Suicidal

With respect @LilCC, you misunderstand me. I know you have a severe form of hyperacusis (noxacusis). I am not saying exposing yourself to normal everyday sounds will improve your condition because I think you need professional help.

I suggest that you stop reading research materials on hyperacusis and noxacusis, because you know enough. All you are doing is reinforcing the belief that your oversensitivity to sound is so severe it will never improve. Instead, try and find an audiologist who specialises in tinnitus and hyperacusis management and stick with the treatment. This will probably require the wearing of sound generators and having regular counselling.

I am not saying this is easy. You may have to start by setting the white noise generators on their lowest setting and wearing them for just 5 or 10 minutes to begin with and then take them off. Very slowly increase the wearing time and keep away from reading up on tinnitus and hyperacusis material. Focus on working with your audiologist and direct your attention to other things.

Try and keep things simple because the more complex you make you make your oversensitivity to sound by using terminology like noxacusis, I believe the more difficult you make your life and having any chance of recovery.

I wish you well,
Michael

 

Are you vaxxed?

 

I suppose since a huge percentage of US Military disability claims are because of tinnitus, you'd expect the government to have invested far more money into research for a cure.

 

Yes. But it hardly has anything to do with that. It's with 99,9% certainty Mirtazapine induced.

 

Are you able to get any sort of professional help to taper and get off that drug for good?

 

Today, I decided to do some research and unearthed some disgusting stats that reveal an unfortunate truth — that the US government is not on our side when it comes to those endeavors to find viable treatments and/or cures for tinnitus or hyperacusis. We are just the septic tank of a very big mansion — the place where all the shit goes.

Tinnitus and hyperacusis get zilch funding practically. For example, Parkinson’s gets 52 billion a year. Billion with a B. AIDS gets 28 billion. Space exploration gets 54 billion.

Since 1971, the ATA has contributed 6 million towards tinnitus research. That’s million with an M. The DoD did give Prof. Thanos Tzounopoulos 2 million with an M, the same thing Texas Roadhouse raised for Kent Taylor’s death. Pathetic. The gov’t could afford to do a lot more, especially when many affected are vets who got tinnitus and hyperacusis from serving in the military. It’s pretty shameful, tbh. Mismanagement of funds, for sure.

 

Not really. And no matter what, I don't think you can avoid the withdrawal, and I can't go through that. I am already hanging on by a thread. Withdrawal on top would 100% push me over the edge.

 

"Soon"

 

I'm trying to get off of Klonopin but I feel like it'll be the death of me.

I really dunno how much longer I can take it my friends. My worsening in April 26th that caused reactive tinnitus and loudness hyperacusis has killed me. Loudness hyperacusis has gone away but tinnitus just gets louder and louder. I want to live so bad, but I can't find anything to stabilize me.

I am going to try to make it to the end of year, but so tired of suffering.

 

I hope you are still with us.

 

Why not. They give so many tinnitus and hyperacusis fighting for our freedom and can't even come up with anything to help them?!

 

How do we get through this? A month in, suicide is a recurring thought. I don't have the friends and family around me. I was in a ten year relationship and asked him to come help and stay with me and he refused. It's killing me quick too. The crazy squealing sounds are the worst and are sound sensitive. Seeing my 1st audiologist tomorrow (hearing test) and the ENT the following day for the results. Scared as fuck and no idea what to expect. A lot of you are in deep now and I'm afraid I'm heading that way too.

This thread shows just how sudden, life shattering and awful this condition is. It's too much to bear and no cure or treatments to offer that will get rid of it. We never thought we would be in this place and here we are. I'm so sorry to everyone else.

 

I took 2mg Ativan every day for a month and didn’t experience any withdrawal symptoms, no change in tinnitus or hyperacusis.

 

Meanwhile we're gaslit, and our appeals for the urgent need of a treatment and said funding, sabotaged, by the toxic positivity and minimising of our condition, by members of our own community, who share sentiments to the effect of:

• Tinnitus is nothing!
• I told tinnitus to go fuck itself! Now my life is better than ever!
• My tinnitus is raging like a jet engine right now, and I don't even notice it!
• I just had to teach my brain to stop seeing it as a threat!
• There's a lot of scaremongering on these forums. Just get off them and go live your life!
• The worst cases are online, MOST tinnitus sufferers don't come here and aren't affected by it!
• There already are treatments (TRT, BTS, mindfulness etc.).

My personal favourites:

• It seems people who struggle with tinnitus may just be more sensitive to noise than your average person.

