I'm Not Committing Suicide. I'm Being Murdered by Merciless Tinnitus.

I will look into CBD oil. I have had trouble trying to match my frequency with online generators. My tinnitus is very high pitched high frequency hissing, like metallic wasps or shattered glass. Seems hard to match.

 

Hi @TracyJS,​

I'm sorry you're having such a difficult time coping at this time. I hope you're can find some combination of things soon that might help you begin to sleep better, which will almost certainly help you begin to cope better. -- Since you're going to be looking into CBD oil, I thought I'd share a few experiences on my own recent CBD journey.

About six weeks ago, a neighbor gave me three tiny samples of some CBD oil. I took one that morning, another one in the evening, and then one the following day. -- The first day I noticed my tinnitus volume went down about 25%, and that first night I slept better. By the next day, I was pleasantly surprised that my tinnitus volume stayed at its lower level, and in general, I felt a little more relaxed. The lowered volume and better sleep lasted another day or so--and then wore off.

My neighbor had left on a trip, so I bought some cbd oil at a local store. Not knowing exactly what I was doing, I bought a bottle of PlusCBDOil that came out as a "spray". Each 2 sprays contained 1 mg. of cbd. I would put 3-4 sprays in my morning tea, and I noticed it gave me a notable energy boost. But after a few days, that began to gradually wear off, until I didn't notice much of a boost at all. I didn't realize until today just how little CBD I was actually taking during this time.

I met with my neighbor again yesterday, and after about 10 minutes, told her I was wearing down, and would need to go home. She offered me another one of those samples, and I did start to perk up. I also noticed a pretty big shift for the rest of the day. Napped better than normal, seemed more grounded and calm than normal. Tinnitus volume "might" have gone down a bit as well.

I would have bought a bottle of this, except for the fact that it was way too expensive. It's a MLM company, called Hales. A 1200 mg bottle cast $130, and a 600 mg bottle cost $100. Today I went to our local COOP, and had a 10% discount coupon. -- I ended up buy a 1 fl. ounce bottle of a product called, "Ideal CBD by Barleans". It retailed for $70, so I got it for $63. It has a total of 1,125 mg of CBD. So almost the same amount as the bottle I could have bought from my neighbor, but for less than half the price. (Of course, she would say the quality isn't as good--and for all I know, she may be correct).

But I'm going to be giving this a try. And will be taking FAR more CBD than I originally did. The guy I talked to at the store today said that some customers need to take like 25 mg a day to notice anything. Others say they only need about 1-2 mg (1-2 drops) to get noticeable benefit--I think he said especially for helping with sleep.

I recently began applying helichrysum essential oil to the outside of my ears, and noticed the volume of my tinnitus reduced somewhat, and took the intensity of it down a notch as well. I'm planning on applying the CBD oil to my ears as well, and see how that might affect my tinnitus volume and intensity.​

 

@Bam I just arrived here today at the suggestion of my therapist. Yours was the first thread I’ve read. I’ve read your post over and over again with tears in my eyes. For the first time in my life, I found out I’m not alone.

I am: B) scared shitless of suicide. I welcome the end but can’t do it myself.

Thank you for your post and thank you to everyone that replied to you.

Bobby

 

TracyJS, no, you will not get the tinnitus worse because of this, the only problem is that person does not know how to do acupuncture. As has been said, you do not feel pain when it is well done.That's exactly what Wolfears said.

 

I understand only too well Bobby. I’m still in utter disbelief that the destination we’ve arrived at in life even exists. To wake up every morning hearing this dreadful screeching in your own head, with no improvement, no treatment, no clue how to get better, and knowing all you can do is ‘endure’ another day of abject torture in a world that you once loved but now no longer even resembles the one you once knew, is truly heart wrenching.

I too am B) but I’m also just so incredibly grief stricken that it increasingly feels like I’m being shoved hard towards it by this awful malevolent grinding noise. That even though it’s considered something a ‘mad’ irrational person does, in our awful twisted state of being it starts to seem like an entirely rational and unavoidable option, however painful and terrifying.

