Suicidal

Look into Keppra.

You need to get a court order for the fire dept. to bypass and remove the fire alarm from your apartment and install an alarm for deaf people (strobe light)... Otherwise you risk getting worse and worse with every exposure. I got my tinnitus onset in 2011 following a Toronto residential building fire alarm.

 

My hearing was damaged by an MRI also. There should have been better procedures in place to prevent against hearing damage during the MRI. I plan to make a complaint to the FDA so that the clinics and MRI manufacturers will create better procedures to prevent hearing damage. See my post history.

 

Benzo class drugs (especially Clonazepam) will help your tinnitus not only on a psychological level, but also on a pure "sound level" aspect, as it is pretty well known now Glutamate plays a huge role in the loudness perceived.
Not so many people on this board take these drugs, but I know for some of them it's the only way they can function.

Yet, there's a price to pay on the long run being on these drugs.

The question is are you ready to pay the price when time comes in order to get immediate relief (as little as it may be).

I am personally ready to pay the price, I do benzos, which is the only support that keeps me barely functioning. I'll deal with the consequences later, when treatments come for tinnitus in the upcoming years.

If I were in your situation, and believe me, I'm in a very dark place, I wouldn't hesitate to do anything and get it prescribed at least for a short period of time, just before your reach addiction and only to realize your sounds can get lower.

But keep it in mind: price to pay.

 

I’m honestly not sure why some days I feel upbeat and optimistic and other days I literally need to fight the urge to jump off a balcony. Symptoms are the same most days so it’s not spikes/intensity. My life feels so small and conditional now, and what’s left is sort of pathetic. It’s certainly not pleasant.

 

Your recent posts resonate with me. I also think I may have nerve damage: highly reactive tinnitus, severe hyperacusis, no obvious hearing loss or word recognition problems that point to hair cell death, worsened easily by low level noises. I don't know though; this is all so complex that hair cell death is still possible.

Anyways, I am right there with you on mood swings. My doctor's goal is to treat me with steroid sparing medication. Hence, I am weaning off prednisone as mycophenolate kicks in. Pretty much the last thing a suicidal, disabled person needs is steroid withdrawal. Sometimes I want to laugh at how big of a joke my life is, but I can't.

 

I laugh all the time through all the pain and hell.

 

It's the process of habituation. It's normal. Hang in there. In a couple of years you'll be habituated and tinnitus will be just a minor annoyance more than anything.

 

I am no fan of the ATA in general, but this is simply not true regarding the research they've funded as a whole. I hope to see them re-prioritize how they spend their money but when they do fund research it has to fit their roadmap to a cure.

https://www.ata.org/research-toward-cure/research-program/past-ata-funded-research

 

I'm at my all-time low. Just surviving, when the night comes, I think "another day that I don't make my family suffer for me". That's the only thing keeping me alive. Intense suffering the rest of the time. I don't know how much time I can be like this.

 

I’d like to be able to sleep without drugs again, among other things.

 

I’m sorry we are both suffering. Each day is an endurance test. I hope we reach at inflection point and are able to enjoy life again. Whether the catalyst is time, medical treatment, or something else, I truly hope we can improve.

 

You will, I also started with drugs.

 

Do you know the manufacturer of the MRI? Mine was Siemens. 20 minutes that ruined my hearing forever... it’s been a year. Call your GP and tell him you can’t get into an ENT yet, and you need Prednisone... then go to a minute clinic, tell them you had an ear trauma... get more Prednisone... and then see some of the dosing threads in here... act quickly.

 

Wrong.

 

At least you found drugs that work/help.

Guess what time it is here? :-(

Does anyone know where to donate organs to researchers? Frequency Therapeutics etc?

Can they figure out how loud your tinnitus is/was after you're dead?

 

At around 2.5-3 years after the onset, some people report habituation (or partial habituation).