Lol. Mate, I grew up in front of what was basically a motorway in London, between the ages of 0 and 16. I never gave a sh*t about noise until hyperacusis hit me in my 20s. And yet, my first 5 years with tinnitus almost killed me.

• Tinnitus affects 10-20% of the population, yet Tinnitus Talk only has (roughly) 35,000 registered members; therefore only 0.0021875% of people really struggle with our condition.

Where are @convolution and @Zugzug when you need them, eh? This is just sh*t Mathematics. And not just the numbers, but the logic behind the application of the numbers.

Firstly, is the misinterpretation of the sentence "tinnitus AFFECTS". When written correctly (by slightly more discerning journalists) the sentence used is "10-20% of people EXPERIENCE tinnitus". Why does that matter? Because EXPERIENCE does not imply permanence, whereas AFFECTS does.

There is a BIG difference between experiencing tinnitus and suffering from/being affected by it. I EXPERIENCED tinnitus a dozen times in my teen years, and it did not make me want to register with a tinnitus support forum, because it always disappeared within 2 weeks.

Secondly, the figure "10-20% of people experience" is in relation to the US population, not the global population. So it is not telling us 1,600,000,000 suffer chronically with tinnitus (and that only 35,000 of those people struggle badly enough with it to post here).

Thirdly, a lot of us here are the start of a new (and buggered) generation.

Tinnitus used to be a condition that very rarely crippled under 50's. But in our exciting new era of sensory over-stimulation and pharmacological dependency, that has changed, and it is no longer uncommon to find 20 somethings posting on these forums. Forget COVID-19; myopia, tinnitus and early onset dementia are the new and silent pandemics that are not making headlines.

But for that reason it's easy to forget the old demographic; who for the most part do not use forums (or even the internet for that matter). So add this undeclared group of geriatric technophobes to our registered number, along with people like me who simply read posts on forums like this while suffering dreadful tinnitus for 12 years before ever registering; now set that against our vastly smaller number of people who actually have tinnitus (don't just experience it for 72 hours after a night at a concert). Remember that we're dealing with numbers from the US, not the world (because you can bet your life there are a f*ck load of tinnitus sufferers in Asia, for example, who have never heard of "Tinnitus Talk"). And what you have is an antidote to your routine gaslighting and persuasion that: you are just a weak minded minority who can't handle a little noise inside your head(s).

• Threads like this Suicidal one shouldn't even exist.

A continuation of the problem. Not only should we believe there is no problem, and that we are unique cases, possibly suffering more from mental illness than a legitimate reaction to one of the worst afflictions humanity has ever misunderstood. But we should also not express that there is a problem. That's right, stop your whining. You want to off yourself because you're slowly being drained of your life and your dignity by this unfixable defect; keep it to yourself please, we don't need your negativity!

The best part is, the majority of these phrases I've catalogued above, come to us from our own kind in the guise of "help", whose self image(s) are a white robe and a crown of thorns. They weep for the pain we have chosen to inflict upon ourselves, like humanity in it's "sin"; if only we would visit the Back to Silence thread, or just go to those concerts we once loved, without caving to the herd-think hysteria. And of course they share this not only with us, but with the tinnitus-free general public, and their doctors, and ENTs; further compounding the widespread belief that those of us that can't continue to live normal lives with this condition are subject to some kind of unfortunate form of neurosis or hypochondria. That is until the day they suffer a relapse and begin posting in the suicidal thread themselves (but that will never happen, because they beat tinnitus, right?).

Well to those people I say: if you're so concerned for our wellbeing, stop coming here and gaslighting the already gaslit (most severe tinnitus sufferers already get enough of this sh*t from their own families and doctors as it is). If you really want to "help", then instead use the time you currently invest in belittling our horrendous experience (wittingly or unwittingly) telling those who don't, have, know about, or appreciate, this never-ending, infinitely worsening, cosmic nightmare playing inside the head of it's host(s); how f*cking bad it is, and how desperately, young men and women, who are offing themselves, are in need of a solid treatment, of any kind. Let them know that the only difference between us and those with terminal cancer, is that we don't get the luxury of being spared having to do the job of ending our lives ourselves when it becomes unbearable. Why? Because the squeaky wheel gets the grease, that's why.

As has been said many times before: we are the only sick and disabled people on earth for whom this denial of experience, bullying into self-doubt and self-inflicted worsening, is allowable and normalised. No one would dare tell a person who was paralysed that the severity was all in their head, and that they should just stand up and walk to the bathroom. No one would dare tell a person with COPD or heart failure that the severity was all in their head, and that they should just go run a marathon.

