Wellbutrin Made My Mild Tinnitus Worse

Hello fellow sufferers, I'm glad to have found this website and forum. I've been lurching around for about a week now and have decided to make an account and introduce myself.

I have always had a little bit of tinnitus but had never put the thought and effort into researching it, because frankly, it never really bothered me. It was low level and I was pretty much habituated to it. I didn't even realize what it was until I experienced my first spike.

I had been doing some research and had asked my provider to put me on Wellbutrin 150 mg XL as I was having a little bit of depression and wanted something to help with my focus. Being a pharmacist and reading through others' accounts, I thought that Wellbutrin would have been the best choice for me as it seemed to have less side-effects and withdrawals compared to SSRIs/SNRIs. Although 6% of people on it reported it, tinnitus wasn't even something that was on my radar because I have never heard of or read of anyone with those complaints.

For the first 3 months on it, I definitely noticed an increase in mood and focus with minimal side effects. Seeing as the side effects were minimal, I thought I could go up, and so I asked my provider to increase my dose. The first few days were mainly OK, just a little bit of extra jitters but nothing that would have indicated something far more sinister was brewing. After a few days, I noticed that I wasn't sleeping well and would wake up with some ringing in my ears. Again, nothing that I've not noticed before because it would usually fade in a few days, except for this time, it wasn't fading. I decided that the benefits of the medication were not worth the tinnitus and my lack of sleep, so I decided to taper myself off. Naively, I thought that upon cessation of the medication, that the tinnitus would stop. Once it didn't stop, I started looking for answers online and came to the dreaded realization that there was no cure for tinnitus and that my condition could possibly be permanent. This of course, would lead to many more sleepless nights, worrying about a condition that may or may not go away.

Luckily for me, it's not so bad as to affect me while at work. Although I can hear the high pitch over many of the things I do at work, I find I am still functional at work. The worst parts of the days however are waking up in the middle of the night to this high pitched whining, and trying to fall asleep. I'm currently using a masking app on my phone and fan, but I can still here the high pitched whining. I'm lucky to get about 4 hours of sleep a night.

In a desperate attempt, I went and got a hearing test with a audiologist (no hearing loss) and have bought a ton of different supplements in a most likely futile attempt to treat this condition. I am currently taking Magnesium, Ginkgo biloba, a vitamin B complex, vitamin D and fish oil in the morning, and 600 mg of NAC and ALCAR in the evening. I am also taking Melatonin to help me sleep as well. I know that many of these supplements have not helped many of you, but I am desperate for some peace and quiet. I've also downloaded the OTO app which is helping me cope with some self-guided CBT.

Anyways, I hope that by sharing my journey, I can also contribute and help others with this terrible affliction. There needs to be more tinnitus awareness as I feel that even though I'm a health professional, I really had no idea the impact that tinnitus has on its sufferers, especially with the limited amount of treatment options there are.

 

I'm not an HCP but I can heavily relate to your story, having spent more than a third of my life optimizing for health and longevity. Going so far as to monitoring air quality in my home and installing MERV13 filtration, not exercising outdoors when air quality is poor, exercising nearly every day for 15+ years, etc.

And then tinnitus blindsided me. I'd been careless with my hearing in the past, but more careful in recent years. I always figured if I ended up with hearing aids later in life, there's no harm in that. Well, lol.

I too find great value in the OTO app. And I don't know much about Wellbutrin-caused tinnitus but I have seen, as you probably have too, several success stories here. It just takes some time, 6 months, even more than a year to see improvement. I hope to see your progress story here too.

Oh, one other thing, I have read accounts of people saying that NAC keeps them up at night. So hard to know if that is the true cause but I've kept to taking it in the morning.

Klonopin gives me a break from the noise. I take it once a week or so and the effect lasts through the next day.

 

Last night was a rough night. It was so rough that I decided to just bask in my misery. I took a pair of moldable wax earplugs and jammed them into my ear so that I could hear my tinnitus in all of its glory. The high pitched whine, the oscillating tone, the low level rumble, ALL of it.

It was late and last my bedtime and I figured if I wasn’t going to sleep, I might as well suffer and be miserable. To my surprise though, as I laid there and concentrated all my thought and effort into the sounds, I actually found that I was getting a little bit sleepy and my mind was just wandering off into some dreamlike thoughts. I eventually fell asleep. Crazy.

I think the crazier thing though, is that when I woke up, my earplugs were still in, and I couldn’t hear my tinnitus at all! Eventually, it did pop up, but at the faintest level, so I just took my earplugs out and laid the side of my head into the pillow, something that would normally bother my tinnitus and cause my head to ring. Nothing. I got nothing. So I fell back to sleep and woke up this morning feeling amazing.

I’m not sure what’s going on here, perhaps my mind is habituating to the sound, but whatever it is, I’m gonna repeat it again tonight and report my findings.

 

Glad you found some relief! Let us know how it went for you on the next night.