Closing in on the Fabled 3 Month "Acute Tinnitus" Period — Experiences with Weed?

Hi everyone.

So my tinnitus is noise-induced.
This was a typical day in my life as a 24 year old. Wake up. Smoke weed. Listen to music. And smoke a lot more and listen to a lot more AMAZING music.

I am also a music producer( guitar, keys, etc).

My tinnitus is mostly very soft and manageable however as soon as I smoke a joint it goes from a 1 to a 10.

As weed is one of the few pleasures in life for me I was wondering if anybody else with tinnitus smokes weed on this forum? (I know it may seem petty, but it was always my form of self-medication and would not like to start taking benzos, as it seems to be the only thing similar to weed without a "spike").

 

Yes weed spikes the tinnitus. Listening to music while stoned is something you have just lost my friend. Life goes on though.

 

Congratulations on your tinnitus being so low. Try to keep it that way.

The general consensus seems to be that weed always spikes tinnitus temporarily but then it goes back down. For some people it seems to get permanently louder but we have no way of knowing if it's the weed that does that or not

Weed is nice, yes. Tinnitus has a tendency to cure weed though, as they say... Can weed make tinnitus worse? maybe. There is no way to know. In fact nobody knows much about tinnitus, it's mostly guesswork.

Enjoy being able to listen to and make music at all. That can change with just one small mistake as it did for me. Stop using headphones and be very careful with moderate to loud sounds.

 

Bit of a broad statement. May or may not be the case.

 

Let me just add, manageable in the sense that, if I do nothing, nothing at all, my tinnitus is a 1. I just can't see risking my ears further by being around anything other than myself.

 

What makes it go beyond 1 apart from weed?

 

Probably not, at least permanently.

 

*chomps down another big handful of hemp*

 

I've been meaning to make a thread about this but I'll ask you quick now: how do spikes work? If coffee, salt, drugs, colds and more give temporary spikes, could exposing yourself to these things continuously make tinnitus permanently worse?

 

I guess stress is the main culprit. Although I am not a stressed out person. Feels like the t is just adding onto my normal life this creating the stress.

 

I'm flattered you desire my opinion.

I think the nerves are wonged out and damaged. Spikes can either make the damage worse temporarily, or permanently, depending on a million factors.

 

It's like I'm living my normal life. Plus the t is adding an extra 20%. No matter what I'm doing.

 

This will thankfully get easier with time, as long as the tinnitus is low (that's been my experience at least)

 

Thanks for your kind words. Here's to hoping both of our tinnitus disappears spontaneously by the morning.

 

Hi again. Sorry to bother. I am interested in getting myself some CBD oil. I can get it from a number of people I know( mostly stoners). Was just wondering. Is there anything I should look out for in specific? Strong stuff, weak stuff, should I get it from a friend or should I buy online?

 

No bother at all! Where are you located? The first thing you have to decide is if you want pure CBD isolate or full spectrum. Isolate is less effective but perhaps less likely to spike T (never tried it myself)

I buy raw hemp since that is more than 10 times as cost effective compared to oil. It's possible to make your own oil too but I think it’s easy enough to just eat the decarbed hemp

 

I smoke occasionally and it doesn’t spike my tinnitus. I seem to be the exception though, most people say it does. Could you not give it up for a year or something, see if your tinnitus goes away? If this thing gets any louder it could be very very tough so it may be worth it, as you wouldn’t want to risk a permanent spike.

 

I live in South Africa. It is very easy to get thc oil for me. But I believe I am looking for the isolate as it wont have any psychoactive properties. A friend says he can get it for me. But I am not sure it will be pure cbd. I dont mind spending the extra for the oil as I think it will be easier to use. However I just want to be assured it is pure cbd. And dont know how to test it

 

Hm, well I know nothing about South Africa. If CBD oil is legal it should be easy to find online.

 

Yes I will try. But it is so difficult. How often does a spike become permanent? It usually goes away as soon as I go to bed and wake up. But those spikes are intense. A solid 10

 

I couldn't tell you how often a spike becomes permanent. If they go away reliably, and it's from a drug not noise, probably not often. But what you do see very consistently with tinnitus is it's FAR more likely to go away altogether in the first year. If it were me, I'd be ditching anything that spiked my tinnitus for a year or to to give it the best chance of going. Especially if it spikes it to a 10.

Weed doesn't do much for me except kill pain and make me paranoid (no idea why) so I could happily live without it. But I like beer. I had a constant headache for several years a while back, and while I had it, I gave up alcohol. The headache eventually went away. It wasn't caused by drink but drink would sometimes spike it so I was happy to give it up for a while. 6 months or so after the headache went I started drinking again, no return of the headache.

 

Strange. I also sometimes get really bad headaches sometimes. Not sure exactly why that is, strangely enough also seems linked to when I used to smoke a lot of weed. Now I don't really get them much. But the stress from having tinnitus sometimes gives me some pretty bad headaches.

Thank you. I will stay away from anything that will give me a spike.

I have a question for you as you seem to know a fair deal of how this all works. I have been taking Xanax 0.5mg for the past 4 days just to forget about my tinnitus. I don't plan on using it everyday. But it definitely works. Is this something I should be worried about? I.e. go the all natural approach and just wait it out.

 

Remember no one on a forum really KNOWS how this works, we can only say x or y based on what we've seen or read. Mind you, ENTs mostly aren't too interested or knowledgable really anyway! They do often tell people if it's not gone by 3 months it's permanent and you can see from accounts online that's not true. If you don't have some serious fading by two years, that seems more likely to be a sign of permanence. No one seems to know the % for whom it goes away, but anecdotally, I reckon it seems more common in younger folk.

Re Xanax-so, this is a benzodiazepine. It seems they often make tinnitus quieter the next day. I had the same experience with valium at the start- GP gave me some to help me sleep and calm down - ALWAYS quieter the next day if I took them. But one cause of tinnitus is people who were on benzos long term - maybe short term in helps, but in the longer term it can cause it (some kind of receptor desensitisation in the brain maybe). I was on baclofen long term for that headache (not a benzo but can cause a similar withdrawal syndrome) when I got tinnitus and I have a funny suspicion that might have help start my T off. Cos if I take extra baclo, my T is always quieter the next day, and if I skip it, it's always louder. But in the long term maybe daily baclo can cause T like valium can.

Taking valium once in a while might be fine, but I'd really be guessing. Definitely don't take it regularly. You would not have the opportunity to even do that in my country, doctors here almost never give out valium in the long term.

Only other thing to say would be........long term exposure to noise is definitely a big risk factor for T, so many musicians seems to get it. But if this is your profession, not much you can do.

 

Early on in your tinnitus career you'll get random spikes all the time. It fluctuates like crazy.

The good news is WEED DOES NOT CAUSE SPIKES.

I had a jam session at my house this weekend and 3/4 of us have tinnitus, and all four of us smoke. Nobody got spikes from the weed, or the amplified music and drums. Earplugs / Over the ear defenders are amazing things.

If weed is spiking your tinnitus you need to question whether it's your attention to it, or if you have a blood pressure issues that are exacerbating it.

Stay calm. Your musical life isn't over. Feel free to message me to discuss this because a barage of people that don't expose themselves to loud sounds or anything that may potentially trigger a spike are going to comment as "experts" about what happens when you do the things they do not do.

 

Thank you very much. I hope for the best constantly for me and you. It will dissapear.