Living With Tinnitus

Ten Tips for coping with constant sound

Jan 14, 2024

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My post “Waking up to Tinnitus” elicited an immediate, considerable response, as I expected it would. Many of you confessed that you suffer from this affliction, hardly surprising given that we are mainly here primarily to discuss historically loud forms of music. However, not everyone who owned up to having tinnitus got it from exposure to loud music, and as per the medical data, you appear to suffer to varying degrees; in addition, some of you confessed to having gotten lucky, and some of you to making your own luck and avoiding it by taking sufficient care of your exposure over the years.

Waking up to Tinnitus

Tony Fletcher

Jan 7

Almost everyone reading this will have had the experience. Waking up the morning after that loud event the night before with ears ringing. The realization, “That was great last night, but this is pro…

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I guess I am grateful that nobody took me to task for not protecting my own hearing down the line, especially given my recent re-immersion into loud music via playing, teaching, directing, recording, podcasting, mixing and a lot of in-ear listening. To which, there is a story to tell, which serves to connect the last post, Waking Up To Tinnitus, to this one, ten tips for Living with Tinnitus

1) Protect your ears: it’s never too early (even if it feels too late).

My musical younger son Noel, who has been playing guitar since he was three, listening to rock since he was about five, and been gigging in some form or another, quite often in loud rooms or on loud stages with other (loud) young people, since he was about eight, has highly sensitive hearing. It’s part of what makes him a natural musician (I envy him his perfect pitch), and it helps explain why he is already heavily engaged in mixing music, and studying at college to become a full-blown producer. But that sensitivity means that while he loves his loud rock music, he doesn’t like it that loud. Several years back he talked his parents into paying for customized earplugs, the kind that are molded to fit the individual’s ears, and that come with a dedicated internal filter set to reduce, ideally, sound across the entire frequency spectrum by an even amount – 10dB, 15dB, or 20dB being the most common.

Going through our doctor’s office got us recommended to an audiologist connected to Vassar Bros hospital in Poughkeepsie, and while the process was quite lengthy, and quite expensive, Noel was extremely happy with the result, perfectly proud to wear his -15dB earplugs onstage and especially, at those noisy rehearsals. Watching him take these precautions to set himself up for a lifetime of professional listening and playing, and seeing that he felt comfortable wearing them even on stage, I figured I should get myself a pair: after all, just because I had made it through life this far without tinnitus didn’t mean it couldn’t yet strike. But, given the multiple visits to Poughkeepsie and the $300 cost, this was not an impulse purchase – and I kept putting it off.

Then, in October 2022, at the O Positive Festival here in Kingston, I met someone at a merch table pushing his own brand of custom-molded earplugs: Elliot of Crystal Guardian. Having previously worked for a bigger company, he had set off on his own, arranging pop-up demonstrations aimed specifically at the indie rock crowd, setting the molds in his apartment for a far more affordable price of $100. (They are now $120.) In early 2023, I bit the bullet, met him, got fitted up and took possession of earplugs fitted with a -20dB filter within about a week.

My professional/personalized/customized earplugs, specifically molded to my ear shape, with internal filters reducing sound at 15dB.

“Professional earplugs,” as we tend to call them (though “personalized” might be more appropriate) take some getting used to, not least the process of fitting them into your ear properly. And -20dB, I quickly realized, was too drastic a difference; still, as promised, Elliot swapped them out gratis for -15dB, a standard reduction for musicians. Soon enough, I found myself comfortable using them, and glad to be doing so. While they don’t filter all frequencies equally (I find myself constantly fixated on the bass guitar while wearing them, not a bad thing if you enjoy setting your controls for the heart of the music), and while you do miss that flow of air that delivers sound into the ear on the crest of a wave, the fact is that you can live with them, listen to live music with them, even have conversations while wearing them (depending on the nature of the room).1

Their importance struck home when my friend Richard came to visit last April, and I took him to local back-room venue Tubby’s for some loud, live American rock’n’roll. The headliners, Country Westerns, delivered a blistering set with a degree of professional sound - as in, they knew how to moderate their volume without sacrificing intensity - but opening act Liquor Store, despite having been around for over a decade but perhaps explaining their lack of commercial progress, had no such self-control. When I took the earplugs out just to hear what they sounded like “in the flesh,” so to speak, I was horrified. I suspect the volume in that tiny room was well over 110dB throughout their set and that the squeals of random noise were capable of causing long-term. (Richard can you hear me?) In short, I was never so grateful to have my pro earplugs on hand and in my ears, as that night. After all, it’s never too late, right?

