I have tinnitus. I don't recommend it

Took 1-2 years before I went a single day without thinking about tinnitus after I gave it to myself playing drums. I was so happy to be smashing those punk drums in the first rehearsal of this band. I remember exclaiming afterwards to one of my bandmates, "Wow my ears are ringing! That was awesome!" He said, "Ya, mine have been ringing for 30 years." My heart immediately sank knowing what I had just done.

I spent a lot of days/months totally devastated about it. I remember reading this story about some woman in a scandinavian country who chose medical-assisted suicide because hers was so bad. I thought that was going to be my story. I thought it was inevitable.

But I met a lot of people who lived completely normal lives and described their tinnitus as so much worse than mine. I eventually got used to it. I wouldn't say the actual ringing is better or worse than it was. I have no idea how to measure it anyways. But life has gotten so much better. And I almost never think about it any more -- maybe once every few weeks I'll have the thought, "Oh ya, I have ringing in my ears" and a few seconds later I forget about it again. I think it gets better for most people, thankfully.

But it'd be cool to hear complete silence again.

When I'm very focused I can be in complete silence, but these moments are very few, once I notice the silence the ringing comes back again.

Mostly I'm at a point i don't hear it at all unless I get very distracted or see anything that mentions it. Like right now reading this post and the comments LOL.

> I remember reading this story about some woman in a scandinavian country who chose medical-assisted suicide because hers was so bad.

I'm surprised there is not some method to surgically disconnect the brain from the ear.

Tinnitus is sometimes neurological, seemingly caused by the brain compensating for a loss of sensation. I can imagine a horror story in which this just makes it a thousand times worse, on top of permanently losing all hearing.

Now, being able to use a hot-swappable audio sensor instead of an ear made of tissue would be pretty dope.

Louder than you think, Dad! Louder than you think!

proceeds to rip off ears

Not useful for you now AFAIK, but there's some evidence that n-acetylcysteine has a protective effect if taken before or shortly after loud noise exposure.

I guess there might be ethical issues doing the surgery. Also it'd be quite hard to do as the nerves are in the skull up against the brain so basically brain surgery. But I was thinking if there was some way to figure which nerves were firing and kill those that could maybe fix it.

Maybe if you could stick something like a neuralink in there?

I hear that theory but I don't believe it - I have tinnitus. Nothing else in the nervous system behaves that way - lack of light doesn't suddenly make you see blinding light etc. It's much more likely the sound sensor in the ear is jammed in the on position.

I've read about an experimental surgery sometime in the past doing this, and the patient had no reduction in their tinnitus. Their sound wasn't generated in the ear.

I've had multiple times when my tinnitus has gotten noticeably worse. The path is always the same: some panic and desperation first, followed by some examinations and attempts of alleviation that do nothing, and finally familiarization and acceptance about 9-12 months afterwards that makes everything pretty much fine.

I'm sure it will happen again, and I can only hope that the acceptance phase keeps working.

Amputees have phantom limb sensations including pain. I believe this is more than theory. Certainly medical science has collected at least some case studies over the past century about people who have had their auditory nerve severed for one reason or another. And, as I recall, the auditory system actually does behave unlike other parts of the nervous system like vision which is more mechanical and less dependent on the brain for basic functionality.

Well, perhaps some but I don't think it's the usual cause. Phantom limb isn't just loss of sensation, it's also having part of the body chopped off. Just having part of your body go numb doesn't usually cause that.

It does and it is called neuropathic pain. Phantom limb is just an extreme case of it, but malfunction or damage to nerves can cause all kinds of phantom “pain”. Experiencing phantom sensations due to nerve damage is well known and widely documented, so phantom sound in the ear due to nerve damage is well in line with that.

There is, audio nerve can be surgically cut, but this means complete hearing loss in one ear. The whole inner ear can be removed. You don't want it without a good reason.

From what I've rad tinnitus can be caused by a) shift in small transmission bones, can be age related. 2) inner ears sensors mess up, can be from loud sound. 3) something else, like infection, inflammation, inner ear pressure build up (may be Ménière's disease).

Hope technology develops fast, some sort of implant talking directly to the audio nerve. I think they already exist or are in development. This can give in theory ultra- and infra-sound sensitivity too, as a bonus.

> I remember reading this story about some woman in a scandinavian country who chose medical-assisted suicide because hers was so bad.

I think you are thinking of Gaby Olthuis. Her story is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzQ6kSqBOao

There are various explanations about the genesis of the sound for T sufferers, and it obviously depends on the kind of T that one has (this chart [1] helps navigate the variants).

But if you are one of the "common kind", which is typically an insult to your hearing apparatus that damaged your cochlea, then the work from Susan Shore [2] is a reasonable explanation of what could actually be going on (genesis by the fusiform cells of the dorsal cochlear nucleus). You may be interested in checking out her publications listed in the wikipedia article quoted.

[1] https://www.tinnitusresearch.net/index.php/for-clinicians/di... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Shore

That's how it is for me too. I don't hear it until someone mentions it. Then it's pretty noticeable. I went to an audiologist thinking I gave myself hearing loss at a point but he said my hearing is beyond exceptional, and that I should be very careful with it to preserve it. So I think I have an infection induced, or neurological cause.