 

This. I stick to 0.5-1mg/day Clonazepam and I've never had a problem coming off of them. The benzo fear mongering gets so carried away here it's comical. People let horror stories of high dose, long term users turn them off completely. I've experienced worse withdrawal on softer drugs; I had terrifying sleep paralysis episodes when I quit smoking weed after 4 years of constant daily use.

It's sad because so many people here could probably benefit from benzos, even if it is only a very small relief. But a few people who can't handle it have to ruin it for everybody. Huge disservice. Just ask @PeteJ, his merciless prick Dr. refuses to Rx him anything, thinking he's doing him a favour. They're ultimately looking out for themselves because they don't want to risk losing their license with all the horseshit in the media.

Respect the benzo and you'll be fine, that's been my experience. And if you can't get a Rx, just order some Etizolam from the clearnet

 

How long was your longest period of use?

 

The thing is tricky with benzos and it's not only about using them cautiously.

I respect them, but I've been using them for 3 years strictly respecting the dosage and I had to up my dose a lot recently as my tinnitus is getting so much more severe.

Problem is I'm not even at a comfortable dose now and it's losing its effect on me.

Yet, if I weren't on benzos already, I would get it prescribed ASAP if every other option didn't help me lower the tinnitus.

This is what I called the price to pay.
You don't know when or if you will reach tolerance, but trust me, when you do, you are a in a worse place than where you began.

 

I had about a 6 month supply and when I ran out I didn't bother calling the doc for more until a month later. I actually like them better for blunting social anxiety than tinnitus.

 

I haven't encountered any of that yet, but I'll take your word for it. They've been utterly consistent from the beginning, very subtle. My tinnitus was only ever moderate at worst. If yours is severe I can see why you're hitting tolerance, the amount I take barely makes a dent in my low tinnitus.

 

I don't know how much longer I can be like this either. All I know is that recently, all sound seems to becoming hostile to me, and I don't see any point in going on like this, if things continue like this, as all the things I used to like doing are being taken away from me.

Even worse my GP doesn't seem to understand my position as he's resisting giving me a referral. I'd like to get things more thoroughly checked out.

 

Such a vague assertion means nothing to me.

Do they have mild tinnitus? What's their age? Mild and under 30? Okay, I accept your theory then.

 

Both mild and bad cases of tinnitus and all ages. Having said that, this is based on people's posts on this forum. So it is impossible to get a sense of the fraction of the people who end up having this experience, except that the probability of that happening isn't negligible.

 

What about in the 1% club?

 

What are you talking about?

 

A new article on Glenn Mitchell's story published today:

Tinnitus from pub gig made life unbearable for retired fireman who committed suicide

His wife had to explicitly say that he "didn't want to die". Obviously, otherwise the public would say he was just mentally unstable.

Guess he relied on the NHS instead of the tinnitus community to seek advice.

 

So sad to read news like this. Even the tinnitus community might not have been able to help him, who knows? I tried so many things, NHS, private, alternative medicine, devices, supplements, osteopathy, medications, mindfulness... nothing seems to work. We are the unlucky cases but what can we do?

 

Probably he is referring to a percentage of people who suffer with debilitating tinnitus and cannot habituate? I have always in mind this ballpark figure of 1% of population being troubled by their tinnitus, so I imagine not being able to habituate, but don't have any hard data. I would have habituated if mine had not kept worsening so long.

 

I agree. I think most of these "habituation proponents " have mild or maybe moderate tinnitus. I think a 1% figure might be accurate for severe tinnitus sufferers to habituate but I don't see any evidence of it here. I suggest that probability or chance of habituation is directly related to degree of severity.

I rarely see anyone make a detailed assertion either or one with context. Bill didn't totally clear it up for me. I think older people will have more acoustic traumas over time, more exposure to noise and age doesn't actually help the condition of our ears. But, of course, there are exceptions and I guess, young people are increasingly exposing their ears to noise, using potential ototoxic drugs etc. I also haven't seen any data to support many of the claims and assertions here either and I doubt there are any.