And then, just a few weeks later, I woke up with tinnitus anyway. Turns out, I was too late.

So: don’t be me. Here are some obvious ways for music enthusiasts to protect what hearing they still have:

A) Invest in “Professional/personalized/custom-molded” earplugs. See above.

B) Invest in “Noise reduction” earplugs. That’s my terminology for the wide number of filtering, non-molded earplugs that have recently come to market. NPR (the USA’s National Public Radio) has partnered with a company called EarPeace to promote modestly priced earplugs that, for $40, come with a pair of -20dB filters, and a third plug/filter for when you inevitably lose oner of the first two. The price is reasonable, and I was tempted to get a pair just for comparison and/or backup, but as per the above, my own experience says that 20dB is too drastic a reduction. So, shop around (and once you start doing so your social media will fill up with ads for them anyway): Loop Earplugs offer a three-way option that allows you to choose from 17dB to 25dB protection. Eargasm offers a 15dB reduction and appears to have over 3000 satisfied customers on that online retail behemoth I refuse to mention by name. There are others.

C) Use noise-canceling headphones. Some of the younger students at Rock Academy are sent in with noise-canceling over-the-ears-headphones, and the drummer I subsequently gave a first recording session to this past year at the age of just 13 (shout-out to Leo Beaumont who beats the skins on “Blink Of An I”) is performing immaculately with me this very weekend on our Rock Academy show with such headphones on. (See below.) They may look obtrusive, but they are certainly not interfering with his or anyone’s natural ability that I have worked with.

D) Use anything in a pinch. I hate the cheap foam earplugs, but they are often to be found at a venue and come cheap. I used to use the silicone sleeping earplugs I put in my ears overnight to gigs for emergencies, and before that I opted the rolled-up and chewed upon tissue paper. They all work to different degrees when you need a quick fix.

E) Turn it down! This is so anti-ethical to someone like me who grew up loving The Who in all their feedbacked glory, who reveled in loud music throughout his youth and adulthood, who is genuinely interested and fascinated by all the kinds of overtones and undertones we can get by turning shit up loud, who took pride in blowing speakers and still maintains that, to some degree, rock and dance music works best loud. Still, modern technology allows us now to extract exquisite sound from smaller personal stereo systems and more precise (albeit digital) musicians’ amps. I remember the invention of a dance floor PA system right around the Millennium, and how a famed nightclub on the West Side of Manhattan (inevitably closed down by Guiliani, that fucker) was first to incorporate it and, sure enough, you could actually stand by the cubist bass bins scattered around the dancefloor and have a conversation even as the bass soaked through you. If you like going out, find a club that pays attention to sound quality like that. Ditto with local bars and restaurants, which may mean leaving the younger generation to their own devices and watering holes.

On which, take the advice of your device and heeds its warning signs that your volume is too loud. Better yet, swap out the earbuds for earplugs. Better yet, swap them out for headphones. Better yet, stop using them entirely for a while. We didn’t use to live this way and I don’t mean to sound like Grandad when I say that music never sounded better or appeared to progress quicker. That’s because we shared!

Personally, I miss the days when, whether you were a London boy playing The Who at full volume across your housing estate (hi

Ian Sharp

) or Bob Stinson forming what became The Replacements in his room so goddamn loud that the police ultimately struck a deal with him on curfew time on behalf of the neighbors several blocks away. In 2024, I have having upstairs neighbors who object to me having a simple date night music singalong with my girlfriend/Hudson Palace partner or daring to watch TV on the floor speakers from Scandinavia I picked up for $30 at a family’s moving sale. Then again, when I stayed with Kurtis Powers of The Face Radio in NYC a couple of months back, he pointed out how his small but hi-quality speakers allow him to keep music going all day long, with clarity, at a modest volume. So, okay, I get it. Less can be more. Try it.

2) Get a hearing test.

I recommend this whether or not you have tinnitus. Knowing your hearing loss can help you address it; confirming how bad – or indeed – good your hearing is can help you adapt to it. I went to my local GP shortly after realizing my tinnitus was here to stay, had the rather entertaining debate about the loudest ever concerts referenced in my previous post, and then, as hoped, was referred to an audiologist.

