Marijuana / Cannabis and Tinnitus

Love you brother and hope you're doing fine

Peace.

 

I would really like to use marijuana a couple times a week but I keep finding that I get a rough spike the day after and another night's rest. Is anyone else like this? Recent comments also suggest that this has changed after the early months of their tinnitus.

My tinnitus has definitely changed over the last 3 months of 6 months total. I used to get distortions in my right ear while speaking but that's now gone. Really strange condition. Wondering if my response to marijuana use will change too.

 

Is it that weed causes an actual spike or could it be that because weed alters your perception, it only creates an illusion that it is louder?

For example, for some types of pain weed is actually not helpful because you become more in tune with the sensations even though it doesn't really increase the pain. It just makes you more aware of it.

 

Many have speculated that it's an attention thing. I swear that mine actually gets louder.

This recent research indicates, if I'm reading it correctly, that cannabis might have a direct effect.

Alterations of auditory sensory gating in mice with noise-induced tinnitus treated with nicotine and cannabis extract

 

But has marijuana made your tinnitus permanently louder or does it only get louder the day you use it?

 

No, it goes away after a day or so. And I can usually avoid the loudness increase if I use a minimum effective dose. I've basically quit though.

 

After some deliberate experimenting I can confidently say that a small dose of indica edible reliably suppresses my tinnitus for 24-48 hours. By small I mean roughly 20% of a 10 mg gummy, I can sometimes barely tell I've taken it.

It's actually a remarkable effect, more than anything else I've tried -- going from what I perceive as normally quite loud tinnitus to near-silence the next morning. The evening that I dose I experience bizarre effects with my hearing, as if the tinnitus sound is cutting in and out every now and then. I momentarily wonder if my hearing cuts out but I think it's actually the tinnitus. This happens every time, edible or vaping (which I've only attempted a few times). The tinnitus isn't suppressed until the next morning, upon waking it's nearly gone and quiet through the day, sometimes into the following day. It's a wonderful thing!

To me this indicates a couple things. That my marijuana use over the years likely contributed to this (I blame many things... lifelong noise, stress, mRNA vaccine... hence my name). And that the endocannabinoid system is directly involved in this sensory process.

I haven't been brave enough to experiment with a larger dose. But it seems as though there is a threshold where a little too much causes a wicked spike for the same amount of time that a smaller dose provides relief.

Anyway, I would love to hear if anyone else experiments the same way!

 

Happy to experiment and report back. Do you have a link to the product that you have used?

 

https://wyldcanna.com/ca/products/elderberry-gummies

P.S. when I say I can barely tell I’ve taken it, I mean the high. I’m presently reveling in blissful near-silence 24 hours post dose. It’s incredible. I just hope it continues to work!

 

@blamingeverything, that's amazing, I hope you find that it works for you everytime! How often do you dose?

 

Thanks! Give it a shot... I’m trying to keep it to a couple times a week. It’s been 36 hours now and still suppressed, but starting to rear its head again slightly. So on average 2 days of relief 2 times a week is giving me 4 days of comfort. This week I might try every other day and see how it goes.

 

I'm intrigued. Now I have to figure out how to get it.

 

Take a quick trip to a legal state, they’re all over now

 

It's still working like a charm.

 

Nice @blamingeverything, so happy it's working for you! I am actually in a legal state, so the trip would be quite short. I might head over to a shop and see what they have.

What dose do you take?

 

I was high as hell when I got permanent tinnitus from music. I would still smoke, but after wasting 10 years of life on drugs, I realized it's not worth it. Anything that intoxicates the mind and clouds the judgment is bad luck imo.

I'm also against meds unless needed. Ativan gave me multitonal hyperacusis.

 

I think I'm taking about 2 mg, maybe 3 mg sometimes. I should cut an edible up and experiment with more discrete doses.

 

I'm just here to suffer as little as possible during my time in Samsara, and help others to do the same. If leaning on some pills or a plant or some pills plus a plant assists me in that, then morality doesn't concern me.

The devil of it is, Samsara is chock full of things that appear to relieve suffering but actually just cause more attachment and suffering. Drugs, like many things, are a sword that cuts both directions (or, into all 4 dimensions in the case of bizarre stuff like DMT).

 

That is some very interesting information.

I have noticed that getting a good night's sleep can help with tinnitus, I'm sure that part of the effect of the gummies you mentioned promotes sound sleep, as well as other benefits. I'm going to see if my local place has the ones you use, or something similar.

 

Possibly, but marijuana is known to interrupt REM sleep.

