New to the Forum, Tinnitus Since Late June, Early July

Hello everyone, my name is Artur and I developed tinnitus after listening with earphones at maximum volume to the lastest Metallica album while I was studying. I exposed myself to this harmful music for about an hour or so before feeling like going to the bathroom which ultimately saved me from even more harmful exposure.
When I was in the bathroom I noticed my hearing was muffled on my right ear and I also noticed a high frequency pitch in my right ear. I panicked internally a lot and searched for what this noise meant online and found it was tinnitus, I shouldn't have googled my condition, thankfully my girlfriend(Alex) was arriving home and I felt like I could rely on her to feel a little bit better and I did feel somewhat better, somehow later that night I managed to fall asleep and on the next day I had no tinnitus I was quite happy that I couldn't hear the tone anymore.
Stupidly this event didn't stop me from using earphones, even though I used earphones on low volume.

A month or so went by since my initial encounter with T happened, around that time my flatmates who were also friends with the landlord asked us(me and Alex) to move out of the flat, they were gonna place the house on the market, it was quite a stressful month but I was feeling surprisingly ok about moving or so I thought, on a thursday or friday(29/06 or 30/06) I was studying in my quiet room with no earphones and I noticed this hissing sound that filled up my head, I panicked but tried to stay positive and believe It would just go away, that weekend my girlfriend and I went looking for small apartments to rent and found two, but she was freaking out because we really only had a month to move out and she thought we would end up homeless and with no money, the fees that the agencies ask just to check if we can afford a place are absurd.

That weekend Alex made this stunning stunt that got us the perfect apartment and all was well on that department, I tried to get my mind off of my hissing tinnitus sound, but it didn't work I just got worse and on the weekend afterwards my anxiety went to levels I've felt before, during other traumatic episodes in my life, my anxiety was so high my body was shaking, tremors felt and being conducted through my entire body.

Eventually I came upon this forum and the first thread that I came upon was the one written by IWLM on the back to silence method, I didn't try using that method until later that next Thursday, I registered my emotional response religiously everytime I heard it. Initially I was registering 39 entries in one day eventually after another month or so It got down to 1-3 entries a day.

On the 18th of August Alex and I went on a vaccation to our home country, I thought this would help me emotionally and in someways it did, on some other ways it had the complete opposite effect.
I was afraid of ruining Alex's vaccation which I did in a sense even though she wont admit it. I was there for 3 weeks and the first week was quite hard I couldn't sleep and it wasn't really because of tinnitus I was just anxious and it was too hot, no airflow in the room, I had to go to the doctor and the doctor was quite understanding, he said he also had tinnitus for more than a decade and he just lives on, he prescribed some valerian root initially for my sleeping and anxiety problems, it worked for the anxiety but I still couldn't sleep even after taking like 4/5 pills of it, I returned and he prescribed Ambien and some magnesium, the problem was that everytime I was about to fall asleep I would be jolted back into consciousness.

Thankfully the ambien worked and after a week I tampered off of ambien and could sleep well without it. I stopped doing the back to silence method during my vaccation, I felt like I just couldn't keep it up, it was forcing me to think more about tinnitus than I wanted to which led to more anxiety. Also around the time I tampered off from Ambien I started to have these bouts of fleeting tinnitus which really scared me because they would only happen while I was asleep, they would wake me up and would just fade away after about a minute or less, at least this doesn't happen everyday and only really happens a few times every month.

After returning home I was feeling better but I was still thinking about it every minute and it was driving me crazy, now this part that I'm gonna write I'm not too sure if it's true or not but when I returned home I felt like my T got slightly better to the point that I could only hear the hissing sound in the bathroom where there's no sound present. On some rare occasions I couldn't even hear anything in the bathroom.

A week or so before returning back to uni i started to have fleeting tinnitus during the day aswell it would only occur once or twice everyday and then it stopped for some weeks and returned with a frequency of 2/3 a day for 3 days a week.

I've had some suicidal thoughts and I'm afraid someday I might act on them but in general I feel like I'm slowly getting better but at the same time for example, today I had a bout of extreme depression and felt like I would never be well again like I would never return to my previous self and that I would just have to live with this hellish hiss, a lot of self harm and bashing my hand on my head and against a wall, a lot of screaming and crying against a pillow. My main fear is that someday this will get worse and that it wont be maskable I feel this way specially when I get fleeting T. A few days ago I woke up with this toned pitch that scared me a lot I was afraid it wouldn't go away as it felt it lasted more than a minute or so and it never happened before.

I just hope I get better and that this will be in the past. I don't wear earphones anymore as Michael Leigh recommends, his sound enrichment advice also helps I think, I don't worry too much about going to sleep with T now since I can just hear the white noise. Most of all I'm afraid this will get worse.

If you read all of this you are a champion and thanks if you did. Also I've been trying gingko leaf but it doesn't seem to help I haven't reached the 2 months marker to see if it's actually useful or not but I intend to continue with the treatment until the end. I need to thank @Michael Leigh for everything he has done for this forum and also to @Markku and @Steve I've read all of your posts when I was extremely obsessed with T.

 

HI @Artur

Thank you for your very kind compliments. Like other members in this forum, I try to help people with tinnitus, so it pleases me to hear feedback such as yours. It is much appreciated and I hope that your tinnitus reduces to a manageable level soon and eventually goes away completely. I believe there is a good chance of that happening, since you're new to this condition and already seen improvement in a short space of time. Please don't ever return to using headphones even at low volume.

I wish you peace, happiness and good health.
Michael

 

Hello and welcome Artur,

I'm glad that the things we wrote helped you.

That Metallica album was a bit of a return to form, I was into them in my teens but didn't rate much from "Load" onwards. One or two tracks on the new album feel a little self conscious but apart from that I'm impressed by it. Metallica are also partly responsible for my tinnitus, from my metal days, so I can sympathise.

Stay sane. This tinnitus is a bit of a pain but if you can keep your head above water and not let the anxiety get to you, you're in a good spot. It sounds like you're doing the right things, thinking about it properly and taking care of your ears. And being so early on it is very likely to go or drop to a level where it isn't any kind of issue.

Fleeting tinnitus is something I've had from being small so to me it's almost normal, although it is still distressing when it happens, I don't think you can ever get used to a sudden thing like that.

Steve

 

Thank you for the replies guys it really gives me extra strength