Tinnitus from 60+ Gunshots (Short-Barreled AR) with No Hearing Protection

I foolishly was convinced to shoot my father in-law’s short barreled AR with no hearing protection.

Almost 4 months later and I still have ringing in my left ear. I got a hearing test which did show hearing loss in the higher frequencies and was told to come back for a follow up test in about six months.

Has anybody had an experience similar to this with positive results?

I’m 21 and hoping I will be able to make some sort of spontaneous recovery since I’m still so young, however, I have treated my ears pretty harshly my entire life not knowing this would be the consequence.

 

Give it up to a year.

If no improvements at that point, it’s time to realise it might stick.

Since you’re young there’s also hope you’ll be able to benefit from the research going on.

OTO-313 and OTO-413 coming with important updates within 6 months.

Stay strong, avoid loud noise!

 

Should'a got on steroids when you noticed it wasn't going away.

That said, I've heard of shotgun trauma going away over 6 months, another guy got that I bitched to on Facebook. He recovered, I'm still here.

Some people swear NAC helps, or certain SSRIs.

Benzos worked for me, but only for the first year, and the improvement was temporary.

 

Yeah I wish I would’ve but I didn’t know they helped at the time. Anyways, I’m hoping for the best and will be avoiding loud noises.

 

Thank you, I’m avoiding all loud noises to the best of my ability now and keeping an eye on research. Hopefully one day we will have an effective treatment.

 

Hey man, going through a very similar situation. Shot a whole mag through a full auto 7” AR pistol, with no hearing protection. It happened in the beginning of November 2021, ears are still ringing off the walls. It has gotten slightly better than the first few weeks, but it has not been easy. I’m about 4 months in and really hope to see some more improvement by the end of the ear. If not, not sure what I’ll do to be honest. Keep us updated bro and best of luck.

Do you have hyperacusis as well?

 

If you're in the US, look into applying for the OTO-313 trial. It's for tinnitus while it's in the acute stage. If you get accepted, DON'T POST ABOUT IT ON THIS FORUM.

 

I disagree. A client of mine was accepted to the OTO-313 trial thanks to @Sentinel posting about it here. He was encouraged by his success.

The trial center didn't even ask my client to sign an NDA. And they didn't discourage talking about it on the web. FYI.

 

Here’s the problem. What if they got placebo? They’d just as likely be raving about how it didn’t work and their tinnitus got worse. This creates all kinds of problems for the data collection in the trial, by setting biased expectations. Not good for Otonomy, not good for people with tinnitus that want a reliable treatment.

 

Thankfully I don’t have any hyperacusis with my tinnitus, just this same awful high pitched 6-8 kHz tone mixture in my left ear.

If you have hyperacusis I hope it will go away for you as I’ve heard that it does for most people.

We are still early in timelines of our tinnitus so hopefully we will have a better future to look forward to. Best of luck!