Tinnitus Spike After Taking Trazodone — Advice?

Hi guys,

I couldn’t sleep for two days because of my mild spike... and because I had to go back to work, the doctor prescribed me 100 mg of Trazodone.

It would increase my sleep quality compared to Zolpidem and it used to be prescribed as an anti-depressant. Now it’s prescribed as a sleeping aid and sometimes even to treat insomniac tinnitus patients.

I took it. After 30 minutes my heart started racing, I started sweating, couldn’t form sentences and had a dry mouth. On top my tinnitus spiked to levels from before the Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT). Instead of a soft, morse beep in my right ear, which felt more like hyperacusis, I was now hearing an intruding sharp hiss again. To make matters worse, I was still feeling like a zombie 36 hours later!

Needless to say, I threw this garbage in the trash can.

I did some research and apparently this thing is ototoxic!

1) Could it be possible that the delicate repairs done by 10x HBOT have been completely annihilated by one pill? That seems highly unlikely, right? As people take this stuff for years in high doses even!

2) Or was this most likely triggered by my body’s reaction to the side effects. It felt like drinking 5 liters of coffee... I can imagine that would make my tinnitus spike too.

It’s been three days. It has decreased since that night, but I doubt I will reach my post-HBOT level again

Any advice you can give me?

1) Should I just wait it out and hope good (natural) sleep will fix it?

2) Should I go see an ENT to see if there’s something to be done?

I’ll inform my GP of the ototoxicity of Trazodone at least! He should know!

I am so tired of getting better every time and just when I’m nearing silence, something makes it come back.

So unforgiving! It’s useless... I don’t understand this thing

I should really start thinking about accepting this burden, instead of fighting to get it to a low volume.

 

Some Antidepressants are prescribed to help sleep but not a high dose and should be increased bit by bit till you reach the dose right for you.
eg.
Amitryptaline 10-20-30-50mg.
Nortryptaline the same and that should be enough for sleep.
Love glynis

 

I also have a new sound/sharp hiss after taking trazodone 50 mg. Anyone else had this issue? How long does it take for the hissing to go away? What does the doctor prescribe next?

 

@ZachB !

This is the exact drug you’ve been given!

 

@Pero1234 - Did your tinnitus lower after the Tradozone?

 

My dose was 150mg... I really really hope stopping this medication will lower my tinnitus

 

Let us hope so. Maybe even a full remission.

 

I have to say my sharp head-hiss never went down to the levels I had before the trazodone.

I did habituate and whenever I am fully relax or did yoga... it is significantly lower. So I accepted it...

But Trazodone seems like absolute garbage to me. I wonder if my T would be a lot lower now if I had not taken that 100mg.

Go the way of magnesium, chamomille tea, valerian, yoga and melatonine if you can’t sleep. More difficult in the short term, but you’ll thank yourself later.

 

I feel so bad for you, but also happy that you habituated. I think I read your story - Mad Max: Fury Road, right?

Hope you are living your best life.

 

I’m trying to... Will write a success story when I find the time.

Yes, mad max that’s one movie I will never forget

 

@ZachB how is your T now after stopping trazodone for a few days. Thanks.

 

My tinnitus reduced a fair bit after starting trazodone, (50-100mg) which I attribute to more sleep.

Seems it's been messing with my blood sugar possibly as I get weak feeling between meals so I've started to taper from 100 back down to 50, and will try to go lower to zero over the next few days.

Slept like a log for 7 hours last night which is slightly uncommon, 50 mg the past 2 days and it does seem to be a little louder this morning. We'll see.

 

Any others have experience with Trazodone? @Rb86, how did you fare?

 

Trazodone spiked me. It was one of the first meds my PCP gave me for a sleep aid after getting tinnitus.

 

Did it subside?

 

I had been taking Trazodone for a few weeks when my tinnitus started. It could have been a coincidence.

The thing I find odd is that I've been regularly exposed to loud music for 35 years and never had ringing after a gig or night out and I've stood next to a wall of speakers in tiny clubs in the 90s lots of time, no ringing afterwards.

My tinnitus came out of the blue and I hadn't been exposed to loud sound before hand so maybe a link to Trazodone but can't be sure.

 

Yes. I can’t say when the spike from it specifically subsided. I was very new to tinnitus and didn’t know anything. So I kept taking all these meds the doctors were throwing at me and it just kept getting louder and louder. Eventually once I weaned off everything and found Clonazepam worked for me and didn’t spike me then the volume went down some. From like 10/10 to 7/10 which was around where it started.

 

Interesting for sure. The trigger point is a really interesting matter to me, as I'm pretty sure I had hearing loss for quite some time leading up to the day it started. I did have the COVID-19 booster 2 weeks prior and a flu shot RIGHT before it started though.

 

Thank you for the feedback @GoatSheep. There is a challenge with onset and risk of associating anything new with what may have been natural progression of tinnitus. I too find Clonazepam works for me but I try to keep it to once a week or less and low dose. Hence interest in the Trazodone as I am struggling with sleep quite a bit.

 

Yes, I understand that. However, anything that is generally a serotonergic drug spikes my tinnitus. I didn’t know this initially. After a while I began to realize the pattern.

 

That makes sense. Thanks for your responses @GoatSheep.

 

FWIW: I took 50 mg Trazodone last night for the first time. It got me to sleep but I still woke up several times as per usual. AutoSleep app w/ Apple Watch says I got ~8 hours sleep (lol). I have a slight hangover from it this morning but it's less than what I would get from Benadryl. I feel fine.

And most importantly, no spike and my tinnitus is actually much quieter.

 

Trazodone also spiked my tinnitus. Do you know how long it took to subside? Like days or weeks?

And how did Clonazepam help you? Are you still taking it? If so, how regularly?

 

From all the meds they tried it took several weeks to subside. I can’t say how long from Trazodone specifically as I tried multiple sleep aids in a short span of time.

I took Clonazepam for a little over a year and tapered very slowly. It helped me sleep.

Nowadays, if I take it intermittently, it seems not to help me very much.

 

Alright, thank you for the answer!

Some antidepressants spike my tinnitus a lot. I will probably stop taking them. I just need something else for sleep. I’ve also been jumping from one sleeping med to another.

 

I, too, started taking Trazodone about 3 weeks ago - it knocks me out & gives me fabulous sleep, only problem is, my tinnitus has gone up intensely and I've got really bad hyperacusis. I'm at a loss on what to do, since it's the only thing that allows me to sleep.

I only take 25 mg. I've tried 3 different sleep aids in a month to 2 months... all of which didn't agree with me or has made my tinnitus worse, unless it was a coincidence. The hyperacusis with it is horrible. I have no idea what else to take for sleep.

 

I have taken Trazodone for years. It has never impacted my tinnitus.

There are many many medications that are known to be associated with tinnitus. Trazodone is not truly ototoxic in that it does not damage your inner ear hair cells.

 

I’ve been taking Trazodone regularly now and it works alright. Some nights are great, others not so much. No negative effect on tinnitus, perhaps a bit quieter some days.

 

Medication-wise, it's a roulette. Medications (Aspirin, Pfizer jab, antibiotic ointment, NAC, prescription toothpaste) and supplements (Lion's Mane mushroom extract), have spiked my tinnitus in the last 14 months so many times that it reached very severe levels. Still, though, I have started paying a lot less attention to it in the last 2-3 months, and this has helped considerably.

The two medications that I take that help me sleep well are Mirtazapine (30 mg.) and Melatonin (0.6 mg.). I don't take other medications (and don't dare to).