The AudioNotch Tinnitus Treatment Blog
Celebrities with Meniere’s Disease
Meniere’s disease is an oftentimes debilitating condition that can cause bouts of intense vertigo, tinnitus, and hearing loss.
UsMagazine.com: Your last album of brand new material was Cardinology (with your band, The Cardinals) in 2008. Why the time off?
Ryan Adams: I did my last live shows in March 2009, but I was really suffering from an inner ear disease called Meniere’s disease and all the stuff that goes along with it, which is a lot of vertigo, balance issues, and problems with depth perception. When I was on stage, with one shift in the lighting, I couldn’t quite see where to put my foot, and it made it really, really difficult for me to just do what I needed to do with my band. Also, I started experiencing tinnitus, which started in 2005, maybe even before. I actually was missing tours and shows, like little tours, from these intense ear infections and basically they started to graduate into this thing where somewhere around 2006, 2007, I was diagnosed. But the tinnitus was an overwhelming noise that never stopped in my left ear, 24
hours a day.Us: So the tinnitus just accelerated very quickly because of this disease?
RA: I don’t know if the kind of tinnitus that I’m experiencing is the kind of tinnitus that someone with just tinnitus experiences. The way I can explain mine is on a good day, it sounded like the wind was howling and there was a siren. On a bad day, it sounded like I was standing in front of a jet engine in front of my left ear. As all that stuff was going on, I was losing my hearing. I would hear these very high-pitched noises would be in my left ear and they would come on with the feeling of pressure and then after that there would be this very, very intense high-pitched frequency that would sort of emanate to an almost unbearable level until it would completely disappear. And when it would disappear, it would also feel like pressure as well and then there would be silence where that was. But it would be because I could no longer hear that note. So I was listening to the sound of my hearing going, which is terrifying, extremely painful, and it was causing me to lose sleep. And the side effects for me were seasickness, some people experience vertigo, but mine manifested itself in a sort of extreme nausea and like seasickness. I was really worn down and ill and I was always carsick, and I was on tour from 2007 to 2009 as this is happening. It was getting to the point where just going to a radio station in the morning before a show was making me violently ill and I was being not able to perform on stage. I weighed like 130 lbs. or something, I looked like shit and I was just destroyed. I was completely destroyed. At the same time, we got a nice review in Rolling Stone, but people were starting to lay back into me as a musician and as a performer. I’m a pretty flawed dude, and I keep it pretty real, and I do my best to not act like a rock star, which means people think I’m being one. I just don’t cover stuff up, I am who I am, and sometimes in my life I feel like I’ve stepped into the role of punching bag, and I couldn’t do it. I didn’t have the strength to be punk rock.