Louder Tinnitus Since a Week Back. Sudden Increase.

I was sititng in front of my computer in the evening when suddenly my tinnitus got much louder.

I haven't been able to sleep properly since then. Went to emergency care the night between Tuesday and Wednesday and got a one-time dose of benzos, with some muscle relaxants.
It helped for sleeping through the day, but now it's hard to cope with.

I can't connect the increase to any specific event. My best guess is a loud gunshot in the Hitman 2 game, and bad sleep. About two weeks before I also had a long cold with high fever, which usually causes a spike during, but did not this time. (Meaning I did not have a tinnitus spike while I had the cold and the fever.) The past week I've been woken up every day by loud machines outside my window.
Now the tinnitus is what mainly keeps me from sleeping properly.

This increase in the tinnitus has been coupled with ear pain and a burning sensation. Essentially the feeling of heartburn, but in the ears, and sometimes regular stinging pain.

Last night I lay in bed fighting the anxiety purely by force of will. I eventualy became dead tired and dozed off, but now that I'm awake again it's pretty terrible.

 

I hope it settles. What you describe seems common, and it almost always returns to baseline.

For me, a cold can give me spikes that last several weeks

 

Yeah. Of what I read that is how it can go. I'm surprised I didn't get any spike during the cold itself, although I suppose a bad cold can have many residual effects that linger and pop up later.