Dissociatives Dissociative-induced Tinnitus

[Chris Timothy]

March update. I was a bit worried my options were getting exhausted and I was in for the long slow wait for the soft hiss to either dissipate or become the new normal. It's surprisingly depressing, compared to harsher symptoms but with the chance specific hacks can be applied. But this month's research turned out quite eventful. Part of it was success with pulmonautics, with insights which can serve the community in general and probably shouldn't be confined to an obscure post in a specialized thread. But the other part of it was increased insight in the phenomenon of inflammation.

Hitherto I've doing symptom managing, but inflammation is a very intricately orchestrated repair process, despite going overboard in many cases justifying some toning down. But working against it too much is apt to backfire. I was surprised to learn that feeding the elderly antioxidants actually increases mortality. The explanation for this lies in the concept termed "hormesis". It's something we all know already, it's the principle that little jolts of disruption strengthen the system. This is why (regrettably, heh) exercise works, why MDMA microdoses boost the immune system, why going out of your mind every now and then helps sanity, etc.. In the same way the body depends on some amount of free radicals. They can be considered messenger molecules in the general cleanup process which is inflammation.

So respecting inflammation as the exquisitely coordinated protocoll it generally is, my focus has shifted from stopping it to helping it along. There's a myriad of ways to go about this and I'll be reading up on it for quite some time I'm sure. But the most easily boosted mediator compounds are the aptly named "resolvins" and "protectins". Many of them are metabolites of omega-3 fatty acids. I was already taking some, because, in the absence of anything actually chemically exciting, it's a noticeable boost in energy and the closest tolerable thing to a nice cup of coffee in the morning. Now it's about finding out how much the dose can be increased. It can become headachy.

Next to omega-3, aspirin is a resolution booster too. It generates its own flavour of lipoxins, another category of specialized pro-resolving mediators. Now this is a scary one, because there is such thing as aspirin-induced tinnitus, which some of you know all too well. And in some studies on inflammation they give the test subjects doses in the gram range.. nope nope nope! But here again should be an instance where dose is everything. If one decreases the dose with an order of magnitude or two, it barely functions as an NSAID anymore, but still produces the lipoxins. Two-digit milligram doses are still recommended for cochlear inflammation specifically.

So those are the new additions to the stack, omega-3 and aspirin. What's still worrying though is that, on top of vitamin E, that now makes for three blood thinners I'm taking. I'll see how much I can spread them out, but if I want to retain the ability to heal from paper cuts I might have to seek replacement for vitamin E, which is a shame because it's been working so damn well. I might even have to cut it out altogether considering the inflammation might resolve the quickest that way.. but I'm not sure how to make that call. In any case it's really hard to be convinced to amplify the noise, if there's any chance at all it's not strictly necessary. But so maybe other antioxidants have a quiet noise profile as well. I got sent magnolia extract by accident, a substance which pleasantly surprised me. But just like EGCG the fact it works directly on GABA receptors makes for a rebound effect. Selenium I haven't experimented with much although it is quiet too, but its antioxidant effects are indirect, so I'm not holding my breath.. well I am, as part of pulmonautic techniques for retaining CO2, but that's a story for another time.

 

[Dr Mamba]

sorry for this dumb post that add nothing to the topic, but just to tell you that I learn so much reading this, it very interesting, go on

 

[Chris Timothy]

Hey, thanks. Don't worry about not doing my homework, it's the pretend help that got to me. You're trying to cure an incurable torturous affliction, and then people come in and act as if you can't google a bloody diet.. dear sweet mother of fml.. Anyway, I'll share some more thoughts on the matter.

I've been wondering whether going down the rabbit hole of immunology has made me lose oversight. Chemicals aren't infections after all. Even though all I've said about inflammation is still valid, the problem should obviously still be framed neurochemically. Overexpression of NMDA receptors causes a vicious cycle of exitotoxicity, making the outer hair cells too sensitive to glutamate, causing cell death by overexitement. So I should really reconsider risking feeding that vicious cycle in an attempt to help the cleanup process of inflammation along, which is secondary. I've therefore stopped the aspirin: it turns out it antagonizes NMDA, lowers GABA and heightens serotonin, all things I don't want to happen. And I've lowered the omega-3 to an inaudible dose too.

