I too have tinnitus. It gets bad if my stress levels go up. If I am pissed and start felling my pulse pound in my neck the noise is real bad. Thankfully that is very rare. Mine came from a mixture of things.... Loud punk shows in tiny crappy little clubs, shooting for years sans ear pro, but mostly I believe it came from working on flightlines while in the employ of my rich uncle. I promise there is nothing like aircraft to destroy your hearing. That and jackhammers, loud 75 KW generators etc. Also I spent a good bit of time working in a machine shop and the noises contained therein also have damaged my hearing. It is a constant high freq buzz. Not chirping, or whistling, just a higher pitched buzz. It accompanies me everywhere I go. I also have bilateral hearing loss that is service connected (according to VA) and they wanted to outfit me with hearing aids. For ten GRAND! I told them to spend the 10K on someone worse off then me. Background noise is what gets me. If someone is droning on and on close by and I am trying to speak to someone else close by it drives me insane.