I’ve suffered from tinnitus (ringing, buzzing in the ears) for over 20 years. I had pretty much given up and figured I would just have to live with it. There is no cure, according to my doctor.
I tried the old home remedy of drinking large amounts of vinegar until I was almost sick. The vinegar cure worked for a little bit, maybe an hour, and then the buzzing returned.
Let me describe the sound of my buzzing. If you’ve ever walked down an Iowa ditch in the summer and heard insects buzzing in the weeds — that’s what my tinnitus sounds like. I remember when I first noticed it. I was sitting at a card table playing board games in the winter with my family. I asked them if they were hearing insects. They looked at me like I was loony. I knew then I was hearing noises other people weren’t.
I went to an audiologist and was prescribed hearing aids. Ka-ching! They improved my hearing, but did very little, if anything, for the tinnitus. A supplement was recommended. It had about the same effect as vinegar. It stopped the noise for a short period, but it was soon back.
Recently, an unsolicited email popped into my in-file. “CBD’s Stop Tinnitus!” “Sure. You betcha,” I thought. But my curiosity was piqued.
Being an alcoholic and drug addict in recovery (32 years clean and sober), I have to be awfully careful of what I put into my body. Marijuana was one of my downfalls. CBD’s (Cannabidiol) are cannabis with the THC (the stuff that makes you high) supposedly removed. I was leery.
However, if a CBD could stop tinnitus, well, maybe it would be worth a try. They were the chewable-gummy kind. I took a chance and entered my credit card number. Of course, I was deceived into buying quite a bit more than what I thought I was buying. I knew for sure then — it was a scam.
But the CBD gummies arrived and I tried them. You have to eat quite a few. “1-2 gummies every six hours or as desired,” the directions said. At that rate, the quantity I bought wouldn’t last very long.
The first thing I noticed was that the buzzing in my ears (head) increased dramatically. “What is going on? I’d better stop eating these!” But then I remembered when a chiropractor cured me of migraine headaches. The migraines got worse before they disappeared all together, sort of like the last hoorah.
Lo-and-behold, in hardly more than 24 hours, the buzzing was gone. Hallelujah! I was doing jumping jacks. The noise in my head was reduced to, what I call, the gentle humming of the universe.
But, alas, the buzzing returned. I doubled up on the gummies. My supply was getting low, so I ordered more. The buzzing continued without abatement. I came down with vertigo that lasted three days. I stopped taking the CBD gummies, and the tinnitus slowly reduced to the somewhat tolerable state it was in before the CBD’s arrived. The vertigo vamoosed, also. I now have a rather large supply of CBD gummies that I don’t know what to do with.
Moral of the story? If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. It’s not the first time I bit on some quacky ad, and won’t be the last, I’m sure. For me anyway, the CBD gummies do nothing for tinnitus, and possibly made it worse.
If I could just get the tinnitus to play music, like Ginnie’s dad’s tinnitus does. Maybe some Beatles. Yeah, “Penny Lane.” That would be the cat’s meow.
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