And I shouldn't forget the surprising fact that in the face of the long, relatively stable dissociative use pattern which included a whole year on MXE, 3-HO-PCP managed to do me in in only half a year. How does agonism of opioid receptors delta, kappa and mu play into this? I don't know, but there's some success reported with an antagonist of opioid receptors delta, kappa and mu. Naltrexone, the common alcohol detox drug, has some interest to it for general life improvement. I mean, there's a non-profit called "Low Dose Naltrexone", apparently you can even try quitting porn with it. All substances so far have either been rather subtle, or have had the problem of rebound. But Naltrexone has a tinnitus study to its name where half of the participants showed lasting improvement! I'm not sure why this hasn't gathered more attention, probably because there were some people in there for whom it worked the opposite direction. Not too surprising, because it should be kept in mind tinnitus is a symptom of many possible neurological levels, not one single syndrome. I'm not sure whether I should let that stop me, considering a child could point out how Naltrexone reads like the perfect antidote to 3-HO-PCP!

Still.. I'm currently halving my magnesium glycinate intake, because the baseline noise is so quiet now that I can even hear that one's own noise profile. I'd have jumped at the above a couple of months ago, but maybe right now I really shouldn't be taking any risks anymore. Or maybe that's forgetting I'm still applying drastic lifestyle hacks to keep the ears from sizzling, and that I'm not in the end stage of healing at all and really should keep looking at actual cures if I ever want to drink a cup of coffee again.. which is a wholly alien thought considering I've spent the last half a year wishing for nothing else than please just the noise to stop. You know, it sounds twisted, but maybe I want the bloody bland diet around to remind me never to go crazy on the chemicals again, just like how John Lilly had that little dot in the center of his vision left over from his sloppy injection coma, reminding him of the same.

Symptom duration wasn't a factor in the study, 10 year old tinnitus responded equally well as acute-ish tinnitus. So I'm not in a hurry, and will investigate further before I cut any Gordian knots.

 

[MsDiz]

then people come in and act as if you can't google a bloody diet..

Just to say, the diet you professed to eating is not the keto diet that was used medically for kids with epilepsy where ALL these other keto diet pages have been born from. I was explaining to you that maybe, in order to obtain a BETTER result for yourself that undertaking the MEDICAL keto would have been more beneficial. For someone so hell bent on a cure I’m really shocked you’d pass by that information.

I was trying to help you, I don’t waste time writing posts for fun.

 

[MazDan]

I have had tinnitus for 15-20 years. It did annoy me for a while, maybe 6 months or so but then I realised there is not much can be done and so I needed a plan.

It was actually very simple...........stop focussing on it. And to help with that initially if I was allowing myself to "hear" the ringing, then I would purposely find something else to focus on........podcast, TV, being productive, whatever.

Yeah from time to time I become more aware its there, specially when I see threads like this which make me think about it. But its really no longer an issue.

Its no different to tuning out traffic noise or that annoying dog that barks non stop or the cicadas in summer etc etc.

Stop thinking about it. Re train your brain to focus elsewhere.

Good luck.

 

[Chris Timothy]

@MsDiz
Well I didn't get my information from the keto pages to begin with. I don't know why you would assume otherwise. I generally read sources as close to the nuts and bolt as possible, which usually means the scientific papers themselves. I certainly remember reading what exactly they fed the epileptic kids in the beginning, for instance. Then again, I in turn assumed a site with "keto" in the URL must have been a pop/fad one. So I suppose the insult I felt was partly imaginary, my apologies.

@MazDan
There's that glorious piece of advice again.. Look, if I had taken that stuff seriously then I would not have found all the things that have worked to better my situation. People like you have been profoundly unhelpful, to the point of having formed a threat to my health I luckily managed to sidestep. And you could have come to that conclusion yourself if you only had read an inch into this thread. Tinnitus is a complicated, heterogeneous matter, and things that have worked for you don't therefore work for the next person. It's utterly ignorant, arrogant, and again potentially harmful to pretend otherwise. I do not claim any of these hacks necessarily work for you, please in turn don't force your wise old method of sitting there and taking it onto me.