As usual, an excellent post @Jerad. You and a handful of others on this website, legitimise the terrible suffering so many with our illness experience, and reassure us that we are not alone, as we are so often made to feel.

You highlight the problems, rather than sweep them under the carpet. I appreciate this because that is exactly what society and medicine has done with us; swept us under the carpet. And I will make no attempt to hide my contempt for the people that suffer with our same condition, yet aid this conclusion, be it by: misrepresenting our numbers, suggesting the censoring of our pain, or just proclaiming to the world that they're "fine and dandy" while suggesting us "others" are "addicted to negativity" or some sh*t.

I don't see any of this (the mild/moderate sufferers exhibiting Messiah complexes and preaching to us here, or the underfunding issues) changing anytime "soon" (if ever), but it feels good to call it out for what it is.

 

You eventually get used to it... maybe. I mean it’s not pleasant but you will eventually adjust where you can live your life.

Just don’t be careless

 

Like I said, 1 month is nothing. There's a good chance your stress induced tinnitus will subside in 6-12 months.

If not, you will habituate in 2 years - it doesn't seem that way now, but it's gonna happen.

 

Just know that it could be worse... read the horror stories and realize where you are, it's not the worst it can get and don't do anything to make it worse. Protect yourself from anything that sounds too loud or causes pain, even indoors. Reduce stress, take time for yourself. You will be ok. We are all here for you. It will go away. Love on yourself.

 

To Damocles:

I asked myself, "Is this the very best post regarding the seriously problematic nature of habituation that I have encountered in the 3+ years I have been on this forum?"

I think of myself as the smartest person I have ever met, but I could not so succinctly encapsulate the difficulties associated with habituation as you have.

The nature of the relentless ballyhooing regarding the alleged panacea that habituation provides reminds me of that quote from Hamlet, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." Is there an underlying insecurity regarding the effectiveness of habituation that compels such advocates as @Michael Leigh to proclaim its success over 8,600 times?

Is such relentless ballyhooing in and of itself a symptom of the craziness induced by long-term tinnitus?

I still cannot believe that these posters themselves actually believe such comments as the one involving the jet engine; could even a Zen Master attain this comfort level of detachment given the monstrous hugeness of the noise?

Also, do I dare ask, "If habituation is so successful, then why are there still so many tear-your-heart-out reports of suicide?"

Isn't it unspeakably cruel to chastise them as inexcusably weak because they were obviously unable to internalize the "principles" of habituation?

A man I worked with lost 12 pounds in one month. He went to the doctor, and was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He was dead within the year.

If this happened to me and I had never had tinnitus, I would have regarded it as a catastrophe.

With tinnitus, I would have been provided with all of the megaton pain killers that would have neutralized my constant stress reactions. It would also have resolved the excruciating question about how much longer I could be forced to cope with this.

 

Let’s be real here. There needs to be a balance of both. We do need treatments. People do need to take it seriously, but we can’t just greet newcomers here with bad hyperacusis and loud tinnitus and just tell them “lol you’re fucked” while in the acute phase. We want to try to stop the suicidal thoughts and help people move forward.

No treatments... just support for now.

So many told me I would be ok in the beginning and I had to shift my brain just to function with all this crap going on in my head lol. <3

 

Should I go for stem cells?

Now that my neurologist has run out of options, my parents have agreed to it. It’s probably my last and only hope. This thing keeps getting worse and I can’t hold on much longer. Things like Neuralink are too far away.

Most clinics seem like such a scam though. I’m thinking it would be better on both me and my parents if I kill myself now, rather than going all the way to Thailand and be scammed right before I die. It would be less of a heart-break.

 

In my experience, severe tinnitus is the devil. It gives you a good day giving you hope and wish it would stay this way, only followed by rebound permanent worsening and suicidal thoughts.

Is this common?

 

@Travis Henry, hey mate, I'm still here. Sorry I haven't gotten back to you sooner and I truly, sincerely, apologise to you or anyone else on this forum, if I caused any distress with my last post. I feel like I've not only let myself down but also everyone here who is dealing with this. I was and still am in a troubled way. I went close. But thankfully things didn't work out and I'm here to struggle on. Which I'm so grateful for. I want to live on, more then anything in this world. But it's going to take some serious help (which I'm now getting) and some inner strength to hold onto the hope that something is around the corner to give me some breathing space.

Again, I deeply regret posting my troubled thoughts here which may have upset some people who are doing it a lot tougher than me. To say I was in a fragile place would be an understatement and thoughts of others unfortunately weren't taken into account.

