Severe Tinnitus from Cannabis Withdrawal

Hi everybody, my name is Ivan. I've had severe tinnitus for 9 months already after I had to quit cannabis cold turkey after 10 years of daily usage due to an extraction of 3 teeth.

Believe me on this, due to the extreme nature of the withdrawal, and I know this is not the case for everyone, my brain would just seize every time I wanted to sleep and sleep became an impossibility. Because of this, I had to start taking 1 mg Alprazolam and I continued rising my dose. I even got into an inpatient psych ward facility.

Within a couple of months, the other symptoms like burning skin, faded away, but the sleeplessness and the severe tinnitus remained.

As of today, It's impossible for me to nap or rest, let alone enjoy a single second of quiet and respite. In order for me to sleep at night, I take: 2 mg Clonazepam, 0.65 mg Alprazolam (because I'm tapering off), 50 mg Quetiapine, and 1 g of Valproic Acid alongside some Magnesium and Valerian Root (which does almost the same thing as the Valproic Acid).

Now, I've been instructed by another sufferer to taper off all the benzos first (and later the cannabis, because I relapsed into it). As I'm doing this with the Alprazolam, I can feel the tinnitus is getting louder and the quality of my sleep and duration of it is getting lower. According to him and also some AI (ChatGPT), I DO need to get out ALL benzos out of my system in order for my GABA receptors to upregulate (and even then, I don't know if that'll fix my tinnitus).

My problem is, if I remove ALL benzos, even gradually, my sleep will get worse, my tinnitus will get worse, and this will be a vicious cycle which will leave me without sleeping for many days probably.

I know that many of you can handle many sleepless nights, but my body and brain cannot, my heart basically starts beating more and more slow until it WILL stop and I WILL die.

So, I'm at a crossroads right now. I want to continue the taper but my symptoms and my sleep are getting horrible. For the 9 months that I've had tinnitus, I've only wanted to die or to kill myself, even when I have a wife and daughter and a job and all of that.

I truly need some help or reassurance, or if anybody went through the same, to give me some advice.

Right now, I cannot think of myself without any benzos, I think I will surely die without them. But that's supposedly the ONLY way to upregulate my very damaged GABA receptors, and that, in theory, could lower the volume of my tinnitus, which is driving me crazy, not only because of the sound, but because of the torturing restlessness. There's not a single day I don't think of death and I'm truly on the brink of it. Please... I need some help, some advice... Some words of hope...

 

Hi Ivan. I'm so sorry to hear everything you're dealing with right now. The dark thoughts hit especially hard when you haven't been able to sleep or rest. I went through a similar period myself in January/February of this year with a huge increase of my tinnitus (now able to hear it even on highway).

I was going to suggest Valerian root but you're already using that. I also use Inositol and liquid ionic Magnesium before bed. Another member recommended the liquid ionic form to me and I think it really is better. I was using the glycinate form before. I think I've seen some other members recommend L-Theanine for sleep as well but I haven't tried it.

Are you able to take off any time from work for now? I know this is a luxury that is often impossible but I know that my sleep improved drastically when I decided to stop working for now.

I'm not sure if you're trying to mask your tinnitus or not, but believe it or not it became much easier to sleep once I stopped trying to mask it. No matter what masking sounds I used it never worked and my tinnitus would always bump up over the level of the masking sound. At first it was terrifying to try to sleep with the tinnitus screaming in my head in silence but somehow it forced me to get a bit more used to it. My sleep is not perfect at all but it is astronomically better compared to January/February. I was originally waking up every few minutes often in a huge panic and awake for hours. Completely exhausted at all times.

I'm not an expert at benzo tapering but I think I would err on a taper that is even slower than you think is necessary. You can't let yourself be terribly uncomfortable and restless throughout the entire taper. You have to give yourself some time to rest in between dose adjustments if possible.

Hang in there. This is a terribly difficult condition that other people without bad tinnitus will never really understand but we are here to support you. Truly just take it one minute, hour, day at a time right now.

When I first got tinnitus back in 2016, it went down to almost nothing until I screwed up my hearing protection at a festival 7 years later.

Also, there are really big potential treatments in the works. Look up Susan Shore and XEN1101. Eventually they will probably have a cure (I hope within the next 10 years), but sooner than that I think we will have a good treatment.