 

[Chris Timothy]

And yes, the literature supports that this whole neurochemical and immunological cascade is set off by kappa opioid agonism, usually mediated by the very versatile molecule dynorphin. Which is in turn set off directly noradrenergically, as with acoustic trauma, or by external ligands like 3-HO-PCP. Indeed, cases of salvia-induced tinnitus can also be found.

I've ordered some Naltrexone from across the globe, I should be able to report back on it in a couple of months.

 

[cosmic charlie]

I hope you feel better soon man, your à good dude and ive always been fond of you. I know sometimes it feels like this shit will never stop and trust me the first few years after I fucked up royally with DXM and my ears rang loud i was really upset about it but then it just slowly vanished and now I can even take Dissos again which I thought would NEVER happen. But trust and believe I wouldnt touch DXM with a ten foot poll as im sure you wont do 3-HO-PCP. Sobriety was what really helped me when I was locked up for 5 years and I mean you sure as hell dont want that to happen but it seems like your on the right path on your own with the suppléments. Appreciate all the good talk about Magnésium Glycinate because I started using it after this thread for some headaches I was dealing with after à Flmodafanil binge and it helped with that to, its deff à very bioavailable form. Just wanted to let you know im routine for you and still following the thread, glad their has been progress.

 

[MazDan]

@MsDiz
Well I didn't get my information from the keto pages to begin with. I don't know why you would assume otherwise. I generally read sources as close to the nuts and bolt as possible, which usually means the scientific papers themselves. I certainly remember reading what exactly they fed the epileptic kids in the beginning, for instance. Then again, I in turn assumed a site with "keto" in the URL must have been a pop/fad one. So I suppose the insult I felt was partly imaginary, my apologies.

@MazDan
There's that glorious piece of advice again.. Look, if I had taken that stuff seriously then I would not have found all the things that have worked to better my situation. People like you have been profoundly unhelpful, to the point of having formed a threat to my health I luckily managed to sidestep. And you could have come to that conclusion yourself if you only had read an inch into this thread. Tinnitus is a complicated, heterogeneous matter, and things that have worked for you don't therefore work for the next person. It's utterly ignorant, arrogant, and again potentially harmful to pretend otherwise. I do not claim any of these hacks necessarily work for you, please in turn don't force your wise old method of sitting there and taking it onto me.

OK no worries, I now understand that tinnitis is not your actual problem. Good luck with that.

 

[JackARoe]

I hope you feel better soon man, your à good dude and ive always been fond of you. I know sometimes it feels like this shit will never stop and trust me the first few years after I fucked up royally with DXM and my ears rang loud i was really upset about it but then it just slowly vanished and now I can even take Dissos again which I thought would NEVER happen.

Same sentiment here too @Chris Timothy Feel better man. You will, I know that. BL is a better place because of you and this thread. It goes all over the place but interesting.

I have been digging around for the physical mechanism of how a dissociative drug can cause noise in the ear. I would assume ear. We know when we break a bone we put it in a cast and it heals. Totally logical ( as much as nature healing can be logical in fact nature is not logical in my mind) as a treatment to heal a bone. But tinnitus, we can break it down to something as simple as wax build up or other blockages. We can get hisses. But now the notion of a drug physically doing something to the ear, and I say ear here not the mind...yet. But that is what I have been digging for in this thread. But now I see tinnitus as possibly having 2 origins. Physical and in the mind.

The mind part as been thrown around here too, Noises in the mind. And then you threw in kapa agonism and I have not even thought about that yet since you just threw it out here. But I hear voices on Salvia. (I am still sane though lol) Anyway the notion that the noise is in the mind and not the ear has been discussed. Add in DXM, or PCP and what exactly happens to cause it and what is it really? Kapa agonism brings out a parade. and I can agree there is more stuff in there. DMT too though. Voices, music etc...But to me seems dissociatives are causing something because I have seen many threads of people talking dissociatives and tinnitus. We still have not defined it. Someting similar to aspirin or at least how aspirin causes it.. Stay away from aspirin as it causes ringing in the ears. That is the only physical way I can induce a tinnitus in me every time. Aspiring moves the volume up. So I wonder if some of the PCP analogs do something similar. I do like some of the recommendations. Omega 3 for sure. There has to be more healing things.

