Tinnitus After Second MDMA Usage 3 Months Ago

Hi folks!
My name is Matt and I am 24 years old.
So around 3 months ago I went to a techno night club and dropped a capsule containing 230 mg of MDMA. I only used MDMA once priror to that, and that was 3 weeks earlier (dropped 150 mg + 50 mg + 30 mg).

I was a complete newbie when it came to drugs and thought I will be fine. I didn't plan on doing MDMA any time soon after the second usage. However, I suffered crippling depersonalisation, insomnia and anxiety.

My symptoms became quite better after 2 months (proper eating, exercise, no alcohol, some supplements) but what still lingers is tinnitus. I can hear a constant noise which feels as if emits from the center of my head, a very faint short circuit type of noise I hear in my right ear, and a come-and-go high pitched noise in my left ear. It feels as if I had head trauma.

I would do anything to make it go away. It makes me feel weird, clumsy and unnatural.
I took an MRI and they didn't find anything worth mentioning. I tried antibiotics as well but to no avail.

Advice would be greatly appreciated. I messed up and now I just want to feel normal again

 

Welcome to the forum. Drug interaction or side effect is a known cause of tinnitus. Some people will find their T slowly fade after they stop the drug. Others may have to endure T for a longer period. Since you don't know which way it will go, it is better to remain positive that it will fade over time. Trying to be positive is not just a mental thing. It actually reduces your stress and anxiety level and that can help tame T from flaring up unnecessarily. This can also keep the limbic nervous system away which can make T worse if invoked by too much fear and panic by T. You can try some supplements like Magnesium, Zinc, B12, D3, NAC etc., and should keep away from excess salt, sugar, caffeine, alcohol, MSG etc. To calm the nerves and the neurons which are in hyperactive mode, you can try some natural stuffs, such as melatonin for sleep, gaba calm, lemon balm, passion flower, catnips, valerian, kava, chamomile etc. You can search Amazon on these to see how people review these products and see if you can use them to calm and sleep better. Try to live your life and pursue your dreams instead of focusing on T. Distraction and acceptance are two good approaches to disarm T if not to eliminate it. You will feel normal again when either your T fade, or you habituate to T. Many people have done that and have written their success stories. Try read them up to give you hope. Take care. God bless.

 

Has your T faded at all in the past month or two?

 

Sorry you have t.

the culprit may not be mdma.

it may be repeated noise exposure.

which antibiotic did you take?

 

if the MDMA was actually MDMA, and not one of the much more toxic analogs/designer drugs that are floating around these days, then I'd be a lot more suspicious of the noise of the event as a causative factor, than the drug itself.

That said, I'm a little skeptical that what you took was pure MDMA, just because ~80% of what gets sold as ecstasy these days isn't, and 230mg of pure MDMA would be one hell of a strong dose for someone with limited experience.

 

Hey there, i doubt MDMA was the cause, you were rolling and didn't take notice of the noise ... I know too because i got my T from a rave.. The dumbest thing i ever did ... And by the way you say your right ear sounds like a short circuit board? My sounded like that for the first 2 weeks.. like a computer working.. stops for a second and continues.. i still have it but it's less noticeable, the left is a louder constant ring.

 

Thanks for the introductory post.

No. I'm not sure if I had it exactly since the day I took MDMA, or maybe a few days later, but it's been two months.

Pretty sure it's MDMA. Not sure which antibiotic. I said to the doc I had ear infection. I took the antibiotic after I noticed the ringing

There *might* be truth to what you are saying. I should stress the following:
-the first time I used it, I felt great, but I felt as if the feeling I had could be a bit more.. prominent
The friend who gave it to me (he is experienced) was surprised I was resilient. Everyone who took it that night had a blast and no aftereffects (including me).

Same thing next time. Same looking crystals, same feeling (but more intense). And everyone was fine. Except me.
I had a bunch of problems for weeks. Depersonalisation, anxiety etc.. you can find those problems when you look up "MDMA long term domedown".. and yes, people often report tinnitus.

But.. we didn't test the drugs. However, everyone who took it was fine.. except me.
I'm pretty sure that was to me not giving the drug the proper respect and thinking I could "get away" by spacing it only three weeks instead of several months. I didn't belive I could damage myself by doin it only two times ;/

I assure you, it was the drug. I am a concert veteran; I've been to many rock and metal concerts and festivals. We just went to techno clubs this year in order to try mdma in a proper setting.. the music wasnt really that loud.. while looking for answers online, on reddit and drug forums, I noticed that a lot of people have tinnitus due to mdma.. some of them took the drug at home and developed it.

