[gibs0ns]

Imagine this, you're laying in bed at night, it's quiet outside just as it should be when sleeping, except for the constant ringing of your tinnitus.

You roll over, maybe you cover your ears or put a pillow over them, but the ringing sound doesn't change. In fact you realise nothing you do has any effect on the ringing sound - it's coming from within your head/ears, how do you block out a sound which is emanating from within?

You're tired, you just want to sleep, you have an early business meeting tomorrow, but throughout the perfect silence of the night, this ringing sound is relentless. You know you just need to ignore it and focus on something else, which might be easier if you weren't also trying to clear your mind so you could sleep. So you decide to get back up out of bed and take something, anything, that will knock you out.

Now that you're drugged up you get back into bed, laying there waiting for the drugs to put you to sleep, waiting while listening to that torturous sound, waiting while thinking about how easy it used to be to sleep, thinking about how you'll never know true peace and silence ever again. At some point you fall asleep, only to wake up in the morning feeling like shit from the drugs and lack of sleep.

I would give anything to be able to sleep in peace again.

[syspec]

That sounds really rough, I used to listen to my music very loudly when I was young and getting tinnitus is one of my fears as I get older.

How did you get tinnitus? Is the loud music thing a myth?

Is yours at least not getting progressively worse?

[gibs0ns]

I can cope with it during the day by keeping my mind active along with background noises, it has really turned me into a workaholic.

I too used to listen to loud music when I was younger, I never noticed it cause issues for me at the time. The original cause was a hit on the head by a falling metal beam - nothing noise related - this caused the occasional distortion of sound but was a minor inconvenience really, it didn't affect my sleep or day-to-day life. After a few years of it like that, I found myself at a music festival which did make it worse. It turned into a high pitched alternating tone which is now there 100% of the time.

[quantum_magpie]

I concur with the experiences of GP. It is torture. I got mine because of being stupid around power tools more than 10 years ago, for the first 5 years it was merely an annoyance that would often drown out in the background. Lately it has progressed to insufferable nuisance. It contributes significantly to my insomnia, which is also a gateway to major depression.

[clsec]

I believe that it's true. I've had it for >25 years and my belief is was caused by lots of loud music in small clubs, where you're more likely to stand next to the speakers, and working in a very loud machine shop when I was younger.