@MazDan threw out a whole lot of truth though and to me it was helpful. (we are all trying to dig into this topic). Again the whole white noise treatment has to do with focus. I can deal with some tangible physical explanation of tinnitus, or voices, or whatever but I also need that deeper part. Here is what I know. 10 years from now you won't be thinking about tinnitus because life will consume you and all things pass like leaves floating down a river. You will look back and realize you have not thought about it for a long time. These noises, whatever they are can be let go. Can be watched as clouds that float by. In fact we have to let go of all things. (helpful? lol) I need that mystical part. I think we all do. I like talking to things that bother me. Like say "later" or "bye". The devil likes to make you worry. lol But it passes!

I reiterate, I think all people here hisses, gurgles and things. I do, never hear silence. Luxurious silence happens later after we let this stuff go. It is underneath all of the noise. One odd thing I just remembered is some DMT come ups all of a sudden everything gets completely silent like you were blasted into space. All the noise in the room and mind get silent for a few moments.

I can say this, I can sit here in silence and there is parade in my mind. LOL And I am ok with that. Total Peace.

 

[Chris Timothy]

@MazDan
It's indeed actually almost gone, thanks to ignoring imperatives like your "stop thinking about it". I read up about it, am fixing what I can, it's working quite well, and if you need to demean my person over that then the problem is all yours.

I don't know why I'm not being clear that talking people into longterm acceptance of a fleeting symptom is a twisted thing to do. It subtly implies delusion on the other person's end, which is insulting, and generally quite upsetting considering it threatens to lull people in need of intervention in a sense of complacency. Which is apparently funny to upstanding people like @tired of crap, but really quite harmful, a fact I'd like a harm reduction space of all places to acknowledge.

Please don't be the cripple putting others down because unable to stand the standing. One naturally sympathizes with suffering, but if that same suffering serves to spread suffering to others you can't reasonably expect to be lovingly sat down and patiently explained why you phrased things poorly. Just heed the message and don't take it personally.


@Shadow Cat
Thanks man, that's touching, especially now I sometimes ask myself what I'm still doing here. It has helped me a lot knowing someone has been there before, or at least somewhere close. DXM lacks the relevant opioid angle, but it has the serotonergic effect alongside the dissociation. It's like heroin tinnitus versus MDMA tinnitus, but coming together through a shared glutamate fiddling, heh.

@JackARoe
Because I'm sure that's how you can define dissociative-induced tinnitus: the positive feedback cycle causing hair cell damage is glutamate-mediated, which is aided by NMDAR upregulation, a side-effect of dissociatives. 3-HO-PCP adds kappa-opioid emphasis upstream to that. You are absolutely right there's an operating system component, and one of the many subgroups of tinnitus indeed seems to be about the most central mental organization only. But no it's not appropriate to reduce it to such in the presence of multifarious potential neurological issues. It's the basic principle of the nervous system that constant sensations are filtered out. It's why we ignore backgrounds and focus on movement, can get used to all kinds of pain almost limitlessly, why we gravitate towards worrying about changes, etc.. I do not believe that a rather selective failure of the mind to do so deserves equal footing with mechanical failure, considering multiple possible malfunctions of the inner ear, the cochlear nerve, the relay centra of the brainstem and upwards, and mechanical damage and demyelination of all the connecting wires, and all the neurochemistry and immune responses that dovetail into those. The science indeed tries to move it all to a mind paradigm, but that's because they're stubbornly trying to put all these dysfunctions under one header. But such forced greatest common divisor is a factor that doesn't represent most cases anymore. It's important to recognize that to avoid falling for the narrative it's all in one's head. Which from one perspective it obviously is. But which from other perspectives most likely doesn't help.

 

[Chris Timothy]

Alright, exciting times. I'm in the second week of Naltrexone, 50mg a day. The occasional ear pain has pretty much subsided, which serves as evidence for the theory. Nevertheless it has, like so freakin' many molecules, its own noise profile. Or more precisely, its metabolites seem to have, as it arises an hour after the initial effects. Which are interesting. Everything hurts a bit more emotionally, which can be used for deepening introspection. But it's less pushy an effect than something serotonergic. It increases the ever so slight psychoactive effects of the supplements as well, which gives the weird illusion that an opioid blocker of all things is the most euphoric substance I'm currently taking, heh. Though when the supplements wear off it shows its somewhat dysphoric side. I can see how it could be therefore used as an exercise inducer, because of the tendency to compensate.

