Dealing with HPPD and Tinnitus

I have been experiencing mild HPPD (Halluconegenic Persistent Perception Disorder) since sometime before my tinnitus began. It's mostly visual snow and light tracers. Sometimes I see faces and patterns. It's annoying and recently becoming as bothersome as my tinnitus.

I started taking Gabapentin for anxiety and for some reason my HPPD has become more pronounced. It's stressing me, which makes it and the tinnitus works. I can't win. I can't look around to be distracted by the tinnitus without getting stressed by the visual snow.

I feel so awful and trapped inside myself. I could only hope for the sweet release of death to free me. I want to just cry while someone loving and caring holds me and tells me everything is ok.

This is who I am after all. I'm no wolf, just a puppy frightened by the rain.

 

I've had the same symptoms as you since the late 90s, though once I got through the initial 12-18 month panic the tinnitus wasn't really a problem until it got worse in 2010 following noise trauma.

I'd describe my visual problems as moderate to severe, but somehow after a year I basically stopped thinking about it entirely, it just became my new normal and aside from causing me slight irritation when I try to look at stars or meteor showers, literally the only time I think about it is when I'm reading threads like this. It's always there, though - my entire visual field is a mess of static, afterimages and other artifacts, and if I start following them then yes I can see faces and all sorts of things. The visual side of things basically doesn't bother me at all, and if someone came up with a drug that suppressed it tomorrow, I would not take it.

I'm not going to bullshit you and tell you that my life is perfect or anything, and I wish I'd been smarter about protecting my hearing and avoided the tinnitus increase.

Look, though, you've got a choice: continue to suffer, or figure out how to become the wolf. On some level, everyone is a scared kid, no one really has "their shit all figured out". You've got a particular conception of yourself which you've decided is unacceptable and incompatible with the disabilities you're facing. Okay, great... then change. Incredibly simple, and yet incredibly difficult. No one can tell you how to do this, past a point.

Are you getting any kind of professional or spiritual help with your issues? You seem to be in panic mode, hopping back and forth between "I want to kill myself" and "I want to find a path forward" and "I want to bludgeon my head with a hammer". Again, no one can tell you which of those things you really want, but I'd encourage you to not make permanent decisions based on a psychological state which is temporary (as all states are; change of some kind is unavoidable).

 

I honestly feel like I can't live life and be happy this way. My previous coping mechanisms of alcohol and weed make the tinnitus and visual stuff louder. I can't take it anymore. My life ducking sucks. There is no joy or happiness anymore.

 

Guys type FGSFDS

 

I just want relief from this hell and there is none to be had