Let me clarify a bit my experience:
One, the folks I worked with at the clinic were very kind, and I have no doubt their genuine hope that patients find relief, which is, in my book, a good starting point. And I am very happy to hear that some folks here experienced relief with their TRT.
For me, I reflected on it a lot and really considered it, but ultimately found that learning about tinnitus, re-learning to do the things that I love to do (with some self-imposed limitations) really helped me get from my TRQ score of 58 (rounding up from my "actual" 48) to the 5-10 that I'm at right now. I really feel that I have reached the level of habituation that would be deemed a success in TRT every day for the last three months and it feels absolutely fantastic. I've achieved that through a combination of support from members here, work I have done personally with my psychotherapist, an increase of exercise/yoga, and "re-introducing" myself to the activities I temporarily ceased when I first had my onset.
I continue to come back to this message board though because a) I want to help new sufferers of tinnitus, b) I've made friends here that I enjoy talking to about T and other, more fun things (and actually has helped me a lot in the "support" side of things) and c) I am still personally invested in finding a medical cure, or medical treatment of some kind. Habituation is nice, but it doesn't turn me back to the time when I could listen to music without fighting with my T in the mix. And I've seen the amazing work that people like
@attheedgeofscience have done to push toward medical intervention, and the behind-the-scenes work
@Markku and
@Steve have done to bring information from pharmaceutical companies developing actual drugs designed to treat Tinnitus, and of course the many, many folks on Team Trobalt. I am truly inspired by the truly GLOBAL movement that all of these things have taken.
That said, I must disagree with you
@RCP1 about bickering--I think people have every right to question whether in 2015, TRT is the one and only way down the road with Tinnitus. It does bother me that it is based on a model developed in 1990 (which is what I was referring to in my "red flag" about the Neurophysical model developed by Dr. Jastreboff.) That was 25 years ago--and I'd like to think that we should demand more in our treatment for Tinnitus. In fact,
the ATA itself does not list TRT as one of the "Treatment Options" on their own website but does, in fact, does list Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction as offered by
@Dr. Gans on this Board. (The website lists Sound Therapy combined with counseling--which is the basic program of TRT--but is something I was able to achieve without spending the money.)
Make no mistake, I would be much more willing to give TRT a try if it were at least covered by insurance, but it is not in the USA, in part because of the lack of Cochrane-level studies that have shown efficacy. Even for me, a fairly fortunate person with a job and supportive family, the cost of TRT is just more than I could pay. I do think that there are a lot of ways to get to the point that TRT can get you to, and many of them are much less costly.
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