I also noticed there is a lot of denial among the MDMA community about the ill side effects. People didn't belive me I felt depersonalised after the drug usage and claimed it was just anxiety.
It was not.

 

I took ecstasy back in june. It spiked up my T but it settled down after 2-3 days. Drugs that affect the brain can cause a variety of symptoms...lets hope it backs off.

 

I would suggest your cause is mostly probably the noise exposure Sorry to hear you have to go through this. Protect your ears from now on and I hope it will continue to get better as you're young.

Keep doing what you're doing, the first rule to understanding tinnitus is that you can't understand tinnitus. I suggest spending some time away from this forum - It will only make you focus on it. Good luck.

 

@Citizen it may well be that you took pure MDMA and had an unusual reaction; drugs in general are not predictable. I have read probably the same reports you have, of what seems to be MDMA-induced tinnitus in rare cases. It's very hard to know what's going on there; lots of people take MDMA every day; lots of people also develop "random" tinnitus out of the blue -- I have seen far more stories of people who just suddenly had tinnitus set in while they were sitting there reading or whatever, than had it set in during/right after MDMA use. So, it's likely that at least some of the people who attribute their tinnitus to MDMA, are actually just experiencing a coincidence, but that doesn't give any useful data about what's going on with any one particular person.

Certainly, even at a "reasonable" dose, MDMA is to some extent neurotoxic -- and reports of serotonergic drugs in general causing tinnitus (SSRIs, etc) are widespread. So, there's a connection between serotonin and tinnitus, and MDMA strongly and dramatically changes the way serotonin transport works.

Given your stated history of concert attendance/etc, it seems pretty likely that you had some amount of existing high-frequency hearing loss going in to all this. Whether the additional noise of the club, the MDMA, or the combination of the two is the straw that broke the camel's back, you may never know, unfortunately. It seems quite likely to me that noise damage which might not be sufficiently traumatic to cause tinnitus on its own, could become so under the influence of a drug. Many people on here have speculated that the noise event which caused their tinnitus might have been compounded by concurrent use of antibiotics, or painkillers, or a number of other things.

I totally agree that lots of MDMA users are dismissive of its negative effects, just as many chronic pot users deny that there are downsides to pot, and heroin addicts have told me to my face that their daily use of heroin is responsible and not a problem. I am not suggesting that pot (or MDMA, for that matter) are as dangerous as heroin; only that drugs, across the board, have risks and consequences -- and because all of these substances make us "feel good" and basically rewire the brain to crave that feeling -- long term, chronic users of any given substance are prone to be dismissive of its consequences.

It seems like the best thing you can do at this point is to avoid noise, drugs and stress as much as possible for a while, and try to be patient and let things calm down on their own. I know a lot of people who have experienced some significant tinnitus after a concert (or a concert under the influece of MDMA/psychedellics/whatever), whose ears did eventually settle down significantly. If you do nothing but read worst-case scenarios from here, you are likely to just fixate on the sound and stress yourself out more -- and I think that's actually significantly dangerous, and might adversely affect long-term outcomes.

 

@linearb
Thank you for the thorough reply.
What's also possible is that my tinnitus developed a bit after my second MDMA usage due to me being anxious. I was soo worried becouse of my MDMA after effects that I had suicidal thought for the first time in my life. I was scared of being stuck in this dream like state for life. Luckily, I recovered from depersonalisation.

I met a guy from Brazil on a forum and we exchanged phone numbers so we can talk via whatsapp. He took A LOT more MDMA than I did and he was very suicidal. He is fine now, as more than a year passed, but one problem still lingers.... tinnitus.. he has it as well.

So it might be partly psychosomatic, but MDMA itself should not be rulled out.

 

Hi, same thing happened to me 2 weeks ago, had previous tinnitus and 2nd time I tried mdma Boom, spiked like crazy. How have you been? Any help you can advise? Thank you

 

You're not alone, happened to me as well. I swear MDMA has to be the cause.

 

MDMA can cause HPPD, a disorder that has symptoms of tinnitus and depersonalization. On the other hand, someone on the Internet reported that the middle dose of 100mg weakened the HPPD symptoms. It's like playing Russian roulette.