The new noise had me worried the first and second day, before I noticed the perks. But that shouldn't be surprising as it's supposed to take away the root cause, not directly prevent hair cell death. It's the inflammation that turns the ears into chemofeedback devices, it's two or three degrees of influence removed from the kappa-opioid agonism. It'll come down to how the world sounds when I come off of it. I plan to finish three weeks of Naltrexone, and spread out the fourth week supply to ween off, just in case that's necessary. If there will be, as reported, no rebound, then I should be meeting a new level of quietude. The exitotoxic cycles will still have to run their course, and the brainstem will have to slowly recalibrate as with so many forms of transient tinnitus. But I hope they won't arise spontaneously anymore. They very well could, the people from the study kept improving over the whole three months they were medicated, so three weeks might not be enough. Then again, presumably they didn't hit themselves in the head with a kappa-opioid agonist for half a year, so who knows.

And I'm a light case after all, especially at this stage. I wish I would have come up with this idea immediately after I had symptoms. I really wonder what would have happened the first three months in, what Naltrexone would have done to penetrative persistent presence of peep.

I forgot to mention during the sidetracking, but Q10 is another sufficiently silent antioxidant (next to vitamin E) I tried to add to the stack. Tried to, because the cost has been prohibitive. Only bulk purchase is justifiable really, but that too takes some saving up of course. Now during the Naltrexone noise I'm not sure whether it's worth it, but it's also something that I'm sure would have helped significantly past half a year. Antioxidants typically combine to more than mere summation, so even just two silent antioxidants is big.

In the meanwhile I've got my breath comfortably down to two breaths a minute. The noise is most absent right after waking up, which must be due to sleep metabolism being at 5/6 its waking rate. One Indian monk is on record bringing it down to 1/3. That's a rather advanced trick, but it should be possible to evoke sleep metabolism while awake, eventually. Metabolism basically equates to oxygen consumption, so it comes simply down to cultivating CO2 desensitization. Although the keto diet plays a little role here as well, there's some biochemical overlap between ketosis and pulmonautic biomarkers, so it should have given a head start.

Hurray to shitty food, I guess?

 

[JackARoe]

Something happened since discussing this thread from the other month. Was going to post sooner but it shows my vulnerability. It turned my attention back to tinnitus. And I realized as I sit here at any given moment I have a high pitched whistle and steam hissing thing going on pretty much constantly. So I am thinking about this as I smoked some weed the other night and almost had a panic attack because I was high and could not get away from this hissing. I had to calm myself down, remind myself that it did not just start and I have been living with it all along anyway. But all this stuff kicked it back to the time when it did freak me out.

None of my rationing worked with myself. I had to get back to the place where this noise was in the background and did not consume me again. But all I could think of was what damn remedy would produce an immediate result to quell it. We have nothing but the basics for tinnitus. Yet on the other hand I have a hard time believing there are people that do not experience this. Almost similar to how we don't have total blackness behind the closed eyes either. There are flashes of light and patterns etc... pitch black is behind the patterns and light flahes.

Anyway all of it went back to the background noise and I slowly came out of the obsession. TInnitus is back in its place and reached a peaceful acceptance, enough so I don't hear noises anymore unless I focus and let it get to me.

I think tinnitus is both a physical mechanism as well as a mind one. LIke when aspirin is a sure fire way to cause it that is physical. Loud noises have screwed up some people too so that is physical. So there are physical components mixed with mind attention and no one has that luxuriously silence. But I do know the silence exists behind the noise and someday will reach that.

@Chris Timothy Hope you quelled some of these inner ear demons (total humor lol) and are doing well. I did put it back in its place.I have to wrestle it the ground and use whateve remedy I have as well as mind focus. The white noise theory was onto something dealing with focus and attention. (anyone ever wake up early predawn and tried to get back to sleep but the morning birds are too loud and say quiet!? More noises in the head lol), pleasant and meditative in one situation and and noisy in another. But as far as medicine that one pill that takes away inner ear/mind noise may not be a pill at all but possible some forms of exercise. Maybe blasting the ear with a form of noise as well as a meditation practice. Man we know nothing do we? All should be tried.

