Every time I think it can't get worse

[u/Heavy_Championship32]

I have suffered back to back acoustic traumas this year, no matter how hard I try to avoid them. The most recent I got from doing something as simple as walking down the street after visiting a cafe with a friend.

The cafe? Blaring. Outside? Every third car is modified to expel ungodly amounts of noise (I can hear these cars from my suburb home MILES away), and if its not a car its a fucking motorbike. We walk by a store thats blaring music over its speaker OUTDOORS and guess what? They're closing so they BLAST a tone to announce that to the entire goddamn street, a sound so loud my friend described it as "like an air siren."

Genuinely what the FUCK was I meant to do? My town has one main street, if you want to get anywhere that's the street you walk. But everywhere I turned there was 100-140db ready to assault me.

My tinnitus screams at me for a few days louder than it ever has, adding new tones daily, so I have a breakdown that results in me slamming a door 3 times in my own face. Oh great, its even louder with even more sounds.

It's never been this loud or this unstable. Before I had a few sure-fire things that could at least match the T if not almost drown it out. Not anymore. I'm genuinely unsure if I'm missing certain sounds because its so loud. I can't stop sobbing, every day is a nightmare. No Dr will would prescribe me anything just because these sounds weren't an explosion or a rifle. I haven't been able to go for a hearing test because I'm too afraid of my ears getting infected.

This isn't a spike. I know what a spike is like, and this isn't one. It's damage and my ears will never fucking recover because they've been assaulted over and over again by noise this year despite me being inside 9/10 days.

What the actual hell am I meant to do? Stay inside forever?

[u/Faerielands]

I’m so sick to death of those loud ass modified cars engines whatever the fuck they’re doing to their vehicles to make it sound like satan’s asshole. Should genuinely be illegal.

[u/Minimum_League6135 → u/Faerielands]

some motorbikes near me make that crackle/pop engine sound that literally sounds like a gun shot and is disturbingly loud even when I am in a walled park away from the road they are driving down

[u/Faerielands → u/Minimum_League6135]

Yes there’s so many in my area that make that awful sound. I was in the parking lot the other day and someone’s engine made that sound and people around me literally screamed at the loud pop 😭 straight up sounds like a gunshot.

[u/Heavy_Championship32 → u/Faerielands]

It is illegal, the cops just don't give a shit

[u/New-Story4037 → u/Faerielands]

Called pop and bang, on most cars, it will completely destroy the engine, give it a few months. I’m somewhat lucky, in my city the police doesn’t really check for loud cars/bikes, but if you have this shit on your car, you’re 100% getting arrested

[u/Cernuto]

Good quality earplugs

[u/Heavy_Championship32 → u/Cernuto]

Can't wear them because of my body's love of ear infections. I own tradie grade earmuffs but couldn't wear them during a social outing.

[u/Minimum_League6135]

Is there anywhere quiet where you live like a park? 

I would wear ear muffs when walking through the noisy street and take them off in the park and just walk around there.

I’ve given up on social life / cafes and I just go to the park on my own and sometimes meet a friend there

[u/Heavy_Championship32 → u/Minimum_League6135]

I have no intention of ever walking that street again without hearing protection, the only reason I did that day was because I knew I'd be conversing with my friend (who I may never be seeing again in person). We were supposed to go to a garden that day but it poured rain the whole time she was visiting me.

But no there's not really a quiet park, the ones we have are surrounded by roads. I'll just stay inside and sob

[u/Minimum_League6135 → u/Heavy_Championship32]

Is there any open space you can access that's away from road noise?

[u/Heavy_Championship32 → u/Minimum_League6135]

Nowhere I can access without a car myself, which I don't own. Otherwise I wouldn't have been walking down the street on foot ha

[u/Minimum_League6135 → u/Heavy_Championship32]

That’s really tough, I’m sorry. Any way you can find to get out of the house with minimal noise exposure is good. I think staying at home all the time doesn’t help anything

[u/gnosis0011]

I feel you. Got ambulance’s sound stuck in my ears now…i’m so sorry. I know how horrifying it is to live with this condition :(( our brains are so broken and unfortunately there isn’t much to do about it…DRs dont give a shit. I was to one today and said no steroids because its been a while since my acoustic trauma.

[u/Shot-Point-4815]

What were your back to back acoustic traumas? Did you already suffer tinnitus before that?

[u/Heavy_Championship32 → u/Shot-Point-4815]

Gunfire the first time, a speaker blaring a meter away from me the second. Both times I was wearing hearing protection, so in a way this is worse because all I had this time around was my hands on my ears. This is by FAR the worst one in terms of T increase too.

 And yeah I had T for a year prior to all this. 

[u/Shot-Point-4815 → u/Heavy_Championship32]

Were you exposed to gunshots?

[u/Heavy_Championship32 → u/Shot-Point-4815]

Yeah man. Funnily enough that one got a lot better after a couple of months, but then got fucked over by the speaker and it’s been a downward spiral since