Tinnitus: An eternal, inescapable annoyance which disrupts your very thoughts

A brief rant into the void.

On June 5, 2015 I attended a Glitch Mob concert. It wasn’t my first concert by any means, but it was the first time I saw that band live. It was fun, I enjoyed it, but during the show I noticed that the enclosed space we were in seemed louder than other shows I had been to. I wanted to grab some earplugs, but the venue wasn’t offering any. I was annoyed at the A/V team for the volume, but didn’t think much of it at first.

The following morning I noticed I had some tinnitus in my ears. Not very unusual, this would happen sometimes after a concert or a long flight, as many outgoing concert-goers may attest to. But by the end of that week I realized with some distress it wasn’t going away. Ever since that show I’ve had tinnitus in both ears, a perpetual high pitched dual or tri-tone of roughly 8500Hz ±1000Hz which permeates everything in my daily existence. It will never stop ringing until the day I die. I will never hear silence again for the rest of my life. When this started I was only 22 years old.

The sound is loud enough to feel like it’s just getting in the way of my ability to hear people talking to me at normal speaking volume. Paradoxically, multiple hearing exams I’ve taken with audiologists and a handful of hearing tests with the Apple AirPods FDA-authorized test show that my hearing isn’t measurably damaged, aside from a narrow frequency range in which I have a slightly harder time hearing test tones because my tinnitus matches that frequency and thus it covers up the sounds.

Ever since this started I’ve taken earplugs and noise cancelling headphones absolutely everywhere I go. I take earplugs to every single concert and live show I attend, no matter how loud or not loud it’s expected to be. I take noise cancelling headphones to restaurants, bars, anywhere and everywhere in public. I closely monitor the sound levels of everywhere I go because anything louder than ~75dB physically hurts my ears and often agitates the intensity of my tinnitus. Even the sounds of sitting in a commercial airliner or riding in a car for long periods of time can make my tinnitus worse for a day or three.

For the first few years after the ringing started in 2015 I had a very hard time sleeping. I’ve had countless nights over the years where I had to put on some music to have any chance of successfully sleeping, or simply had to do without any sleep at all because of the relentless noise. As a result my ability to mentally function has never been as sharp and clear as it used to be. The tone is just loud enough to be about the same volume as my own thoughts, which makes thinking harder. I suspect this is why tinnitus has been shown to increase one’s risk of early-onset dementia by as much as 68%.

There’s not much I can do about it other than trying to distract my perceptions and focus while waiting on the incredibly sluggish pace of scientific research into tinnitus treatments. This subject draws too little attention from researchers and biomedical companies despite tinnitus affecting as much as ~20% of the adult population of the United States alone, across all age groups.

My advice to everyone: Protect your hearing, regardless of your age. The sooner you start the better. Your hearing doesn’t heal, any and all damage and loss is a one-way street and you likely won’t notice any problems at first. Once you notice a problem it’s probably too late. Buy yourself a good set of reusable earplugs. They might feel odd at first but you do get used to wearing them, I promise you. I find them rather comforting.

Tinnitus: 0/10, can’t recommend. Not a feature, definitely a bug.