 

Hey there, I'm wondering if you've had any improvement with the tinnitus? Something similar happened to me, I took what I was told was molly (similar to mdma), and the day after heard the same kind of sound that you described. It sounds like an external noise sometimes but when I plug my ears its like its coming from inside my ear/head. It's been a year now for me and it hasn't gone away. I had no exposure to loud noise and no hearing loss.

 

Hi Matt. I’m sorry to hear you are both suffering from newly acquired tinnitus and experiencing pyschological distress. These are hard things to deal with on their own, let alone together - and both problems certainly feed the other problem.

There are a lot of people trying to tell you here what is and isn’t the cause of your tinnitus but at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter, what matters is how you move forward.

I can only offer another opinion, but this comes from someone who has had a lot of loud music exposure, done a lot of drugs, had a lot of mental health problems (not necessarily related to the former) and has recently acquired tinnitus. I work in healthcare and have been lucky enough to have had excellent access to some top specialists on this stuff.

So. IMHO, you should probably treat the two problems you describe as separate issues, no matter what the cause. It is absolutely likely that you are suffering depersonalisation and anxiety after a binge on MDMA or whatever it was, as this is known side affect of amphetamines. As others have said, 230 is a huge dose if that was the case, and everyone is different. I know people who have taken drugs all their life and been fine , and then after one night bamm things were different. The same thing goes for hearing loss.
Nearly all tinnitus is caused by hearing loss - perceptual or not - and the hearing loss can happen over time, or just be pushed over the edge by one episode of exposure. Tinnitus can appear immediately after damaging exposure or years and years later when the brain decides to make it a problem. It’s a complex condition.
There is a bit of research around suggesting that the combination of MDMA and loud music is a double whammy when it comes to hearing loss - bad news for clubbers.
You might also be interested to know that MDMA is currently one of the only known drugs that makes tinnitus go away. Many trials are being done that continue to prove this and I have found it to be true for me - even the tiniest dose gives me blissful silence for about 48 hours. Larger doses up to a week. It’s not unfeasible that the MDMA bought you tinnitus on. but knowing what I do about T and what causes it (the brain trying to process a sound it can no longer ‘hear’ because of hearing loss in certain frequencies, usually high frequencies, hence the high pitched ringing for most people) , it’s likely hearing loss and Ll these events for you are just manifesting in your mind as causation.

But again, regardless of cause, you need to work out a way forward. You should seek therapy for your psychological problems - reducing anxiety also helps tinnitus be less ‘angry’. If you can’t access, read as much as you can (books, not forums) about depression, anxiety and CBT and it should help you learn the skills to self-help.

The best thing you can do for tinnitus is protect what’s left of your hearing. Avoid exposure to more than 85db for more than a few hours at a time. Get a db meter on your phone and you’ll see just how dangerous the levels of sound are in most clubs. Many bars too. It’s driving me mad that I can’t even go for A drink with friends these days and have a conversation without shouting and damaging my hearing. Wear quality earplugs to every gig, if you must go. A rest from all this will really help.

reducing alcohol (esp. red wine for some reason) and caffeine reduces blood pressure and blood vessel dilation which makes tinnitus louder.

Most effective thing is , mask the tinnitus with white noise or soft music. I use the Headspace app, rain sounds work best for me. Over the last few months after taking this advice from specialists, I have managed to get my life back somewhat ( from severe depression, panic attacks every night and thinking my life was ruined) and sleep without heavy drugs and not think about it every minute of the day.

I just make sure every time I notice my T, I put the masking sounds on, headphones, phone, noise machine, whatever. It works and the science is that it can retrain your brain not to notice the sound and fade it into the background like other things it doesn’t consider abnormal (eg. Traffic noise).

Hope that helps mate hang in there and be kind to yourself.

 

Hey everyone, and especially Raven. I have not been to this forum for quite some time. So, as I consumed the MDMA back in june/july 2017, the mental problems (depersonalisation, anxiety etc.) went away in a few months but the tinnitus got only slightly better. It changes frequencies, and sometimes gets really loud for like 10 seconds but then comes down etc. Really weird. The worst time is when I want to sleep. Most of the day I'm exposed to sounds as I always play some talk showsm, podcasts, news on my phone, but it really depresses me to hear that damn "EEEEE" in my left ear when I try to sleep.

Some people say it's not mdma related, but I am 1000% sure it IS as I only consumed it twice and am veteran firearms marksman and concert goer :/

I'm sorry for all of you buds who are going through this, but best thing to do for now is to try to live with it.