If you believe in Karma one can only imagine what we must have done to deserve this hell on earth, for that’s truly what it is, and I pray that we’ve suffered enough in this life and have wiped the slate clean. At times when we’re being shoved hard, it feels like thats the best we can hope for.....all we’re left with.

I would say that I pray for all of us, but my faith is lost. I cannot believe that this was sent to make us ‘better’ or ‘stronger’. It’s destroyed too many good people.

 

If you got audiogram that is over the standard bs 8000 hz range, your tinnitus is probably hiding in the first big dip.
You can also experiment with this.
Start at say 8500 hz and keep increasing by 500 every time.
Play the sound for 10 seconds and then cover your ears and listen for tinnitus...you will know when you are getting close to your frequency, as the tinnitus will be going away for longer and longer before it comes back.

Also, after reading your sound description again..
Would you be able to say it also matches the sound of sand being poured on a glass surface from great height, where you would hear every single grain of sand hitting the glass?
That is what I used to have, along with unmaskable reactive high glass shattering eeeeeeeeeeeeee, when I tried to mask it.
If so, do not despair..it will get better.

 

@J

Hanging in there bud. Thanks for your concern. Appreciated.

 

Thank you @Lane for all the information.

 

You bet!

I took my first dose of this new CBD oil last night (about 6 mg), and it definitely changed my quality of sleep, and ability to sleep in for close to a full 8 hours (a rarity for me). I also felt much more calm, relaxed, and grounded this morning. -- So I'm feeling pretty enthused about the prospects for what this might all do for me. I think there's even the potential for it to be a game-changer.​

 

Great news! I hope it is a game changer! Can it be ordered online?

 

Um, I’m not sure that description is quite right. It’s more hissing, very high frequency hissing, like metallic wasps or air being let out of a tire. Sometimes it’s so high pitched it sounds like glass shattering. If it’s intermittent, it could be like electrical zaps. I can feel it as well as hear it.

I had an extended audiogram done. I have mild hearing loss around 6,000-8,000hz and beyond 8,000 hz it really drops. However, I’m older so that’s not unexpected.

 

@Starthrower
Hi Star!

If you don’t mind me asking:

1. How wound you rate your tinnitus in terms of severity?

2. Has it changed for better or worse over the years?

Thanks!

 

