Excuses to subject myself to loud music

From 1974 til about 2002 I came up with all kinds of excuses to subject myself to loud music. I'm paying the price. Little by little, spike or no spike, I knew the loud music was making my T worse, little by little. They say you can put a frog in a pan of water on the stove and turn it up slowly and he won't jump out, he'll boil. This is exactly what I did to my ears, and my nerves. But I had lots of excuses . . .
..after all the other kids are ok
..after all, it's my brother's wedding
..after all, it's not like I'm going deaf
..it'll get better
..I'll be OK with earplugs (haha)
..after all, it's Stevie Ray VAUGHAN, and we're in the 3rd row!!
..if it gets too loud, I'll leave (after the damage is done)
..these are musicians ear plugs, they must work great
..it got better before, it'll get better again
and on and on and on
until I had the HORRIBLE misfortune of pushing my luck and finding out what a Godzilla spike is like. It's like seeing the face of Satan or something. You change. I'm SO lucky my last big blast 8 years ago DID settle down, although now my T is louder from it.
Horribly loud music is now socially acceptable wherever you go. Does that mean it's healthy? Of course not.

 

How's your hearing?

 

Yeah, I always have a pair of flesh colored foam earplugs in my pocket. You never know when some venue is going to have blaring music....

 

I am sorry to hear that. I know what a truly bad episode can be like. My 'T' is only a few weeks old, and was caused by a sinus thing, which means there's little chance it is permanent. THANK GOD. I didn't realize i had partially blocked Eustachian tubes a few weeks back, and I went crazy using saline nasal spray to 'clear' my sinus thing. The saline backed up into my middle ears and sent the little bones into hyper-drive for about 24 hours. It was the most horrific day of my life. I felt like I was being tortured. I truly hope you find some relief. Good luck to you.

 

Pretty good. A loss in the highest registers of my bad ear.

 

Good for you. Protect yourself.

 

Good luck to you. You probably won't do that again, eh?
This is my point of this thread. Loud music is like the saline. But unlike you, I kept 'spraying' high volume in.

 

"like seeing the face of Satan" That might be the most appropriate decription I have heard so far.

 

so if I play drums in a band standard earplugs will NOT be enough, when I already have pretty bad T?..

 

It wouldn't be enough for me. As I understand it, the tinnea, the hairs, are damaged or destroyed. leaving it to the remaining hairs to do the job they weren't really meant for so now THEY are overworked, and it can only get worse. It did for me. Through the years I was actually trying to play catch up, in other words, loud music would spike me, I'd avoid music for a while then go back at it. That was my mistake. I should avoided it altogether and do what I'm doing now, acoustic music at far lower level. And for me, that's WAY down.
Let me explain what hurt me -
numerous concerts from 72 to 1992.
Lot of garage and bar bands for the first ten years
LOTS of practice drumming with headphones full tilt
Amps always on 10