The audiologist was another very nice chap, who didn’t blink when I told him about my lifelong exposure to loud sound, and evinced no judgement whatsoever. And, again as I hoped, he immediately referred me for a thorough audiogram, a test where you sit a silent room with headphones on and the audiology tech sits the other side of a glass window sending single frequencies at you at various volumes and recording your responses (or lack thereof). This audiologist technician also did her best to see if we could assign a frequency to my tinnitus – after all, it being a “phantom” sound, it’s not like she could hear it herself. The graphic part of the results is below. (The right ear is the O; the left is the X.)

When I went in for a sit-down follow-up, the audiologist confirmed what you see above: I have some pronounced hearing loss above 4000k, which is the approximate frequency I appeared to have assigned to the ringing in my ears (as recorted elsewhere on the page I have cropped above). I also have very modest hearing loss at lower frequencies. This is highly common at my age. However, this hearing loss fluctuates from one ear to the other, which is apparently less common, and that supposedly necessitated an MRI to rule out a more debilitating inner ear problem.

Now, I knew perfectly well that my tinnitus was brought on by my chosen lifestyle/profession, but the American system works on charging insurance companies for things you don’t need at exorbitant mark-ups, so sure enough, I got strapped in to the MRI chamber which, as I knew from past experience when I had an aneurysm, pummels you with noise that sounds like Test Department having an on-stage jam with Sonic Youth in the audience of an Einstürzende Neubauten show – and naturally I left my professional earplugs at home for this sound bath because I’m an idiot.

Equally naturally, at my next one-hour each-way drive to see the audiologist, he confirmed that I have no inner ear problem. In fact, he declared my tinnitus to be the result of “age-related hearing loss” rather than anything more drastic. This was and remains reassuring: it means that despite what my younger son tells me, I’m not deaf. (I just choose to ignore him at times.) Sure, I struggle in loud restaurants and bars, but but both my GP and audiologist volunteered that they have exactly the same problems in social situations and that is an entirely normal result of age-related hearing loss. Additionally, however, I am among the significant percentage of adults who has this thing we call tinnitus. There is no cure. But among the potential salves that are out there on the market, my audiologist, believing I qualified under my insurance, recommended me to…

3) Wear a hearing aid.

Hearing aids are cool. Say it. I don’t mean this in a Morrissey-esque manner, though what was an important visual statement with The Smiths in 1984 remains one now.

But listen, if we can change our general prejudices about people we used to call “four-eyes” (anyone who went to a UK secondary school in the 1970s can deny the insult at their peril), we can do the same about people wearing hearing aids - especially as there are increasingly hi-tech, almost invisible aids designed specifically to help “mask” tinnitus. Indeed, as a result of openly talking about my own affliction, I found out that one of my closer friends from my Brooklyn days, a man I will call Peter as that is his name, has tinnitus. This surprised me as I had him down as a mellow, methodical, safe and sensible German, which he is, but he informs me he spent a good part of his German youth attending German noise-rock shows, and that he is certain he got the tinnitus “from attending a Einstürzende Neubauten show at Irving Plaza 15 years ago,” adding that “They should not be permitted to play indoor shows!” Anyway, Peter has recently taken to wearing one of these new hi-tech aids that he was able to acquire through his wife’s insurance. He was willing to send me a picture to show how unobtrusive it is.

I had been operating under the mis-understanding that the “masking” worked on a philosophy of compensating for the tinnitus frequency, perhaps by attenuating it. However, according to the American Tinnitus Association, “Hearing aids augment the volume of external noise to the point that it covers (masks) the sound of tinnitus,” which suggests otherwise. The ATA also notes that “only 22% patients found significant relief.” Peter’s own experience is that, “Hearing aids are a mixed bag and take a while to get used to - but in the end I think I'm better off with than without.”

And so, given the 1 in 5 possibility of it being effective, the cool factor that I now bestow upon them – they are Bluetooth so you can actually listen to music through them and further damage your hearing – and the fact that my audiologist was confident I would get mine on insurance, you might wonder why the picture above is not of my good self. Simple explanation: the audiologist was wrong. As the ATA also notes, “Hearing aids can be expensive and are often not covered by insurance plans. Tinnitus patients with negligible hearing loss may find it difficult to find insurance coverage for hearing aids.” Simply put, I did not meet the requisite “points scale” to be covered.

