Tinnitus and Hyperacusis?

So here’s my story... my name is Jaylen, and I got involved with the wrong crowd at a VERY early age. Drugs became a constant thing for me at 18 years old, and of course along with drugs came really loud parties and environments. I was about 20 when I first heard the distortion in my left year. It sounded like a piece of paper being bald up by my eardrum, but it literally only happened for a second and because the music was too loud. I just shrugged it off, turned the music down, and kept going about my life (stupid to not be concerned, i know) Over the next few years, the sound would happen more and more often, but again only in loud environments. I finally went and saw an ENT at about 21, and was told that my hearing was perfectly fine, and that they couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but I knew what I was hearing.

I’m now 28 and It’s gotten slightly worse over the years; for example, now it’s in both ears, and is existent even when I raise my own voice at a volume that may be too loud. I’d almost learned to live with it, sometimes barely noticing it, But what’s more odd is that at the beginning of last month i developed a lump in my throat (not one you can see, but one i can only feel when i swallow) which seemed to cause a fullness in my ears and trigger slight tinnitus as well, and the three together can be quite distracting.

I went to a different ENT again last week, she said the lump was acid reflux and prescribed me a pill for it, then she prescribed me prednisone for my ears, and said it probably won’t do anything since I’ve been having this hearing issue for years, but told me to give it a go anyway (after she couldn’t find anything wrong and told me my hearing test came back perfectly normal ). Well, the prednisone turned the slight tinnitus in my ears into more of a swamp sound. It sounds more amplified now and like its coming from different directions. But again, before last month, I was fine because I was learning to live with the little hearing loss that I did have, before it somehow and over night turned into something else.

My question is, do you think it got worse because of allergy season? Pollen and allergy season usually NEVER bother me, but do you think this time it affected my ears? Do you think it’s the lump in my throat that triggered it and made it worse? I’ve been on prednisone for 5 days and decided today to stop taking it all together since it has seemed to increase my T, good idea or not?


I’m also a smoker with high blood pressure, which I know isn’t exactly helping me. Is anyone else going through this? Will I go deaf one day? How can I avoid it? Please help, I’m tired of staying up all night because of fear that I’ll wake up to silence. What can I do to decrease the sounds? Or atleast get my hearing back to how it was before last month.
Thanks!