I had sudden tinnitus start in my left ear pulsing a high pitch with my heartbeat. Then slowly a crackling started in my right with its volume based on what I'm hearing. Now Im bombarded with noise every moment of every day. Docs have basically said "welp this is your life now". The Antidepressants arent cheap either!
Two things helped me: learning not to listen to the "noise" (it's not truly noise, it's a kind of nerve damage), and hearing aids. When I first put the aids in the tinnitus vanished. The downside is that all the work I'd put in to not listening was overturned, because I "heard" the sounds again when I took the aids out. Still nice to have that respite though.
Training yourself to not listen to the racket isn't easy, but it is so worthwhile. Turn your attention away to something else - a smell, a photograph, your pet, anything. Focus away. Just thinking about tinnitus is making it "audible" to me, lol! It's not real sounds, it's your poor abused nerve endings firing off random signals. White noise works for a lot of people, but it never has for me.
Visit https://tinnitus.org/ for more info. There's a download section where you can get a pdf of a scientific paper describing the method.
I've had tinnitus since I was born, that trick does help, but only for a couple minutes. I just live with at this point, I've never had true silence so idk what I'm even missing
I get that this is tongue in cheek, but seriously, some people are just waiting to die and seem to find joy in tracking how their body is breaking down vs doing something about it.
Body maintenance becomes more and more necessary as you get older. Use it or lose it.
Do strength training on the weakest parts of your body (hips, ankles, knees, shoulder, rotator cuffs, lower back, neck) and you will thank yourself decades later.
To anyone trying to cope with minor permanent tinnitus know it gets better. When I first realized I had it at 23 I pulled neurotic worrying self pity card, a year later and its just another part of life like that weird occasional ache in your back. I dont notice it 90% of the time and put on a fan or yt video the other 10%. There's a definite psychological toughness factor to it as you go from "oh man I really really really hope this goes away in a month I dont want this the rest of my life to " oh well could be worse better stop with the loud music and excessive drinking/smoking."
If I ever have kids of my own I'll make sure to let them know not to blair shit into their ears for years straight and take hearing protection seriously