In a way this is good news, in that my hearing loss is not considered medically serious, but it’s also frustrating, because hearing aids don’t cost that much more than an MRI, which I knew perfectly well was not only a waste of time but a short-term test rather than what could be a long-term fix. This only confirms how our medical systems have their priorities all wrong, especially with new research demonstrating that hearing aids can help slow dementia if worn early enough. (The dementia discussion applies primarily to people who, due to hearing loss, retreat from social situations, stop engaging their brain as much as they should, and develop increased short term memory loss as a result. I am not that person.)

All that said and done, there are three companies in Kingston that manufacture customized hearing aids, inclusive of tinnitus masking. I spoke to all three, and one company detailed three price structures dependent on the amount of detail involved: $4,000; $5,000; $6000. For a 90% chance of success, maybe I would dip into my savings and splurge. But for a 20% chance? Not happening. Besides, you know what you can get $6000 don’t you?

Gibson Les Paul Custom 1974, Cherry Sunburst | Carter Vintage Guitars

4) Educate yourself.

I like to learn what’s wrong with me, because only that way, I figure, can I put myself right. So I ask questions of doctors and audiologists. I listen to their answers. Then I ask more. I devour the information. It’s who I am, and it’s why my books and my posts are so long. Let me shortlist some of what I can recommend for you to do the same self-learning:

The American Tinnitus Association and Tinnitus UK are good places to start, as they are not there to sell you anything. You can try the Tinnitus Talks podcast and possibly their discussion groups, but the pod is very detailed; additionally, when I decided to start from Episode 1 and listen to “In Search of a Tinnitus Cure” with a “Dr. Josef Rauschecker,” my initial impression of him as a Monty Python caricature brought to life was confirmed when the bastard started demanding to experiment on chimpanzees.

NOT IN MY NAME!

Let me repeat that for anyone who comes across this post at any time from this moment until long after I am dead. You do not get to cure my tinnitus, which I brought on myself as a human with free will, by infecting captive animals who have no free will, with hearing loss. NOT IN MY NAME. Now fuck off Dr. Raushchecker.

It took me a long time to come back to Tinnitus Talk, not least because the host of that first episode seemed willing to back that bastard’s campaign for signatories re: our ape relatives. However, I feel they somewhat redeemed themselves through the conversation I devoured this past week (since my initial post) with Prof. Dirk De Ridder. This Belgian-born, New Zealand based tinnitus researcher/clinician goes deep, though I was able to follow him easier than I have some other professionals, and he is full of facts, figures, promising developments and multiple reality checks. He is the doctor who tells it to you straight, the good news and the bad news.

The best podcast, for most of us here, is surely “How I Got Tinnitus.” It’s the project and product of an Average Joe (he goes by the name JD) whose overenthusiasm for playing loud rock’n’roll – along with a parallel gig working in loud kitchens – brought on tinnitus so severe, and so early in life, that he had to stop everything he was doing and figure how, indeed if, he could move forwards in life. That severity of his tinnitus would appear to put him in that 1-2% of the population for whom it is a truly debilitating, life-altering experience, but his obsession with it may also have played a part, as he acknowledges eventually and sought to combat – because, again, tinnitus is one of these ailments that comes further to the fore the more you focus on it. At the same time, by setting up a podcast to share his experience, and by then speaking to a broad cross-section group of fellow sufferers that ranges from relatively well-known musicians like Lou Barlow through to a multi-instrumentalist on the episode entitled “Bach & Brahms Laid The Framework” (it’s said that Beethoven had tinnitus, and classical musicians certainly suffer in high numbers too), his former work-mates in the kitchens, and a few people who have written (self-help) books on the subject, he has become so engaged in the general conversation that he is working on (and I quote from direct correspondence), a “Psychology major with a minor in Speech Language and Hearing Sciences, hoping to offer therapeutic options, particularly for those living with tinnitus.” I recommend you take the journey with JD, perhaps avoiding his early monologues and jumping into the interviews. Not only will you learn a lot, but it will help you realize…

5) Talk to others: You are not alone.

Some people find that talking too much about their tinnitus makes it too pervasive. However, only by talking about it can we grasp just how many other people have it, and in turn learn how they have come to live with it. Your reticence to do so – especially if you work in music - is understandable. In this must-listen episode of How I Got Tinnitus featured below – the single best hour of listening I can recommend for you – the British-born, Norwegian-based musician Jack Rúbinacci talks about his own fears when, after 20 years with tinnitus, he decided to make a video about his experiences: “I was worried about losing work, I was worried that people wouldn’t hire me… I was worried that people’s experience of my music might be different knowing that I have tinnitus.” After all, you wouldn’t immediately hire a boat captain with one hand would you? (Shout out to our one-handed boat captain in Costa Rica.)