@Bam - What can I say? Your eloquent style of writing has absolutely hit the ‘nail on the head’ for many of us suffering from this cruel infliction!!! Your writing style, descriptions, examples all capture the true horror which many of us live with 24/7. Reading your posts has made me shelve my domestic chores and stick the kettle on (not a bad thing! ) as you captured perfectly the ‘day in a life with Tinnitus and assured’ The demonic, destructive condition.
I too, have/had a very positive, fruitful life which I was very content and happy with! It all actually seemed too good to be true! Anyway, long story cut v short. My t started 2006 which was mild and Maskable and after a visit to an Audiologist who suggested I get micro suction to remove some ear wax and assured me was the safest form of removal and could not worsen my T (I voiced my concerns as I’d read many posts about it doing so). I proceeded very nervously and was the WORST decision of my life! It left me with unmaskable high pitched T, hypercausis, anxiety, mild depression and now as a result I have fibromyalgia which is another challenging crap condition! Before all this, I could’ve counted on 1 hand my Dr visits, enjoyed a healthy, good life for which I felt very grateful!! Like you & most of us, I’m in utter disbelief at how our lives have ended up like this?
I laughed at your comment about the BTA website!! . I would totally agree and ironically, the Audiologist in question was someone who ran a local support group which I attended once.... so wishing I didn’t go and things wouldn’t have been so bad now. The Audiologist told me things like ‘you’re not coping very well’ ‘your hearing isn’t great’ both of which were very untrue, I believe his words were intended to cause doubt and anxiety which would result in a profitable gain for him as he tried to flog me white noise generators!!! I think there are a lot of charlatans out there preying like vultures on a roadside of a wounded animal!!! It’s absolute criminal! I’ve tried twice to sue but it’s completely fruitless ‘not enough evidence’ . Your comment ‘sneaky nasty bitch of an infliction that hides its claws from everyone but those who truly suffer’ so god damn true!!!! I’ve ofted likened it to ‘the grim reeper’ you may be out enjoying that 2 hours but EVERY NIGHT and EVERY morning, it’s there... waiting.... lurking.... to remind you that you’re once carefree life where you got excited about day to day things and the future no longer is there.... just an existence and a hope that tomorrow might be a better day. Same old humdrum. NOTHING can be done without considering our ears and I resent that. If Tinnitus was physical, I’d tirelessly punch it in the face, that’s just how angry it makes me... we silently suffer & friends/family mean well but could never truly understand this tsunami that sweeps into our lives and the devastating aftermath!
I really enjoyed reading your posts and it sounds like you still have your sense of humour buried under the ringing.... don’t ever lose that, don’t give that to Tinnitus too. Like everyone here, I would gladly cancel my subscription to this ‘club’ but would seem we don’t have much option than to TRY and hope that better days may come... life is stressful and when dealing with this, we truly don’t need any other stresses to tip the scales!!!! Living on the edge with this is very tiring, stressful and scary - an unimaginable existence actually and one which if it wasn’t for my lovely family, I truly don’t know where I’d be. I need to be there for them, that’s why I endure this. It’s not a natural existence now and one that makes me very sad but we, live like your very skilled writing said... one weighted boot in front of another....

I sincerely hope things on some level improve for you & that you can ‘salvage something from this shipwreck’, please be assured that you are not alone and many of us understand your painful journey. Keep your head high and middle finger even higher to Tinnitus!!!!!

 

@Vicki14 The one and only positive of this hell is that I’ve never felt so much passion and conviction flowing through my pen.

I am dreadfully sorry that you are on this journey with me and that you now have another condition that the stress of T has foisted upon you. This is another issue that is entirely ignored by the medical community. How on earth, when people come down with stress conditions from normal life issues, are we supposed to stay sane, fit and healthy?

I was never a vengeful person but for every person that questions my inability to just ‘move on’ and ‘adapt to my new life’ and accept this I would love to curse them with my T for a few months. Just so they could truly comprehend the fear, the misery, the panic, the desolation, the loss, the grief, of being incessantly tortured by a noise emanating from your own head.

Sadly without this experience, they will never even come close to understanding the sheer horror of having a head like an abattoir full of screaming terrified pigs on helium.

 

Do you know what makes our existence even more bewildering is that it flies in the face of our ‘ultra civilised’ society where nobody should be offended, or hurt, or made to feel different, or bullied, or alienated, or tortured.....Any yet here we are, invisibly suffering all these things every single second of every day with ‘get used to it’ as our only line of defence. And we’re supposed to be alright with that. Sure. I’ll just stick on some cicadas, never eat anything other than vegetables ever again, be terrified of using a blender without earplugs, spend the rest of my life feeling inferior and damaged, sleeping alone to a soundtrack of a thundering rain. All fine. No worries.

And while I live like this and see the world being ultra understanding if someones depressed because they lost their job, or their boyfriend shagged the neighbour or they put on weight or someone called them a mean name i’ll be absolutely fine. Because I only lost F****** SILENCE and had it replaced with F****** SCREECHING....FOREVER.... No biggie.

 

I just found the following (the same kind I'm taking) at a website called Swanson's. When I first went to it, a 10% discount offer popped up off of the $69.99 retail. From my own limited pricing research, it seems like a pretty good deal. Just click on the image below. -- Good luck!

​

 

Remarkable CBD Oil Success Story...

 

theres nothing else to say that unless science advances enough to tackle hearing loss/tinnitus then we are screwed.

