I May Be Counting My Chickens — Hopeful Progress in My Tinnitus Journey

[Furetto]

Try playing music on a Bluetooth speaker at around 30 dB. That helped relieve my depression. Your tinnitus is idiopathic, so it should subside over time — you have better odds than most. Hope is a powerful weapon against tinnitus. I was at a 9 out of 10 from an acoustic shock explosion for over a year about 30 years ago, and I gradually went down to a 1 out of 10.

So you had no improvement for over a year, and then it went down to a 1? How long did it take to reach that point?

 

[jewellanne1010]

How do you do TRT on your own?

 

[Badger55]

So you had no improvement for over a year, and then it went down to a 1? How long did it take to reach that point?

I noticed slight improvement toward the end of the first year. However, I continued to struggle well into the second year, masking for sleep and occasionally taking Clonazepam. That medication definitely helped me sleep better, but I was warned about dependence, so I used it sparingly.

The turning point came when I managed to get six hours of sleep. I used to call it my "six-hour discount," because a good night's rest would often lower the tinnitus loudness by about 10 percent. That reduction then made it easier to sleep in the following nights, creating a snowball effect of gradual improvement.

At a certain point in the third year, tinnitus stopped being an issue. I fully habituated to the remaining hiss, which I could only hear if I listened for it or wore earplugs.