Chris Timothy
Bluelighter
Hi guys,
I haven't been keeping up with the bluelight lately. Contracting substance-induced tinnitus really sucks, and makes you wanna keep some distance from drug positivity for once. It's not severe tinnitus, but imagine that whenever room ambiance gets quiet enough, like when visiting the throne, you experience the equivalent of having a voice whisper in your ear: "this time you fucked up real bad, dude". Imagine how troublesome meditation gets when it amounts to growing such voice. But today I woke up first noticing the symptom was notably less, so let me report on what's happened, and what I've been gathering from the literature so far. Note that I have used google scholar, I haven't searched bluelight for anecdotal leads yet.
Ironically enough, I had supposedly the next best thing since sliced bread (read: since MXE) arrive in the mailbox at the same time I noticed the come-up ringing-in-the-ears was persisting. But the noise has been more awful than dissociatives can be awesome, so I've had no problem keeping the drawer shut, which might come as a surprise to anyone who might have subtly given me crap about my management skills, you know who you are.
It turns out there are some known substances which can cause this phenomenon, even aspirin (mad doses, but still). I didn't encounter any cases of dissociative-induced tinnitus. On the contrary, ketamine has been mentioned as a possible fix for it. The fact there's a least one dissociative capable of causing it though (3-HO-PCP), gives some credence that antagonizing the NMDAR-complex is at least fiddling with some relevant bits, even though it can clearly backfire. Of course I wasn't compelled to risk putting more oil on the fire. There are some avenues for other brave experiments though, as there are plenty of anti-epileptic substances, and tinnitus is perhaps some sort of auditory epilepsy. It's an idea, the side-effects often seem awful.
What bothered me enormously though was that weed seems to make things worse! And thing is, from the neurological model it really shouldn't.. yet in practice the tone intensifies, and even other tones get added, bloody hell! Those were always gone the next day, but it's still very disturbing to feel as if you're bludgeoning the brainium with simple innocent herbium. It crossed my mind that perhaps it's because 3-HO-PCP allowed me to combine with cannabis in the evening that the damage could've been caused through interaction, as the downer side prevented those blatant rocket fuel interactions you get with toking up on other dissociatives. This would make cannabis complicit. But I haven't been able to quit it entirely, and my hearing still seems to be getting better, so I'm inclined to discredit that theory.
Because I suppose binging 3-HO-PCP should be enough to explain everything. I had the doubts because I reckon I've consumed more MXE than 3-HO-PCP in my life, so why can't I recall any MXE-induced tinnitus? Well, I didn't get into these fugue-ish states with MXE where memory completely stops functioning. You'd be off either in blissful mania, borderline psychosis, or off into hyperspace. Take the upper aspect away from those and you get a situation in which you can seek up some deeper limits. I've reported on the messes I made on 3-HO-PCP, but in the end I found a stable dosing strategy. This allowed me to keep using daily, and becoming a victim of success so to speak.
The literature did discern between THC and CBD. The latter usually is the harmless one. But even CBD felt like a mixed bag: first feeling relief from care dropping away, then getting disturbed later on in so far as it gets in the way of keeping yourself distracted. Getting more into your own head means sitting with closer proximity to the out-of-hand circuitry and its audible presence in consciousness. That said, CBD could still be used to keep THC in check, to get the minimum dose in for closing off the day.
It's interesting to note the psychological component to tinnitus. Just like with anxiety attacks, negative emotional states can apparently start feeding back into the symptoms. One has to wonder whether this explains why weed messes things up, despite looking harmless and even beneficial from the neurological POV. But so that's the advice you get online, try not to worry about it. Problematic advice of course, but it did steer me in the direction of alcohol.
There's old literature with a preachy tone claiming one should start abstaining from booze, as well as caffeine and even salt! Neither of those latter two had any effect as far as I could notice.. I suppose without coffee some people get too drowsy to notice their head's messed up? Newer literature agrees that quitting caffeine could easily make things worse. About alcohol it had more interesting things to say. In one of the bigger surveys, about 2/3 of tinnitus sufferers reported alcohol to have no effect on it, with the other 1/3 divided in positive and negative. I myself get the impression that it helps, maybe because I'm a heavy drinker and the first drink doesn't get me in my head anymore. It crossed my mind that those two camps could be looking at two sides of the hooch cycle: you don't notice it while pissed, and you notice it extra while hungover and in pain. My poor, overly trained liver saves me from hangovers nowadays, so that could make sense. Though in my opinion it's different than with say CBD where the (short) relief is from seizing to care. A nice bender more of less hits the sweet spot of actually somewhat dampening the sound.. though the question should be raised whether drawing such distinction even makes sense, like, is it even objectively there if you're subjectively not experiencing it.