 

[Mr. Krinkle]

The more you focus on it the worse it will get. I have pretty bad panic attacks and it’s the same principle, if I focused On my panic it would just intensify but when I just accept I am just panicking and that it’s no big deal it fades away.

Right - i have it too and if i focus on it, then it'll get worse - so i pay no attention to it - and panic attacks are the same way - i agree wholeheartedly

 

[Chris Timothy]

So where was I? Right, Naltrexone. It took the ear pain and pressure away within a couple days. I kept taking it for the next month, but I can't say it did anything for the tinnitus itself, other than to add its own noise profile, which took an additional month or two to die off. I can conclude the dynorphin/k-opioid mechanism is the important first domino block that had to be dealt with, but it's a limited part of the whole tinnitus tiramisu. (A medical clue to be discussed later brought me to the kratom family, and an otalgic run-in with kratom - kratom companies obviously put kratom samples with their offbeat orders - was indeed reversed with the little bits of Naltrexone left. Possibly kratom can be enjoyed by ear patients on Naltrexone, but it's an expensive way of doing so.)

The budgetary constraints then led to the ever-trusty medicine of the poor, the plants. Quercetin, otovasodilator, I found not to tolerate very well despite the studies with Ginkgo Biloba and the like. However, 10mg of Cissus Quandrangularis with every carbless meal does help. Its essential ingredient can't but be resveratrol, a substance too subtle to have aroused interest of wikipedians. Maybe the fact it's a prodrug to it matters. It's the same with salt, which has remained a problem. Salt crystals of any kind mess me up in any quantity, but if I use 2g of salted butter with a meal I'm fine. It's weird.

Salt still is kind of the most annoying thing currently. I've tried alternative salts like KCl and CaCl and the taste is forgivable but K+,Ca2+,Na+, they're all involved in ear physiology. Lysine is currently the most promising way making things taste non-bland. But it hikes up cholesterol, which ends up registering on the internal tone scale as well. A preliminary experiment with lysine and lipid medicine medication turned out positive, but the cost-effectiveness of such setups are for now unclear.

The main thing medicinal plants have to offer is modulation of the inflammatory response. That's a slight cheat cuz often this is linked to obvious antioxidant capacity. But regardless there's a broad scale of intervention levels in the immune system they can enter. They're carby though, so the net effects have to be considered. But they've been another major step, on equal footing with vitE, Q10 and magnesium. Effective inflammatory control with minimal registration on the internal sonic-output mass-spectrometer that is the tinnitus-producing human cochlea. (I stopped taking magnesium at some point by the way. Through accidental skippage I noticed at some point the only thing it did anymore was adding its own noise profile. It's a reminder that different methods can work for different stages in a healing process. Do re-evaluate your chemical bandaids periodically, circumstances might have changed.)

The second thing plants are useful for is controlling blood sugar, in various ways.
-Sugar replacements: I had poor results with these initially, even the innocuous stevia quickly gets too carby. But it turns out there's an atypical sugar alcohol, in birches called xylitol. Interest was piqued serendipidously through one study linking it to ear pain treatment. Apparently it sabotages bacteria, helping mouth hygiene and bacterial ear infections. After testing I doubt it helps any infection in my ear, but for some reason it does minimally impact the tinnitus, so I'm able to sweeten food again with tiny (it's also a laxative) scoops of sugar crystals. Hurray to birches, go hug a tree.
-Direct control: when other sugars do reach my diet, like when I'm craving a lemon, then I want to clamp. This I can do with fenugreek, dandelion root and milk thistle seeds. Curcumin and tulsi also help in that regard, maybe just as antioxidants. I don't have them fresh, and ingesting the ground powder quickly backfires, but filtering out the plant material with kitchen towels does the trick. Using a moka pot speeds it up, as normal filtration is slow with all the clogging. Putting dry powder in a filter sandwich and chasing stream through it seems to extract sufficient active ingredients. Always add piperine (dash of black pepper) to potentiate curcumin. Sometimes I add moringa and guduchi, but it's unclear whether it nets to anything. Same with verbena, though through vaping seems to isolate the active, gently downing component effectively. ROA is important, as always. Propolis should also be mentioned. Though not a plant, it's a purported antioxidant, at least enough radical-scavenging to compensate for the fact it comes in alcohol tinctures. Cuz yes, single drops of vodka-strength ethanol mixtures used to give me earache. Nowadays I can tolerate a couple. But with some planning the alcohol can be evaporated off, for instance by dripping it on the xylitol and leaving it on the radiator. That way things get to taste like honey again, without any sugar.