 

Possibly, but so is protracted stress, anxiety and depression

I say possibly because some studies have shown this, on the other hand this one found the opposite:

0159 Reduced REM Sleep Percent in Frequent Cannabis Versus Non-Cannabis Users

Cannabis definitely interferes with dream recall but that doesn't mean you're not having them

This meta analysis has more information:

Recent cannabis use and nightly sleep duration in adults: a population analysis of the NHANES from 2005 to 2018

 

Too damn true. Interesting studies, thanks for sharing! What is your experience with using? How much do you roughly use and does it spike you? Has that changed over time?

 

I grow it and I use "a substantial amount" but it's hard to put a number on that. I go through around an ounce of flower a week but I turn it all into oil and I focus on quality, so I probably lose some yield. I grow it myself, process it myself, turn it into oil myself, so I don't have a good sense of how much I'd be using if I was buying dispensary stuff.

My use escalated a bit when the cost of use became effectively free, but, it's stayed stable for years now. Oftentimes I don't have any until very late in the day and it's just a bit before bed time, other days if I am doing work where I think it will be a help and not a hindrance, I will use some.

 

That's great. So I take it's not terribly adversely impacting your tinnitus noise?

 

No long term changes that I've noticed. Sometimes I feel like intake causes a short term elevation, but, when I plug my ears or try to volume match it against something like rubbing my fingers next to my ears, it seems like the relative volume is the same. This is different than stuff like the COVID-19 vaccines which caused a (temporary, and to me super worth it!) actual spike in the volume and nature of the tinnitus which I could detect with ears plugged or by doing a volume comparison.

To be totally frank, though, I don't 100% know, because the med stack I take or the meditation I do or all of that over years, at this point anyway, has led me to "just not think about my tinnitus that way" (to borrow a quote from someone on here I am forgetting). I'll notice it from time to time throughout the day, moving from a loud environment to a quiet one or vice versa, sometimes I think about it when I wake up, sometimes I don't think about it until it's 2:43pm on Tuesday 9/20/22 and I am replying to a post on the Tinnitus Talk forums. (Yes, I believe I wrote my entire earlier post here without noticing or thinking about it).

Do not confuse this to mean the volume has ever gone _down_ though. At best, it's the same incessant obnoxious screech it was in 2010, and, also, typical age-related hearing loss since, may well have made it objectively worse, I do not do regular objective volume matching simply because I already take what I deem as all reasonable precautions to protect my ears, so, knowing "it objectively got 10% worse over the last 2 years!" wouldn't actually be helpful to me, and, also could just reflect a loss in my overall hearing threshold and not an actual tinnitus volume increase.

My prediction is that people who have worse anxiety generally, and from weed specifically, will have a worse time with it with tinnitus. I am someone who generally has anxiety which has always at least sometimes spiked from weed, but also I really like weed and it helps my sleep and I am a stubborn l'il donkey so I just kept hitting the stuff until I figured out how to mostly avoid the bad feelings.

Also, I should point out: I consider myself highly dependent on cannabis. Whenever I have to stop it, is a 2-3 week ordeal hallmarked by insomnia so bad it can interfere with normal functioning. I don't think this is healthy or good, and I am not defending the use patterns laid out here, I am just being honest, because you asked

 

@linearb, super helpful and insightful, thank you for taking the time to type all of that out. I agree with your mentality. I too am/was a longtime user, quit when I got tinnitus (I quit everything) and had a hell of a time. So am currently trying not to dose every day to avoid that dependence, and barely getting high in the first place.

 

Yeah I feel you on that, there is really no in between for me, personally: once I go through the annoyance of withdrawal, staying entirely abstinent isn't that big a deal and mostly means I have better dreams and short term memory recall and worse overall sleep.

But, finding any kind of sustainable steady state between "use zero" and "use at least a somewhat significant amount at least once a day" is pretty impossible

That's a hard indicator of dependence, addiction, or whatever one wants to call the relationship with the substance at that point. So, I own that and don't try to shy away from the reality of it.

 

Cannabis has a peculiar dose response curve. When I push the dose, I get the "alarm clock going off inside my head effect" which is annoying and not helpful. Taking the smaller minidose does make sense, and does work for me, you may vape dried THC flower for a mini dose of THC, and CBD oil is readily available around here. I was having issues for the longest time, until I found that smaller doses work much better. It is also better for your thinking process, particularly if your employment requires you to think for a living.

I'm also looking into home prepared isoflavones, you do this with simmered soy beans, followed by immersion in hot milk, the cool and inoculate with probiotics, such as Kefir. Go completely vegetarian, then you might become what's called "equol producer", isoflavones are clinically shown to improve sleep, and sleep helps the brain heal, as well as other health benefits.

 

100% my experience too.

Using small doses is working so well that taking breaks is proving to be quite the pain in my rear. I'm forgetting how grating my usual tinnitus is! That seems like a good thing as long as this keeps working... it's working really well.

The plus side is that the nighttime doses are so small that they don't seem to be having any day-to-day downsides.

 

I wish more people would try this and report back!