So with any of these common substances the picture is complex, with factors from neurology and multiple levels of psychology interplaying, and it stays up for discussion whether any of 'em really help or harm or not. Since a fair share of tinnitus sees spontaneous improvement, I'm inclined to think the effects are probably irrelevant. Whatever makes the ride smooth I guess.. so yeah, cheers to that.
One little side-note about how both tripping and physical hearing damage could end up with the same symptoms. With regular tinnitus the tone can, upon neurological inspection, be seen to correspond to the tones that have been disconnected from the regular auditory pathways. It's not the peep tones overshadowing input from outside, the frequency lanes themselves have been split off and become its own little loop in the mind. It gets described in surprising detail in the literature, surely many leads to be gathered from taking the full dive into the neurological realm. With dissociatives, and especially dissociatives capable of hitting deep over a long time, some parallel can be seen. In both cases there's a forceful hit followed by a disconnection of some sort. That's the idea I got by skimming it. Maybe it's hand-waving.
But so at the moment I'm confident I'll recover from this eventually. I still feel screwed over as I really really dig quietude, I daydream of sabotaging the noisy construction vehicles around me, and I've built an extra quiet PC (while perma-shitfaced, still proud I got something working in the end!), just to end up getting the noise pollution stuck in me own noggin'. One warning for anyone on the frontline pushing the dissociative limit: you don't really pay attention to the come-up tinnitus as you're too busy feeling awesome, obviously. But at some point you start noticing it getting stronger on the comedown, or appearing earlier in the comedown. I didn't think much of it, just thought of it as a couple hours to pay for what preceded. But in retrospect that was the big red flag, and before I knew it the noise was permanent. Any noticeable increase in auditory filth is therefore to be taken seriously.
Hope this helps others with reducing harm.
I haven't been keeping up with the bluelight lately. Contracting substance-induced tinnitus really sucks, and makes you wanna keep some distance from drug positivity for once. It's not severe tinnitus, but imagine that whenever room ambiance gets quiet enough, like when visiting the throne, you experience the equivalent of having a voice whisper in your ear: "this time you fucked up real bad, dude". Imagine how troublesome meditation gets when it amounts to growing such voice. But today I woke up first noticing the symptom was notably less, so let me report on what's happened, and what I've been gathering from the literature so far. Note that I have used google scholar, I haven't searched bluelight for anecdotal leads yet.
Ironically enough, I had supposedly the next best thing since sliced bread (read: since MXE) arrive in the mailbox at the same time I noticed the come-up ringing-in-the-ears was persisting. But the noise has been more awful than dissociatives can be awesome, so I've had no problem keeping the drawer shut, which might come as a surprise to anyone who might have subtly given me crap about my management skills, you know who you are.
It turns out there are some known substances which can cause this phenomenon, even aspirin (mad doses, but still). I didn't encounter any cases of dissociative-induced tinnitus. On the contrary, ketamine has been mentioned as a possible fix for it. The fact there's a least one dissociative capable of causing it though (3-HO-PCP), gives some credence that antagonizing the NMDAR-complex is at least fiddling with some relevant bits, even though it can clearly backfire. Of course I wasn't compelled to risk putting more oil on the fire. There are some avenues for other brave experiments though, as there are plenty of anti-epileptic substances, and tinnitus is perhaps some sort of auditory epilepsy. It's an idea, the side-effects often seem awful.
What bothered me enormously though was that weed seems to make things worse! And thing is, from the neurological model it really shouldn't.. yet in practice the tone intensifies, and even other tones get added, bloody hell! Those were always gone the next day, but it's still very disturbing to feel as if you're bludgeoning the brainium with simple innocent herbium. It crossed my mind that perhaps it's because 3-HO-PCP allowed me to combine with cannabis in the evening that the damage could've been caused through interaction, as the downer side prevented those blatant rocket fuel interactions you get with toking up on other dissociatives. This would make cannabis complicit. But I haven't been able to quit it entirely, and my hearing still seems to be getting better, so I'm inclined to discredit that theory.