 

Thank you very much @yeezysqueezy for your response.

As of now, I don't really need to take time off work because it is not as heavy as other kind of labor out there. I'm a software developer but I can pretty much manage my own time and if I could sleep, I would be able to sleep until 9AM pretty much, but the reality is that I wake up at about 3 AM with blaring tinnitus and from then on, it's just me rolling in bed until my wife and daughter wake up as well, not the best rest by any means.

Even on weekends, I can't really get the rest I want, because my tinnitus doesn't allow me to. Unlike the @AnthonyMcDonald guy over here in the forums that can "sleep like a baby" with "catastrophic multitonal" tinnitus. I can't, sadly.

Even tapering 0.35 mg of Alprazolam has made my sleep and the loudness of my tinnitus in the morning much worse and this has created a vicious cycle where my sleep gets worse, and my tinnitus gets worse as a result.

Being this the case, I can't possibly fathom how much worse it would be once I cut ALL benzodiazepines in my life, as I've been instructed to do, in order to upregulate my GABA receptors and hopefully give a chance for my tinnitus to decrease its volume. The last days have truly been hell, just going to sleep with a blaring alarm in my ear and waking up the same. It's no life.

There is big potential for treatments in the future, but I'm not from the USA, so I won't be able to access the Susan Shore device or XEN1101 drug, so the future looks bleak for me.

My only reason for staying alive now is my daughter, which I want to see grow, and I don't want her to lose her father...

I don't really know if I can cut ALL benzos from my life, given the severe state of my tinnitus. Maybe I would have to live with them until the rest of my life. But doing so, will only downregulate the GABA receptors, and ALSO make my tinnitus worse... So I'm a bit at a crossroads here, or stuck really, with nowhere to go but to just suffer until the end.

It's sad, really. And it's even sadder when some members of this forum downplay my tinnitus because I consider the loss of silence something significant. For me, it IS something significant, and for some as well, as it has driven them to suicide.

Thank you for at the very least, believing in my story and caring to share a response. May the spirits of nature accompany you for the rest of your life. Much love.

 

I'm sorry to hear this, @berdichevskyivan.

Can you describe your severe tinnitus? What do you hear?

 

Hi @Jupiterman.

It's 8000 Hz, unilateral (left ear), unitonal severe tinnitus. I used to hear it only in quiet spaces but now I can hear it even with nature background and most definitely with the AC turned on at night while I *try* to sleep and such.

 

Maybe you should consider stopping the benzo taper for now and just staying on the same dose. Some people are on benzos their whole lives. Maybe you just need to stay on the same dose until your tinnitus stabilizes or until you have access to one of the treatments coming in the next several years. I think your sleep and mental health are probably more important than getting off of the benzos right now.

I see your concern about not being able to access treatments if they are in the US but I think they will be accessible by some means within a few years of release in the US. There might even be ways to work with someone in the US to get earlier access.

Something someone wrote on another thread that stood out to me was that we can still have stillness even if we can't have silence. I know that it is not the same but it is something.

It seems impossible right now but you will get through this. Let your daughter motivate you! You'll have a lot to teach her about mental fortitude after making it through this battle with tinnitus.

 

Doctors tend to not care about tinnitus for three reasons:

1) They know very little about it.
2) There is no effective treatment.
3) Patients mostly feel better as the months pass.

 

I think 2) is the biggest reason. Watch how many doctors suddenly become interested in tinnitus once there is a monetary value placed on it via treatments.

 

Hi @yeezysqueezy.

So yesterday, I continued the taper. I tapered the Alprazolam from 0.625 mg to 0.5 mg. It was a rough night. I didn't sleep well at all. I'll see until when I can prolong this and I hope my brain can adapt and heal at every step I go. But it feels unlikely.

Anyhow, I need to try. I know some people are on benzos their whole lives but benzos are also ototoxic and have proven to destroy people's hearing either directly or by attenuating their tinnitus due to built up tolerance withdrawal. I've also found out that Valproic Acid has tinnitus as a common side effect. I basically have to taper off of all the drugs I'm in right now. But, the amount of damage my brain took from the extreme cannabis withdrawals is huge. It was like a nuclear bomb of excitotoxicity for my brain. I still don't know how I am going to come out of this, or if I truly have a chance for my tinnitus to recede or for me to enjoy some rest ever again.