 

@Bam - thus would be funny if it weren’t so true!!! You capture the essence of the condition spot on!

- me neither! It’s not like you said, someone has fallen out over their 2 week relationship and completely devastated!!! This is slightly on a different scale!!!! For me, it feels like, no matter what I try do do to keep me busy, take my mind off it, I have an industrial strength bungee rope permanently attached,
Unable to cut myself free from the Tinnitus monster... always on your back, reminding you that life is now not it was. I absolutely understand that lots of folk face hard times and we’re not the only ones suffering but when there is no ‘fire exit’ in what feels like a burning building, it’s immensely difficult to live with this utterly frustrated trapped feeling, it’s pinning you down & all you can do is swing the punches whilst it’s laughing at you in the face! :-(

This is like being stuck with the shittiest room mate EVER! Like you, sick of the masking, which actually only irritates! When I make a smoothie now I practically exit the house and have to ask my kids to put on the blender & then let me know once it’s done!! I’m sure for most of us, we accept in life that things with our health will inevitably go wrong but never for one minute did I expect this monster would enter my life and deflate my hope, plans for the future and wreck havoc with every second of my life!!! It’s absolutely incomprehensible and something I’d not wish upon my worst enemy!!!! Health professionals have absolutely no clue when they try to offer us advice in how to deal with this! Especially that incompetent Audiologist who performed my MS procedure!!! Idiot!!! This truly would turn the most good natured person into a shadow of their former self. Just not entirely sure how to co-exists with this unwelcome, gate crashing, aggressive sound!!!!! Hope there are better days ahead for us all!!!!

 

I mentioned this same thing on another thread. It’s the lack of preparedness. We simply don’t expect it because there’s zero awareness. It’s not on our radar, so unlike cancer for example we’ve never had a chance to mentally prepare ourselves of the possibility we might one day suffer from it.

The incomprehensible shock of being hit by severe T when you’ve barely even heard of it’s existence, is akin to being fast asleep, tucked up in a warm bed one minute and then without warning being hurled in to an ice cold raging river the next.

In that respect I genuinely believe it’s unparalleled in its ability to take perfectly sane, happy, productive, loved people and within a few short weeks make them feel so desperate they literally murder themselves.

 

Precisely the point I was trying to make a while ago.
There is pretty much zero awareness about this condition out there.

Considering that (as you already mentioned above) it can bring a normal and well adjusted person with no mental issues to the edge of a cliff in couple of short weeks, ideally solving this condition should be made a priority by the medical community.

Unfortunately this is not the case, since there is now a rather large and profitable coping industry that grew around tinnitus sufferers, standing in the way of finding a real cure with their "keep busy and try not to think about it" kind of approach.
This is why we keep hearing the "learn to live with it" crap.

 

This is why I'm somewhat exasperated by my audiologist suggesting, despite my being profoundly deaf enough to have a cochlear implant, that my severe unmaskable 24/7 is largely psychological. I also went to a local tinnitus support group and a representative from the British Tinnitus Association started going about CBT-Mindfulness and how we can lower the volume/banish it by psychological techniques. Now, I am not denying there is a role for this sort of thing, but it seems bizarre that there is not a medical approach. After all, Dr's would not tell someone in severe pain to "mindfully accept" their illness and refuse to prescribe painkillers, and we are experiencing the audiological equivalent.

Prior to the onset of my new 24/7 T in Feb, I was happily doing a postdoc. Then followed two months of being bed-bound, having daily panic attacks, and landing on Sertraline (Zoloft) with Diazepam (Valium) as needed. My partner had to take time off work as she was worried I might kill myself. I have NEVER experienced anxiety remotely like it. I lost over a stone, barely ate, could barely get myself dressed, and all along the Dr's are saying "it's just a noise!!!" Yes, "just a noise" that overpowered my entire head and didn't let up. In addition, my cochlear implant - the very thing that enabled me to participate in the world - started going nuts with sound distortions and amplifying my own voice to unbearable levels.