Because I suppose binging 3-HO-PCP should be enough to explain everything. I had the doubts because I reckon I've consumed more MXE than 3-HO-PCP in my life, so why can't I recall any MXE-induced tinnitus? Well, I didn't get into these fugue-ish states with MXE where memory completely stops functioning. You'd be off either in blissful mania, borderline psychosis, or off into hyperspace. Take the upper aspect away from those and you get a situation in which you can seek up some deeper limits. I've reported on the messes I made on 3-HO-PCP, but in the end I found a stable dosing strategy. This allowed me to keep using daily, and becoming a victim of success so to speak.
The literature did discern between THC and CBD. The latter usually is the harmless one. But even CBD felt like a mixed bag: first feeling relief from care dropping away, then getting disturbed later on in so far as it gets in the way of keeping yourself distracted. Getting more into your own head means sitting with closer proximity to the out-of-hand circuitry and its audible presence in consciousness. That said, CBD could still be used to keep THC in check, to get the minimum dose in for closing off the day.
It's interesting to note the psychological component to tinnitus. Just like with anxiety attacks, negative emotional states can apparently start feeding back into the symptoms. One has to wonder whether this explains why weed messes things up, despite looking harmless and even beneficial from the neurological POV. But so that's the advice you get online, try not to worry about it. Problematic advice of course, but it did steer me in the direction of alcohol.
There's old literature with a preachy tone claiming one should start abstaining from booze, as well as caffeine and even salt! Neither of those latter two had any effect as far as I could notice.. I suppose without coffee some people get too drowsy to notice their head's messed up? Newer literature agrees that quitting caffeine could easily make things worse. About alcohol it had more interesting things to say. In one of the bigger surveys, about 2/3 of tinnitus sufferers reported alcohol to have no effect on it, with the other 1/3 divided in positive and negative. I myself get the impression that it helps, maybe because I'm a heavy drinker and the first drink doesn't get me in my head anymore. It crossed my mind that those two camps could be looking at two sides of the hooch cycle: you don't notice it while pissed, and you notice it extra while hungover and in pain. My poor, overly trained liver saves me from hangovers nowadays, so that could make sense. Though in my opinion it's different than with say CBD where the (short) relief is from seizing to care. A nice bender more of less hits the sweet spot of actually somewhat dampening the sound.. though the question should be raised whether drawing such distinction even makes sense, like, is it even objectively there if you're subjectively not experiencing it.
So with any of these common substances the picture is complex, with factors from neurology and multiple levels of psychology interplaying, and it stays up for discussion whether any of 'em really help or harm or not. Since a fair share of tinnitus sees spontaneous improvement, I'm inclined to think the effects are probably irrelevant. Whatever makes the ride smooth I guess.. so yeah, cheers to that.
One little side-note about how both tripping and physical hearing damage could end up with the same symptoms. With regular tinnitus the tone can, upon neurological inspection, be seen to correspond to the tones that have been disconnected from the regular auditory pathways. It's not the peep tones overshadowing input from outside, the frequency lanes themselves have been split off and become its own little loop in the mind. It gets described in surprising detail in the literature, surely many leads to be gathered from taking the full dive into the neurological realm. With dissociatives, and especially dissociatives capable of hitting deep over a long time, some parallel can be seen. In both cases there's a forceful hit followed by a disconnection of some sort. That's the idea I got by skimming it. Maybe it's hand-waving.
But so at the moment I'm confident I'll recover from this eventually. I still feel screwed over as I really really dig quietude, I daydream of sabotaging the noisy construction vehicles around me, and I've built an extra quiet PC (while perma-shitfaced, still proud I got something working in the end!), just to end up getting the noise pollution stuck in me own noggin'. One warning for anyone on the frontline pushing the dissociative limit: you don't really pay attention to the come-up tinnitus as you're too busy feeling awesome, obviously. But at some point you start noticing it getting stronger on the comedown, or appearing earlier in the comedown. I didn't think much of it, just thought of it as a couple hours to pay for what preceded. But in retrospect that was the big red flag, and before I knew it the noise was permanent. Any noticeable increase in auditory filth is therefore to be taken seriously.
Hope this helps others with reducing harm.
