Chronic Tinnitus: Had It Twice, Gone Both Times.

I know exactly what it feels like to lie awake at night, unable to switch that sound off. I know what it’s like to hear a doctor tell you, “Learn to live with it.” And I know what it’s like to feel completely alone with a problem no one else can see.

Fall 2010, my first time ever at a club. My cousin had talked me into going—“It’s not as crowded as other clubs. It’s a total blast.” Even on the stairs going down, a good 40 meters from the room, I could feel the bass pounding. Naive as I was, I stood in the best available spot: just six to eight meters in front of the speakers. Four hours. The next morning, I keeled over to the left as I got up, and on day three I was hearing sounds in my left ear that weren’t there.

The first ENT doctor took a quick look, said, “Yeeah, don’t listen to it—listen to some music,” and walked out of the room. The second prescribed ginkgo. The fourth was a tinnitus specialist and explained that the sound was now all in my head. Six ENT doctors—four in doctors’ offices, two at the university hospital. None of them could help me.

So I started reading up on it myself. At night on the tinnitus.de forum, later with my laptop in a hospital bed. Thousands of hours, over years—cell biology, cochlear physiology, neurology, nutritional biochemistry. Not because I found it fascinating. But because no doctor could tell me what was actually happening in my ear.

I found the solution not in a lab, but in the living room. Back then, my father was giving himself vitamin B12 injections for a nerve disease—a little ampoule of red liquid. My B12 level was at the very bottom of the normal range, just above the official deficiency threshold—for my nerves, that was already a functional deficiency. My family doctor still wouldn’t give me an injection. So one evening I let my father give me one, feeling really uneasy about it. (Important: I explicitly advise against trying this without medical supervision.) And what can I say—the next morning, the sound was a good 40 percent quieter overall (the improvement went from 25 percent to a good 40 percent). From then on, it was detective work—lecithin, the full B complex, months of silence. After about a year and a half, 80 percent was gone; eventually, there was nothing left. Nothing. The “Later” audiogram above is from that 80-percent stage.

Years later, I deliberately brought on tinnitus a second time—headphones cranked up for weeks—to test whether my model was right. I know how that sounds. It was right: this time, the tinnitus was gone in three to four months.

This site exists because it’s exactly what I would have needed back then. Not every path works for every person. But everything I’ve found out over the years is here—with the medical records, with all the dead ends. And if my experiences and research help even one person with tinnitus find hope again, then every hour I’ve put into this site has been worth it.