 

I wish I had any good days since my worsening in April. Reactive tinnitus is hell.

 

We’re just glad you are still here with us brother! Our struggle continues, and never hesitate to reach out to us, we are all in this together. I’m glad you are filled with a bit more hope, that makes me happy. Stay strong brother, I hope we all find relief soon.

 

It will come, but it does take a huge mental fortitude. I also have "reactive" tinnitus. Good days start after some time with it. As another said, it takes time for the brain to adjust.

 

I think I've pretty well defined the balance (on this forum) already @Wrfortiscue.

Newcomers (those in their first year) arrive here in fear and panic, just as they should; because yes, welcome to a waking nightmare, that will possibly last forever.

The difference between them and us, is: they have the greatest likelihood of improvement, and perhaps, complete remission.

I (and many others here) routinely comfort newcomers with that fact, and also share advice on how to shift the odds in their favour via supplementation and protection (whether it actually makes a difference or not), while my own chances of continuing to exist with this illness get slimmer and slimmer, by the day.

And that's the crux of the point I'm making here. We are shooting ourselves in the foot to pander to people with better prospects of quality of life and survival than our own.

Am I drawing the line at informing people of the above mentioned facts: that the acute stage is the best possible stage (despite feeling -to a person with no history from which to draw a comparison- like the worst) to find yourself in? No.

Am I drawing the line at allowing those same people (who improved or fully recovered during the acute stage) to harm my chances of recovery as a chronic sufferer -given no priority by health authorities and the medical establishment- by publishing posts that confirm those same health authorities and medical establishment's biases: that we are just cranks and loonies, too lazy and/or stupid to utilise the fantastic resources already available to us, in order to return to a normal and happy life? Absolutely f*cking yes.

And from a purely philosophical perspective, what if we didn't? What difference would it actually make? Acute sufferers will either get better, or they won't. If their symptoms don't improve, they'll either cope or they won't. I had no support network when I first got severe, all-encompassing tinnitus (there was no Tinnitus Talk). It was sink or swim... and well, here I am. So my choice was self-explanatory. Plenty of us made it this far without being told it would get better.

Why should we lie to them (the fresh arrivals with mild/moderate tinnitus) and subsequently, the rest of the world, about life with this disability? This sh*t is scary. Maybe if more people knew that, they wouldn't be turning up here, day after day having f*cked their ears into oblivion.

Again, "the first year is the worst", "you (sort of) get used to/learn to live with it (but your life never quite goes back to how it was)"? Fine. That's not the rotten root I'm grasping at here.

But "Tinnitus gets better! Life becomes amazing!" (ﾉ☉ヮ⚆)ﾉ ⌒*:･ﾟ

Does it? Does it really? Because I've got news for you. Short-term: yes, it can get better. Long-term: no, it gets worse.

It's a biological reality, that, if we suffer chronically from this condition, as we age, it will become worse.

Just as surely as is the physical reality that if you drop an object it will fall towards the ground.

Our CHCs and SGNs will succumb to age, and die. Our hearing will become worse, and thus there will be less external noise to mask the sound inside our heads.

And that is excluding the significant noise traumas that will be unavoidable over time.

I have lived (roughly) 18 years with this sh*t. Every day I make it through, brings me closer to the day I won't. Life with tinnitus is like a game of Russian roulette, but with a revolver holding 4000 chambers. Every day you fire one shot, except in this game, for every day you survive, you add one to one-hundred more bullets (plus the original(s)) to those 4000 chambers (depending on how much of your life you've sacrificed to protecting yourself from, and evading, noise).

I've already had several significant worsenings via traumas and infections; I did not begin this decline a severe sufferer. My next worsening will probably be my last. That is the reality. I am in need of a treatment, and I don't give a f*ck about scaring newcomers... or children, if that's what it takes to get one.

Sometimes I wonder what they must tell each other on Motor neuron's forums. I wonder what the positive spin is they put on that? They're not really that different, except that tinnitus is somewhat preventable, and Motoron neuron disease is not. But they both ruin your life and kill you eventually.

Actually there is one more difference between MD sufferers and tinnitus sufferers:





No one is bullshitting them.

 

I would @danielthor.
What have you got to lose?

 

Thanks @LilCC. I really appreciate that mate.

 

Please don't apologise for posting how you feel on here. You have not let yourself or any of us down. We understand and are glad you're still with us.

 

Would IV stem cells have a possibility of doing anything? That's all I can find state side and I am too ill to travel far.