Music Distortion for 4 Months Now Following the COVID-19 Booster Vaccine — Losing Hope

I got my COVID-19 booster vaccine in January, 2022. 3 weeks later, I developed music distortion. My first 2 vaccines were alright, I had no auditory symptoms at all. My first two jabs were AstraZeneca and the booster was Pfizer (only one available). I work in healthcare so am at a high risk of catching COVID-19, so I decided the lesser of the two evils would be the vaccine (in terms of auditory health)

In my first week of music distortion, I reached out to lots of people who had this sudden onset, not precipitated by any noise trauma as well, they all said theirs went away within 1 month, 3 months, etc. It’s been 4 months for me now. It hasn’t gotten any better, nor has it gotten worse. I didn’t have any noise trauma at all before this, so I don’t understand why it’s stayed so long.

I’ve searched this forum for success stories of music distortion specifically but cannot find many. Only one that gives me hope right now is Jason C who still had distortion at month 5 but eventually completely resolved. Is there anyone out there who has had completely resolution of their music distortion? Past 4 months?

I feel very down, sorry for myself, punished. I’m 22 and can’t even listen to music. I don’t understand why I developed this, and more importantly why it has stayed so long... This is my last resort of hope.

 

Hey Sophia, I want to give you some hope. You can read more into my story if you want but I had moderate tinnitus and a little sound sensitivity since I was 18. I got sick in November 2020, don’t know if it was COVID-19, it was the worst cough I ever had, lost my voice completely for a week. The next month I was deadlifting heavy as usual and got home and I developed distortions in my tinnitus ear. I also got dizziness, pressure, more ear sensitivity, all that fun stuff. My distortions were like behind my tinnitus, like a beeping sound, and the more noise I was around the louder the beeping got and it mixed in with music and fans pretty much everything sounded like crap. I was really upset after accepting my tinnitus from before. Getting this was too much. I still managed to hold my life together for a bit, then I got in a car accident months later and developed severe noxacusis from the car accident and tinnitus in my good ear.

This whole time I thought my distortions and beeping was from a perilymph fistula or a CSF leak but my mom is convinced I had COVID-19 and it messed my ears up more. Mine could be extremely bad sometimes, but over time it started to calm down, I had 4-5 months I barely noticed it. Since I was home bound for 8 months in severe pain, I was letting my ears heal from everything. Mine seems to get set off from working out. It did get much better over time, in the beginning it was the worst, now I started working out again it’s starting to get bad again but not as severe as the beginning. I am dealing with it much better now.

If you never had tinnitus before this, it will be much harder for you to deal with the distortions, I had the jump because I was used to hearing unnatural noises. I did have horrible anxiety, over it and depression for the first few months, then I started to care less and less. When I first got tinnitus it took me much much longer to get used to hearing it. There are upsides to distortions and downsides. For me the distortions were way worse than my tinnitus and much more distracting, it’s way harder to get used to noise that’s not constant. But sleeping, if in a quiet room, I hear my tinnitus of course but the beeping is lower and I only hear distortions off the air coming from my vent. Some people with severe tinnitus never get a break and have to hear it 24/7 loud as crap with no break.

Give it time and be good to your ears. I would stay away from loud noise for a while and keep yourself as busy as possible. Yours should calm down with time and maybe even go away.

 

I had the music distortions in the beginning too. Music sounded like a blown out speaker. I was hearing all sorts of static and microphone feedback, which made the music real difficult to comprehend. It was constant for about 5 months, then it finally started to dissipate slowly. Music sounds way better now, although I still get fluctuations with distortions. Not so much with music anymore.

 

I’m about to hit 5 months and it’s still constant I’m scared, I haven’t read any stories of someone having it longer than 5 months.

 

Don’t get caught up in timeframes as everyone is different. I believe for @Jason C and @MindOverMatter, it took them about a year before they saw positive changes. @Matchbox‘s distortions although still dealing with, it greatly improved with time(after 1 year) as well. I’m still dealing with them on/off 1 year but it’s in a much better state than onset.

There’s a thread I made a while ago about a musician dealing with distortions(recovered) who contacted an audiologist.Audiologist basically told him that it would resolve overtime, but it’s difficult to give a prediction on timing. The timeframe will vary.

Try not to despair.