For me, silence is not golden. It is a cheap, tin-plated knock-off that turns your skin green. I haven’t encountered genuine silence in almost 20 years. You could drop me in the middle of the Atacama Desert or abandon me at the furthermost outpost of the North Pole, and I would not experience quiet. Ironically, the quieter the world around me, the more noise I hear.

Welcome to the world of the tinnitus sufferer, an exclusive club where noise is a constant, ever-present, and wholly unwelcome spectre.

In medical terms, tinnitus is “the name for hearing noises that do not come from an outside source”. It is commonly experienced as a persistent ringing sound, though it can also present as a hissing, rumbling, buzzing, or throbbing noise. If you’ve ever left a music festival or a night club with a loud ringing in your ears, that’s tinnitus. It’s not so much an auditory hallucination as it is an auditory perception, and for most people it is a temporary glitch. But for around 14 per cent of us, it’s a permanent or persistent problem.

It’s not fully understood what causes it, but known triggers include hearing loss, Ménière’s disease, conditions such as diabetes, thyroid disorders, multiple sclerosis, anxiety and depression. It can also be a side effect of certain medications, such as chemotherapy, antibiotics, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, aspirin, and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. It was taking these that appears to have caused mine.

I was 25 when I was struck down by a........

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