Not only did Rúbinacci’s generous way of sharing prove popular, but if de Ridder is right, 60% of rock musicians have tinnitus, which puts us in the majority. Indeed, when, only after acquiring tinnitus did I ask of my fellow Rock Academy teachers and directors whether any of them also had it tinnitus, there was a degree of show-must-go-on “welcome to the club” and “hey, what took you so long?”… but also an element of understanding, sympathy and support. This will prove more extensive for you the more you ask around. Even if you are part of that highly unfortunate minority of people who suffers intently, to the point that it affects your daily ability to live, you are still one in 50. Look around on a crowded subway train carriage and consider, at least one other person here is probably going through what you are going through: hell. You are not alone.

6) Experiment with diet.

There are certain conventional wisdoms surrounding tinnitus and our medical profession is all too willing to share them. Both my GP and audiologist advised that reducing or eliminating completely my caffeine and alcohol would help; the latter included as much on a formal tip sheet. As I have pointed out before, I’m data driven, so I searched for the evidence. There is none. There may be lots of good reasons to lower your alcohol and caffeine intake (although a moderate amount of each can be perfectly beneficial for your health), but eliminating tinnitus is not one of them. In fact, the study of studies shows that while reduced caffeine intake may prevent tinnitus, increased caffeine intake helps minimize it for those who already suffer. So. If you have tinnitus, brew her up!

You may also be advised to eliminate NSAIDS (ibuprofen, acetaminophen, aspirin etc.), but again, studies are weak on data. A longitudinal study of adult women (69,455 aged 31-48) showed increased tinnitus with heavy dosage of aspirin, but almost no difference amongst those who took it modestly. And this is only aspirin, not the other NSAIDS.

However, I decided to act on this suggestion, as historically I’ve been too free and easy with the ibuprofen, and I discovered in cutting back that the drug had become a placebo at best. My friend Peter – he of the hearing aids – tells me he had a similar freewheeling attitude towards Motrin but after developing tinnitus, kicked that bad habit, and noticed a difference after 3-6 months. It’s impossible to know if that difference was from the Motrin absence alone.

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7) Take a break from noise.

When tinnitus entered my life permanently last year, it had a similar effect on my psyche as when I fractured my patella only a few months earlier, causing me to ponder, “Will this mean the end of how I live?” In the case of the former, it did, in the short term: I was four months without running a step. I had no choice. However, taking a step back from music was not so easy, given that it is largely my profession. Yet, allowing that one of the toughest things about tinnitus is that certain sounds, tones and volumes suddenly become difficult on the ears, I was forced to make drastic changes. Overnight, I became the person asking to turn things down, rather than the one being asked. I couldn’t enjoy a lot of music, and I certainly wasn’t looking to keep playing guitar through my Fender Mustang Micro. I withdrew from teaching, given that the small room was definitely damaging to my ears, but that wasn’t a mainstay of my job and not something I had been doing for long; I would take it back up in a better acoustic environment.

More to the point, when we went to Costa Rica this summer, though I brought my earbuds with me, I decided not to use them. This is good advice on travels anyway – experience has taught me that some of the best conversations with locals pop up when you least expect them, so you have to be open to them. My hope that taking a break would relieve the tinnitus turned out to be somewhat wishful thinking: however, on the day I had one of the best run-hikes of my life, up and down and all around the Rincón de la Vieja National Park it saddened me that even at the top of the trail to the Hidden Waterfall, a trail so steep and exposed to the sun that no one else was on it that day… I still heard a sound, that ringing in my ears. However, for the vast majority of that trip, I was too busy enjoying myself to focus on my tinnitus. And this bring us to the next and perhaps most important advice:

8) Practice coping mechanisms.

If you are part of the vast majority of tinnitus sufferers with a non-acute version, you can learn to live with it. Of the many coping mechanisms that work, the most important, quite simply, is to come to peace with it. The sooner you can do that, the less pervasive it will be. Tinnitus is well documented as being exacerbated by stress – though in my case it came on just as I was coming out of a stressful period with that damaged knee and feeling good about myself again, so go figure. If you want this all explained in somewhat layman’s terms, go back to Prof. de Ridder, but in short, like a lot of negative aspects of life, if you accept it, you remove the burden of it and can learn to live with it. (See my post Take The Blame.)

