For the future deafened music-lover

People who live for music should be the most scrupulous about hearing conservation. Hearing loss usually creeps up, starting with that temporary numbness after loud exposures, and then becoming permanent with repetition. Anyone who has repeated temporary hearing loss should know that permanent hearing loss WILL occur. Hearing loss from overexposure to loud noise is not a possibility or a probability; it is a certainty. The only question is how severely and how soon it will occur.

Some people have sent me email in utter panic: “I was at a concert two nights ago, and I was right in front of the speakers, and I still can't hear!!” They want to know what they can do, whether they are already doomed. In general, this is a temporary hearing loss. There’s nothing certain that you can do to speed it up. Think of it like pulling a muscle in extreme exercise. It takes time. If it didn’t take time, you would be right out there doing it again. Remember this panic and let it guide you next time there’s a space in front of the speakers.

What would it be like?

Many people assume that hearing loss is like when your vision gets blurry. Just put on some glasses and you're back to normal. If that were true, sounds would just get a little quieter, and you could just amplify it back up. In fact, hearing loss often creeps up on you by striking one pitch at a time, so that you can continue to think that you are hearing just fine, when a significant amount of hearing has been permanently lost. If you ever think your stereo system has begun to lose amplification, say get a little fuzzy in the treble, that's a strong sign that it’s your ears, not your stereo. If your ears ring or buzz some of the time or all of the time, it's a good chance that you are losing your hearing.

Hearing aids do not restore normal hearing. Hearing aids amplify sound so that it's loud enough to be perceived. It doesn't sound normal. Some things are too loud (like the toilet flushing) and some things are tinny-sounding. With powerful hearing aids, you may be able to recognize speech and tell songs apart, but someone who is a real music connoisseur wouldn't mistake the sound quality for the real thing.

The most common thing among deafened people is for the mind to continue to play the same music after the hearing is lost. Hearing people have “songs running through their head” but you can turn it off or change it by listening to other songs and you can add new songs to your stored “library” of songs. Deafened people tend to have the same song running for days, sometimes weeks or a whole season, and new songs are never added. Repeated over and over, they tend to become distorted or just a chorus plays over and over. Add that to the ringing in the ears, and I promise you, it’s not a first class listening experience.

If you are born deaf or become deaf through illness, injury, or heredity, you can certainly have a full life as a deaf person. However, it just doesn’t make sense for someone who is a true music lover to give up the chance of lifelong enjoyment of music by overexposing themselves to loud volumes of sound.

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See also Noise Awareness