I have tinnitus. I don't recommend it

I have it since I can remember, but got aggravated by two events:

(1) One time when I was going to setup the drums to play for a band, walked front of a tall speaker and precisely when I stepped in front of it a loud boom scaped from it; and

(2) covid-19.

It's kind of in "stereo", in the right ear is a bit louder and with a higher pitch than in the left ear. I can't imagine how terrible it is for people with worse cases but in my case I can live with it despite sometimes I have trouble hearing some stuff - but it's kind of uncanny sometimes I even forget about it until I remember I have it, like now reading "tinnitus" in the title of this article. Something like the yawn effect.

I sang in choirs for nearly 25 years. The scariest thing about it was that everyone thought that the way to test a microphone was to tap firmly & directly on the diaphragm.

They also thought they could adjust or move equipment without muting the channel on the mixer.

It is absolutely crazy to tap your mic when you know that booms are bound to reverberate from your powered-up PA system.

Microphones amplify human speech. They are not drums. Why not test them by speaking or singing in front of them?

I kept telling them that one day they would damage either a speaker, an amp, or someone’s perfectly good hearing.

I have it from being a death metal singer/guitarist 30 years ago, but it gets much worse when tired or higher blood pressure (handy though ; most people don't have an actual audible alarm for that). It's indeed not recommended, it is, however very clever how the brain mostly filters it out unless I actively think about it.

I am in my 50s and the most notable 'side effect' is that I must avoid conference calls; it seems unconsciously I got good at reading lips in person, even in groups, but video calls and especially audio calls are just too hard. I tell people now I'm handicapped, which is indeed true I guess; we either meet in person or they will have to write it down. Captions sometimes work, but we work with people from around the world and some English accents just generate mostly random words as captions. Not sure why a discussion about a payment api is mostly about rain, goats, [laughter], [music] and such...

I’ve played drums and loud music for a long time. When I pay close enough attention there’s this persistent, aggravating noise — which I sometimes call “silence”, and other times call “tinnitus”.

I don't know, but I find it quite unpleasant to read.