99% Recovered from Tinnitus

25 year old white male. Tinnitus was a 6 to 7 at its worst.

I believe my tinnitis has been 99% recovered. My tinnitus was induced by using Doxycycline in 2015 an antibacterial drug that was used to treat an abscess.

I ingested this drug for 2 days 100mg twice per day. I know this drug caused it because the ringing happened to me in a nearly basement on a chill thursday night in march 2015. I started in my right ear as a ringing and several months later spread to my left ear.

Right Ear: High Pitched Ringing.
Left Ear: Low pitched ringing.

I firmly believe this drug fucked up my GABA receptors in my brain because I remember taking Ambien (sleeping pills) that induce sleep by depressing the GABA receptors. It was almost like a mute button.

1st 6 months: Very little improvement and it actually got a little worse. Stimulants and weed made it worse but once these drugs wore off it returned to baseline. I fell into a huge depression and thought my life was over. It would even get worse at night but be much quieter once I woke up. I refused to give up and took vitamin C supplements and reduced noise around me and worked out vigorously.

12 months: Noticeable improvement but it would still get really fucking bad. Again I used activities to take my mind off it.

1.5 years: More improvement, I started smoking weed which really helped me get to sleep, stopped taking so many supplements.

As the days went on there was very small improvement. I never assumed I would fully recover. I kept my nose to the grindstone and tried to live as much of a "normal life" as possible which definately helped with my psych.

3 years later: 99% no noise. I would have to plug both my ears in a quiet place to hear any noise, but its still in both ears. I still experience spikes but they last at most 5min. My longest spikes were at 1.5 years and they would last for several months. Noise changes, noise intensity, I experienced it all.

I'm a firm believer that for ototoxic drug induced tinnitus that it is a long recovery process. We live in a day of instant fixes and most of life's problems are long term waiting fixes and this shit is no different.

The last several months I got a girlfriend who happens to be getting a PhD in Audiology and nerded out about my ailment and gave me a full battery of hearing tests as a "date." According to her I have hearing loss in my left ear and none in my right ear. This is very strange seeing as the worst tinnitus was in my right ear.

KEY FEATURE IS TO STAY MENTALLY STRONG.

 

Thanks for this post. It's great to see a success story, and thanks for going back to the beginning and giving us a timeline of your tinnitus. I have tinnitus from an ototoxic drug (wellbutrin), and I'm 7 months in. I'm hoping to improve over the long term as well.

 

So was time your healer or something else you have done?

 

I think time played a majority role in the healing process. I will say that GABA/Vitamin C supplements played a minor role in making it more tolerable. Honest to god answer would be like 80% time and 20% supplements. Weed helps a lot too if you don't mind the temporary noise increase.

I think specifically for drug induced tinnitus that screws with your nerves that the recovery time is guranteed to be slow and not a 100% recovery.

I was born with a cleft lip and pallette and had to have surgery on my nose. After the surgery, due to the trauma my nose nerves received the entire right portion of my nose was numb for 6 months or so. After that the feeling started to come back and is at about 90% normal.

I think this same logic can be applied to auditory nerve cells. Nerves take time to heal, a lot of time.

I would say my spikes are that of a 2 to 3 with a constant 1 ringing throughout the day. I've tried to see if anything spikes it specifically but at this point it just has a mind of its own.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if new symptoms and spikes happen to you along your recovery process. I remember about 8 months in I got the strangest noise change, it was like wobbling metal but at a very low volume combined with the low ringing in my left ear. This spike lasted for about 2 months.

Expect it to take at least year for some serious recovery. Some days it may be better and some days it may get worse in a matter of one week.

A key thing to do is do hobbies and activities that distract you from it. Hitting the gym has helped me and nnow im kinda jacked up too because of it.

 

Hi Samuel,

1) I'm wondering that even such a small dose led to such severe problems for you and that they lasted so long. This leads me to the thought that sensitivity to Doxycycline is extremely different from body to body.

Thus, IMHO it is not directly related to hearing cells, since we (me and other colleagues here who suffer(ed) from NIHL) needed even a way higher dose than you to worsen our ear-situation, even though "we" had pre-damaged inner ears.

2) I disagree regarding this sentence:

"I think specifically for drug induced tinnitus that screws with your nerves that the recovery time is guranteed to be slow and not a 100% recovery."

I am absolutely certain that Doxycycline-induced tinnitus is not a nerve damage in the conventional sense, but some adverse change in the body that is reversible.

You also state that you can now only hear it if you plug your ears in a quiet environment. Don't you think that you either had this level of tinnitus already before or your recovery process is not yet finished?

 

A really nice success story!

Perhaps hitting the gym helps...?

@Rudedog205, how are you doing and what’s your take on this?

 

Hi Samuel, thanks for your encouraging story! So you are not taking Ambien any more?

I am taking it regularly but have started to think that it makes my tinnitus worse? Did you stop completely? How long after you stopped taking it did you notice an effect?