrial deafness (he never complained and obviously lived his life all the same). Owing to worsening problems with Trichotillomania (hair pulling disorder), my GP referred me to a Psychiatrist. The Psychiatrist convinced me that I had masked depression and prescribed 50mg of Sertraline. I felt my problems were hormonal and surely I would be Peri-menopausal by now? However, desperate to keep the hair on my head, I decided to give the SSRI a try. To be on the safe side, I only took 25mg. I took the solution in isolation. I hadn't eaten or drunk anything in the last hour and it would be another twenty minutes before dinner was ready. Within a short space of time, maybe only twenty seconds or so, I felt an intense pounding pressure in both ears. After six hours, the drug was working at full capacity and I experienced many of the listed side effects, including ringing in the ears which sounded like alarm bells going off. I chose to never take drugs again unless my life depended on it, and eventually, I was back to my old self...except for one thing. I was left with a constant high pitch hissing sound. I am assuming that my blood pressure was affected which in turn damaged some of the fine hairs in the cochlear. So now I have Tinnitus and Trichotillomania. When I returned to the UK last September, I asked my father about his tinnitus. He said that my brain would sort it out. He should know after fifty two years of living with tinnitus.