Poll: Would You Trade Your Tinnitus for a 5-Year Prison Sentence?

I'd take 5 years in prison, for sure.

 

I would need to be allowed to choose my cellmate.

 

Would you say that to someone suffering from another kind of chronic severe pain condition?

Your comment is ignorant, cruel, shaming, and stunningly arrogant.

Please share your wisdom somewhere else. Maybe visit your local hospital. Look for those most in pain and tell them they are “feeling sorry for themselves.”

 

I voted yes on the condition that it also prevents any future tinnitus so I can go to concerts, fireworks and shooting ranges without fear like a normal person.

 

I've asked myself this 'fantasy' question each time I check this thread.

I'm already in a prison.

 

Ha. I was tortured and suffered a traumatic brain injury from shrapnel as a human rights volunteer in Bosnia. You might want to gain a little perspective. I have severe tinnitus, but I am grateful to be living and having a beautiful life.

 

Great holier-than-thou attitude, jackass. It sounds like that 'traumatic brain injury' did some lasting damage. You're (allegedly) a human rights activist, and you've chosen the morally righteous path of belittling an entire group of people online. Take a walk.

 

Nope, I am not an “activist” by any means. I was a simple volunteer. I know what real pain is. Tinnitus sucks, but it’s not the end of the world. Stop being a crybaby.

 

Please do the honourable thing and leave the forum, @Mattv. It's clear it serves you no purpose now, and you serve it no purpose either.

Thank you.

 

Utterly deranged response. Well-adjusted people don't wield their negative experiences as a weapon to try and invalidate the hardships and suffering of others while calling them 'crybabies'.

Say that to families and friends of suicide victims who had this kind of manipulative guilt-shaming rubbish repeated to them. Don't forget to record yourself for our entertainment. I would love to see the reaction.

What is this teenage edgelord-ass line? I'll throw your insane logic back at you: you're a white man from the United States; how could you possibly fathom what '''true pain''' is? I wonder what survivors of years-long child sex trafficking and other equally heinous shit from third-world countries would say in response to that while you're grateful for your "beautiful life." If you know what "real pain" is, then it's made you an ingrate.

 

You know, I think I’d have to say no.

I don’t think I could do that to my wife. I have two young daughters at home (both under 3 years old). Being gone for five years during those crucial formative years and being unable to support my wife would be incredibly hard.

But it also gets a bit philosophical because a part of me is already gone now that I have severe tinnitus. I’ll never be quite the same, and I’m deeply terrified of it getting even worse.

It’s a tough decision. I think I have to tough it out for them, not for myself. Otherwise, I would gladly take the five years—put me in solitary.

 

Exactly! That was my point.

I don’t need to gain perspective. I’m very clear. You don’t get to decide what category of pain and suffering is real or valid and which is to be dismissed or, worse yet, ridiculed. You so give yourself away with that crybaby comment.

I think people who have suffered greatly do not belittle the suffering of others or render judgment on their experiences. A person tortured in war or a woman violently beaten and raped: whose pain is real? Whose suffering is valid. BOTH!!! You don’t compare. Suffering is suffering deserving of compassion and understanding. Period!

 

I can decide anything I want!

I know tinnitus sucks. But, the day I just said 'fuck it, this is me now," was my first step to enjoying life. It did take about five years.

I suspect mental illness combined with tinnitus is probably what afflicts most people who can't move on.

 

Why did it take you five years to say that line? Why were you being such a crybaby?

 

Congratulations! You found a personal, anecdotal way to help yourself habituate!

Perhaps next, you can share this wisdom with a forum for people with ALS. Unless, of course, we want to avoid blaming those individuals or suggesting they suffer from mental illness because they can't find the bright side of slowly losing bodily function as their body disintegrates in front of them and their loved ones. After all, their families' lives are now centered around keeping alive a family member who is rapidly declining. Maybe if they just say, "Screw it," it will somehow ease the strain on their families' finances and the mental health toll on the people they love most as they watch them deteriorate. Maybe that way, they can truly "enjoy" those last few months of mobility—or their family can.

Tinnitus is, quite literally, a brain disorder. It's very possible that mental illness prevents some people from moving on because their brain is no longer functioning as it was intended to. Given the interconnectedness of the auditory cortex with areas that regulate emotion and cognition, it's not hard to imagine there could be some neurological roadblocks to habituation. And let's not ignore the fact that people who did not have tinnitus from birth are now constantly reminded by a perpetual "siren" that their body is malfunctioning. For some, tinnitus fluctuates in intensity, making it nearly impossible to "get used to," since it's always changing. People with hyperacusis, on the other hand, experience actual physical pain from sounds that are normal for most people, forcing them to try to adapt to a noisy world. All of this happens while their dreams and goals have likely been drastically altered.

It took you, allegedly, five years to adapt.

While there may be an unexplained comorbidity between tinnitus/hyperacusis and mental illness, I don't think it's fair to dismiss someone’s inability to "get over it" by blaming mental illness. In fact, I don't know any severe sufferer who wouldn't agree that tinnitus or hyperacusis could very well be the trigger for mental illness. As a result, it seems a bit insensitive to make such a remark on a tinnitus support forum.

But I'll take your advice. I'll go pray to the Flying Spaghetti Monster and tell him I said, "Screw it" today, so I should be all set!

 

Let me clarify: you don’t get to decide for other people. Of course, you can think or feel what you want about yourself or others.

But you are not an authority on anyone else’s experience but your own. To present otherwise is absurd. And when combined with judgment and ridicule, it is simply cruel.

 

Am I supposed to be impressed by this? Are you more qualified to tell people how to handle tinnitus because you were tortured? I don't think so.