For some people, this means trying not to think about their tinnitus, for others it means welcoming it in as an annoying friend, like the pain on a marathon, or the initial temperature of the pool when you go swimming. Jack Rúbinacci, who now co-leads the UK Tinnitus Musicians Support Group, suggests comparing our tinnitus to a sound we love, like that of the ocean waves that we are drawn to via some primordial connection, and notes that, for the vast majority of suffers, that ocean sound is significantly louder than our ringing. It is perhaps no coincidence that those who struggle to sleep – or function by day - are recommended to use noise machines, on which the sound of those waves is usually the first on the list, to drown it out. I am fortunately not in that camp – I have no problems going to sleep, it is much more annoying when I wake up. So I get up and get on with my day.

For many people, meditation is effective. There are apps that educate and help you meditate – during this very week in-between my posts, The Guardian highlighted a new one on the market, MindEar, which I have tried out, and it combines good information with good exercises etc. If you find such an app helpful, use it. Musicians who find amplification difficult and an acoustic guitar to be too shrill can follow Jack Rúbinacci’s example and write their songs on an unplugged electric. (Jack recommend other helpful apps on his interview with How I Got Tinnitus, btw.) Extreme sufferers can opt for Cognitive Therapy. Prof de Ridder cites positive results from the use of psychedelics and hallucinogens including MDMA/Ecstasy, and calls for more detailed research in this area. Some users cite cannabis as a salve, others say it simply heightens the tinnitus.

De Ridder is clear that almost all manner of supposed cures and treatments seem to have an approximately 20% success rate, which does not mean they are failures. It means that it can take trial and error for someone to find out what works for them as an individual but that once they do so, that particular mechanism, medical or meditational, self-help or external, can be highly effective. That said, be wry of snake oil salesmen online are exactly that. My fellow sufferer

Robert Burke Warren

Warren sent me a Facebook link that appears to show Keanu Reeves, who is well documented as having tinnitus, claiming that a particular medication cured him, but the accompanying ominous music and warnings of “brain paralysis” as a result of untreated tinnitus told me in turn to stay very very clear, and it is evident on re-examination of the video that this is not Keanu’s words. There are items being hawked and advertised all over the Internet, and I would again be very cautious about shelling out $/£40-50 for unproven “cures.” (Upgrade your subscription here instead! I can guarantee you there is no snake-oil being sold at Wordsmith, but an awful lot of dedication going into research.) On the other hand, some people simply are finding positive results from easily obtainable and entirely natural substances like Ginseng. If you have found something that works, you are welcome to share it in the comments. Please be very precise in doing so. And don’t despair, because…

9) Have faith: a cure is on the way.

Not today, not tomorrow. But the more we discuss tinnitus which we have only been doing in very recent years – the more we learn. The more we learn, the more more we learn. De Ridder is optimistic about the long-term goal of “eliminating the noise.” With sufficient funding and international collaboration, he says - a big If -there is no reason we cannot find a cure within a decade. I plan to still be around at 70. In the meantime, as I try to in all aspects of life, I will continue to…

10) Be grateful.

If you are not in that 1-2% of the population with debilitating tinnitus, chances are you can eliminate it from interfering with most of your day-to-day existence. We all know it could be worse – Rúbinacci came close to losing his eyesight from an unrelated illness, and started making videos (which led to two books and his leadership role) as a way of “giving back” for the saving grace that his eyes were saved. For my part, given the choice of my fractured knee preventing me from remaining decades of hiking and running, versus the onset of tinnitus, I’ll take the tinnitus, which is not that bad and not as constant as quite a lot of other people. I have been writing these posts in the midst of directing a Prog Rock show. (Indeed, I worked on this very post between soundcheck and show on Jan 12 and the post is being published only about six hours after I took the video of Leo playing drums with headphones on.) Some of the music is loud, but I have learned that if I simply turn the students’ amps down at the rehearsal room to a manageable level, I am not only doing my own tinnitus a favor, I am helping them in the long-term. It’s a shame it took my own affliction to come to this realization, but as I concluded first time on this subject, I’ve had a blast blasting out the music myself over the years.

It took about six months after my onset of tinnitus, but I’ve come to terms with it, and now I hope to, with adaptations and mechanism, get on Living – Happily – with Tinnitus. If you have it too, I wish you the same.