In June however, the volume spontaneously reduced and, except for the occasional day, has been that way since. I was told this wouldn't happen due to my deafness. It is still unmaskable but sounds faint which is a vast improvement on some of the insane sounds I was experiencing - it also moved into my ears which was a relief as drones emanating from the middle of my head was beyond disturbing. My big fear now is that it might ramp up to previous levels once again as I don't think I could cope with round two.

I've stopped my postdoc, and am presently recovering from what was effectively a mental breakdown. I sleep ten hours a day and walk my dogs. That's about all I can handle. It's been the most life-altering thing that's ever happened to me and I can well understand how people are driven to suicide over this.

 

Unless someone is afflicted for life with severe 24x7 T, I find that they just cannot comprehend well what it means to "live" with it.

Actually, this does happen unfortunately with other painful ailments, for which there is no cure nor effective relief options.
What is slightly different with T is that medical professionals tend to not grasp the gravity of severe T as much as they grasp the gravity of chronic pain for example, and so T tends to generate less empathy and sympathy, as we are believed to be making a mountain out of a molehill. It's only a sound right? How bad can it be: people live next to train tracks all the time!

 

I don't take everything Drs say to heart. I take everything, I hear with a bit of grain of salt. Unfortunately I have had way more disappointments with drs than satisfactions. It was because of a negligent dr that now i live with fibro/arthritis 24-7. So don't get mad at what a dr might tell you. Always have a voice and ask as many questions needed to make yourself feel comfortable. I object to all the meds they want to throw at me. I simply say "NO THANKS". I'll beat my issue with a good diet and exercise. This usually works most of the time, but at times i do need to take a med.

Take care

 

It was major (9 hours) and I'm still here. Gutted (literally) but still here.

 

Oh @PaulBe. It is nice seeing you post. I wondered how you are doing and what happened. How are you and are you home?

That sounds like a very long surgery.

 

@valeri I just saw your question today. For some reason I am not getting the alert thing all the time.

Rating my tinnitus....it is very loud and non-stop. On that basis it is a big 10.

It hasn't changed at all over the years. At times under extreme stress situations it really seems much much louder.

Now this should not scare the you know what out of anyone here that is new to this. My tinnitus is due to nerve damage in my jaw and inner ear. It came on in a single day and never left.

I deal with it somehow - just to survive. I live life as best as possible. But in those first few years..... I never thought I would make it this far. I really hated people who would tell me to chill out it was just a "noise". Or how they did TRT or whatever....

 

Hi @Vicki14,

Agree with you on that one about the charlatans. Unfortunately--from what I can gather--literally every profession has a certain number of these charlatans. One group that I think people with t and/or h should be concerned about are dentists that way too quickly advise a root canal, when they're not even necessarily needed. I personally believe root canals should be avoided until all options--mostly alternative therapies--have been exhausted. I'm convinced 99%+ of potential root canals can be prevented.
​

I'm sorry to hear how severe your t is Starthrower, and how long you've had to endure it. -- I don't know if you're open to alternative therapies, but I've heard/read that St. John's Wort tincture and/or oil, and DMSO are both supposed to be able to help heal damaged nerves. A lot of people would probably be surprised to know that DMSO has been known to reverse paralysis.​

 

@Lane i think you are correct! I remember many years ago a dentist saying to me ‘if you are told you ever need fillings, you don’t!’ ( I have no fillings) and just thought that was a bizzare thing to say! I remember thinking... why would they? Luckily, I have an amazing dentist who I very much trust. Unfortunately I made A very wrong choice with an Audiologist who made very damaging comments to me.... you’re not coping very well.... you’re hearing isn’t great...... both which were untrue! To top it off he left me with loud Tinnitus and hypercausis and for 2.5 years I’ve woke up EVERY day with such anger and resentment for him for damaging my life physically and mentally. Moving on from that is difficult x

 

We have no other option.... its a case of put up or shut up, sadly