But anyhow, that's my update. It's not a happy one, sadly.

 

Can you hear it in the shower? That's the key benchmark in my opinion. If you can't hear it in the shower without really focusing on it (and this of course only applies for the high pitched variety), your tinnitus is still livable and you can and will habituate within the usual 18 month mark, even if now it seems impossible.

 

Hi Oscar,

I appreciate your optimistic approach. I actually can't listen to it in the shower. I think the tinnitus is loud enough to not let me sleep or rest, which in itself is a huge problem, but I also have loads of GABA issues due to my withdrawals (from cannabis and benzos), so the restlessness may also have to do with that as well.

All the best and thank you for your reply.

 

I say this because I also thought mine was super loud (it was and still is, actually) and impossible to habituate to, yet here I am 2 and a half years out, fully habituated, although with fear of it worsening in the future for whatever random reason.

I was also on three benzos (Alprazolam, Bromazepam and Lorazepam) for sleep but I successfully weaned off of them in three months while switching to Mirtazapine which is way better for insomnia and promotes neuroplasticity unlike benzos that thwarts it.

My point is, even if the sound seems maddening, you can habituate as long as you don't hear it in the shower. That's the best benchmark I've found. You just have to give it a looooong time, but you'll get there brother.

 

Thank you very much brother.

I appreciate your response.

I don't think I'll be able to ween off of them in such a short timeline, since my sleep was basically destroyed by my cannabis withdrawal, but maybe on a longer timeline, I will.

All the best to you.

 

I quit cannabis cold turkey when my tinnitus started. I've since reintroduced it at low doses, i.e. I only use edibles so I can more accurately gauge consumption, and take <5mg. I've found that my tinnitus is worse when I don't use, and much, much better the day after I use. It's so effective that some days I can't hear tinnitus at all vs. my bad days when it is very severe.

I believe my cause of tinnitus is fundamentally noise exposure, but cannabis use probably had an impact on it too.

Anyway, if you can, try re-introducing small doses of THC. That's probably a tough call now that you've gone through the withdrawal and maybe it's not smart of me to recommend it. But I wanted to at least provide n=1 experience.

It's been a lifesaver for me. Note as I mentioned the effect on tinnitus usually hits the next day, sometimes it will make my tinnitus noisier after I take it but drops the following morning. Might help you get off the benzos too.

 

Hi brother,

Thank you very much for your response.

Yes, I still continue to smoke in small quantities though I haven't gauged exactly how much. I do 4 tokes every night, but today I did them already and it's still afternoon. I've been having very busy days at work and they've been stressing me out a lot so I decided to smoke a little bit more.

Tomorrow I will for sure get back to my previous dose, I try to keep it low because if possible, I also want my ECS (Endocannabinoid System) to regenerate a bit as well and also because smoking DOES cause me spikes, and if I smoke, or the days I smoke too much, my tinnitus can get quite wild, adding tones and certainly amping the volume to the max.

So yeah, it indeed helps with the benzo detox, and that's what I'm doing now. But still, when I smoke, I spike like crazy. And of course after that, I can't have any shuteye. I can't nap regardless, and I used to. That's what bugs me the most...

 

Try edibles instead if you can! Smoking and vaping both cause problems for me, similar to what you're describing. It spikes me like nothing else. But for whatever reason the edible doesn't.

 

I will do when I can! That's actually interesting to be honest. Sadly, it's not legal in my country so I'd have to stick with the smoked stuff, although I'd sure give it a try if I get my hands on some.

 

Sorry to hear about your severe tinnitus (from another new severe case...).

 

Sorry to hear about yours as well brother. I hope yours can heal in time. Or you habituate soon.

 

There are always workarounds for every situation. Where are you from if I may ask? Why do you think you won't be able to access Dr. Shore's device or XEN1101 when they become available/commercialised?

 

Hi brother,

I'm from Paraguay, South America. Far, far away from the Northern Lands.

But yeah, there might still be ways around it. We will see.

 

If it really works and you need it, I will come to your house and bring you my device to try provided we can do the settings ourselves

 

Haha, that'd be amazing brother. Much love your way and I deeply thank you for your consideration.