Third there was the interesting effect of Uncaria Tomentosa (cat's claw). Common doses backfire, but something like 10-15mg markedly quieted things down. Interestingly, one of its active components, rhynchophylline, is an NMDA-antagonist. In addition it's even a kidneyfucker curiously enough, an even worse one than the clinical dissociatives. But nothing extra hydration hasn't been able to mitigate. This is what got me into the realm of kratom, because it turns out the Mitragyna family carries rhynchophylline as well. I indulged because the Stipulosa species (common kratom is Mitragyna Speciosa) appeared to have negligible k-opioid activity. Well, it turns out it does hurt my ear nevertheless, I had to abandon the lead, but of course did leave me with renewed appreciation for good old friend NMDA-antagonism.

Fourth, there's Angelica Archangelica. It blocks sodium and calcium channels. I take it through tea of its roots so a little carb spike hits at first, but an hour in there's marked improvement in noise levels.

So together these two plant functions pointed back at the direction of the hightech lab, a vista closed off by the stochastic approach to health, previously. You know, fixing chemistry fuckups with more chemistry, really?! But here there were clear indications the initial literature swoop undersold the effects of ketamine and lidocaine. I happened to have a by-the-feels-of-it non-serotonergic dissociative still laying around here, O-PCE, and yes, over the course of emptying the baggie and writing this piece there's a source of hissing that's been taken away. I did make sure to supplement every dose and redose with a capsule of NAC and EGCG. They weren't helpful previously because of the addition of their own noise profile, but I intuited while off my tits that they would now and yes indeed they do. I will probably keep dosing NAC and EGCG from now on whenever I indulge in dissociative anesthetics.

But just now I've thrown a bunch of serotonergic dissociatives at my ear and the noise profile really isn't too bad, so the neuroplasticity must be closing the window for experimentation rapidly. I would have expected an extra distinct noise profile from messing with serotonin based on last year's experiments. I had introduced vigorous physical exercise about a year in to the tinnitus experience, reckoning it was time to ignore the shortterm stressor downside and reap the longterm physical benefits, but boy do the dissos speed up the nervous system part of regeneration!

Nevertheless there should be lidocaine on its way. The most promising studies have used an IV drip, but I have ideas for rectal sustained release methods if lidocaine doesn't mess with rectal muscle function too much so I should get it fairly directly into the bloodstream. Very interested whether that will indeed hopefully kill the very last leftovers of tramped-off tone.

So kindly fuck off with your lazy approaches to health please. You have not been helpful.


Edit: oh and Lapacho bark should have been in the herbal inflammation treatment train, been a game changer as well. Another one that generally flies under the radar of the mainstream research, but whose subtlety perfectly fits the delicate ear.

 

[pupnik]

I have had hearing loss since I was 4yrs old, but my parents did not want me stigmatized with hearing aids - which were ugly transistor radio thingy's in 1956
I never thought about being partly deaf, until I had trouble understanding what people were saying 6 feet away and finally got hearing aids at around 50 yrs old.

I should have been wearing them throughout life, but I did become a good speech guesser and partial lip reader as well - so tinnitus is normal and familiar to me.
very similar to white and pink noise from a synthesizer.

After discovering NBOMES about 8 years ago, I noticed that I get a sound effect that is like szt.szt..szt.szt..szt.szt..szt.szt..szt.szt.. when stoned, and later I noted the same sound on weed, on lysergamides and during sitting meditation or when some trancing sets in (sometimes when falling asleep).

the way I understand it, as my state of mind becomes more resonant (tranced/stoned/emotional) the background tinnitus (which all people with some hearing loss get to greater or lesser degrees) becomes stacked in time, along with other frames of experience, and the "szt.szt..szt.szt..szt.szt..szt.szt..szt.szt." has become for me an early audible indicator that I am in an altered state - it is (IMO) the audible trails of tinnitus.

if tinnitus bugs you, you probably need hearing aids, which I have, but usually do not wear when stoned as they are a pressure bother, and the energy of enhanced sounds is somehow more intrusive to me than the background hissing or the now friendly szt.szt..szt.szt..szt.szt..szt.szt..szt.szt.

