My own private radio station

Living with tinnitus and earworms

Drawing by Jeannine, 2022

The sound of silence - I can’t remember the last time I’ve experienced such a thing. During the last ten to fifteen years, the constant high-pitched feedback-like squeal of tinnitus has been ringing in my skull all day every day.

For some, the constant ringing can be distracting to the point of madness. It is unrelenting and there is no cure. In an interview with Ira Glass, Nubar Alexanian described his struggles with his own tinnitus, how he sought help from six different “…doctors-- going to the high priests at Boston Hospital, to every alternative psychic-- thing you can possibly imagine… four or five different acupuncturists. This one dentist said, well, I'm going to make you a mouth guard. He said, well, I'm sure this will work. It's going to cost you $19,000. And I did some muscle body work and some homeopathic remedies. I had my entire jaw realigned by a dentist over a two-year period. And we had things like this guy come in who spread these Petri dishes all over our house. So we had to install all these filtering systems in our house, and fans, and air cleaners and dehumidifiers. So I've spent probably over 10 years, $70,000.” ("Living Without, Act I: Do You Hear What I Hear?" This American Life, 2004)

In the end, the poor man still had tinnitus and realized that his only option was to learn to live with it.

I was luckier - or more accepting, at least. My doctor determined that there was nothing physically wrong with my ears and that my hearing was normal for my age. He told me right off the bat that there was nothing I could do about it. Apparently, my brain is shooting off random auditory signals that only I can hear and nobody knows why. It’s all in my head, it’s always there, and there’s no way to fix it. So I just got used to it. Once in a while the volume creeps up, and I need to get used to it all over again, but as Garrison Keillor says, it could be worse.

Several people with silent brains have told me that they are annoyed by the constant summertime chirping of cicadas and crickets - welcome to my word! :) I love cicadas - their song has the ability to trick my brain into syncing the internal ringing with their rhythmic trilling, allowing me to forget about the tinnitus for a little while.

Over the past year or two, some new noises have been playing in my head: earworms, phantom music that only I can hear, playing over and over. The tinnitus is still there, but random bits and pieces - and sometimes complete songs - are usually playing inside my skull as well: the same piece, over and over, sometimes for weeks. The earworms usually don’t bother me, unless they get stuck on a particularly annoying commercial jingle (most recently, the K9 Advantix’s “There ain’t no bugs on me” commercial - very cute, but once is enough!).

I suspect the earworms may be my brain’s attempt to make sense of the nonsensical noise of the tinnitus. When real music is playing, I notice that the earworms go to sleep for a while. I don’t mind hearing the same song over and over (I used to play my favorite songs over and over as a teenager, probably annoying my too patient parents!). As long as it’s good, it can play as long as it pleases, like my latest squirmy wormy:

A Dire Straits song is rather nice thing to have stuck in my head. The “Sultans of Swing” has been echoing around my skull non-stop for the past two weeks. I was listening to the radio recently (the radio is a good way to drown out the tinnitus and put the earworms on hold), when ethereal guitar notes flew forth from the speakers and Mark Knopfler’s smokey voice started singing about the “shiver in the dark” and “raining in the park.” For a few magical minutes my inner radio station matched reality and I was happy.

The study of tinnitus and earworms is fascinating, and it’s actually comforting to learn that the problems truly are “all in my head” (and that I’m not the only one). One possible explanation is that I have a hyperactive auditory cortex (the part of my brain that deals with interpreting sound). “Studies in experimental animals and humans have revealed that tinnitus is associated with a synchronized hyperactivity in the auditory cortex...” (“Auditory cortex stimulation for tinnitus,” D De Ridder et al ). Researchers have found that the auditory cortex is involved in earwormery as well: “‘We found that the auditory cortex that is active when you’re actually listening to a song was reactivated when you just imagine hearing the song,’ says David Kraemer, the lead researcher. In other words, the auditory cortex acts as your imagination’s MP3 player.” (“Your Brain on Music: Earworms,” The Kennedy Center).

Tinnitus and earworms no longer bother me, but they still occasionally cause a bit of trouble - sometimes the tinnitus is loud enough that I mishear something someone is saying (or fail to hear them at all). The earworms can be very distracting as well, especially when something especially annoying is playing on my brain’s turntable. But when the random pick of the hour (or day or week or month) is something good, I don’t mind. These are the days when I kind of like the idea of having my own private radio station living in my head.