 

[Chris Timothy]

That's interesting, but please be careful not to make the mistake just about everyone in this thread is making, which is to extrapolate one's own sonic experiential aberration into the tremendously towering trough termed 'tinnitus'.

If you have noise on an electronic sound system, there's a myriad of components that need to be checked. The actual actuator, the amplifier, there can be ground loop, any one of the cables might have a problem, magnetic interference, or the more central computing component clutter, and even the soddin' software. Now imagine an extraterrestrial sound system having fallen from the sky, with its S/N-ratio worsened through impact. Would you really be comfortable readily betting on any part of it being the damaged culprit?

The simile works because to some ever-decreasing degree our biology is alien to our cognition. It's not conceptually impenetrable, it can be investigated with meticulous persistence. But there's absolutely no need for staunch defeatism or narrowing simplification.

 

[Chris Timothy]

So the lidocaine arrived. At first I was disappointed it seems to have its own noise profile as well, but at the right dose it kills the sine waves tones effectively, which are the most annoying ones so that's great. I couraged into the serotonergic hazard of 3-Me0-PCE to see whether it would undercut induced tinnitus on a different level, and yes it did. Then I redosed with the ratio shifted towards more lidocaine per "Dr. Stangelove", and had the unpleasant experiences of finding out the fact the lidocaine hadn't cleared as quickly as the dissociative effects. Coming out of lidocaine unconsciousness is odd, it's like a reversed way of coming out of a deep dissociative hole. Instead of being unable to use language, I used language before I knew what it was. The re-emergence of concepts was different as well. It took a while before I knew what life was, what a human being with controllable hands was, my name, my situation, in that order. I feared for my life at some point going in, but somehow decided against declaring it a medical emergency. After realizing the concept of interaction, I interacted with objects before knowing how and why I did so, or before I-ness was a graspable concept. Very unique, somewhat frightening experience. Pronouncing letters before understanding what's the deal about symbols. Such weird stuff. Currently awaiting whether this potent, direct form of sodium channel blockage enables me to digest salty food without consequence. Will update.

 

[Chris Timothy]

There are herbal serotonin blockers out there to follow the pattern of putting the little buggers in reverse as to clean up damage. It indeed does seem to work like that, I've had some feverfew tea, and it indeed blocks sonic pollution otherwise evocable from 3-MeO-PCE through the serotonergic pathways of inflammation I presume. Or not. The herb might just be very weak a blocker to oppose the doc? Still using the F&B 3-Me0-PCE reference as if he hasn't returned to spread more legacy, hah.

 

[Chris Timothy]

Everywhere where there are reports about tinnitus it's a freakin' minefield. Talk about treatment, and the acceptance crowd gets defensive. Talk about acceptance, and the treatment crowd feels gaslit. I've been part of the treatment crowd of course, but now I feel I've done what I can I've looked around a bit broader.

Apparently in some Mahayana Buddhist literature, specifically the Surangama Sutra, internal sound is used as meditation aid. Nada meditation seems to be primarily about hallucinated music, but it can be applied to tinnitus as well. Pretty whack that some people seem to actively evoke tinnitus in themselves just so they can play around with the otherworldly "silvery shimmering", the infinitely continuous form of which reminds them of cosmic essence. Focus on it enough and, just like how a screen is the persistent presence underlying the cinema image, the persistent presence of crystalline microharmonics starts feelings like it underlies a projected unreality, in contrast to which the yet deeper underlying reality of voidness can more readily be experienced.

It gets more technical than that, because ultimately there is no such contrast, no such need for distinction between everyday experience and revelatory essence. But I just wanted to roughly sketch what Nada meditation entails, considering y'all are more of an acceptance crowd. Therefore you're perhaps interested to know one can even take it beyond acceptance and, kinda reminiscent of trepanation, positively revel in the mind expansion inherent in or at least associable with this instantiation of the Universal Om sound.