The Sound That Never Stops: Living with Tinnitus After Service

There’s a noise that’s followed me for over thirty years.
High-pitched. Relentless.
Never fades. Never gives me a moment’s peace.

It started in the Army, in tanks. You don’t need to imagine the noise; you feel it through your chest, through your skull, through every bit of metal in the hull. Engines growling, comms headsets screaming, the crack of 120mm and 76mm canons, 30mm bursts, and the GPMG rattling above your head. That’s the soundtrack you live with. Back then, no one wore proper protection. You had a headset so you could hear orders, not to save your hearing.

And when you’re young, you don’t think about it. You laugh it off. The ringing after a day of exercise was just part of the job. But the thing is, for some of us, it never went away.

When Silence Doesn’t Exist

It’s there the second I wake, and it’s still there when I try to sleep.
A constant high-frequency whine that drills through the quiet.

People talk about tinnitus like it’s just a bit of ringing. It’s not. It’s an invisible injury that grinds you down day after day. It wrecks your sleep, eats your focus, and leaves your brain permanently on edge. I haven’t heard silence since the early nineties.

I’ve tried the usual — painkillers, muscle relaxants, sound therapy, and mindfulness. I’m on mirtazapine now to help with sleep and mental health because constant exhaustion takes its toll. The truth? Painkillers don’t touch tinnitus. They just numb the frustration a little, and when they wear off, the noise is still there.

Service, Injury, and the Matrix

Today, 11 November, Remembrance Day — I had my appointment with the ENT surgeon at 11:15. He was instructed by the solicitors handling my MOD Matrix hearing loss claim. Poetic timing, really: the nation remembering its fallen, and me on a call about the long-term damage that never left.

He asked what guns I’d been exposed to, whether the tinnitus was in both ears, and how long I’d had it. I told him the truth: tank engines, canons, machine guns, comms headsets, thirty-plus years of non-stop ringing. He said he’d submit his report to the solicitors so they can do their thing. Five minutes. Job done.

That’s how it goes. You spend years living with the consequences, and it all comes down to one short assessment and a few boxes on a Matrix chart.

Still, it’s the system we’ve got. The Matrix scheme categorises hearing loss and tinnitus into bands. The more severe and permanent it is, the higher the compensation. For anyone reading this who served — if your ears ring, even slightly, get it checked. You might think it’s just part of the job, but thirty years later, it’s no joke.

The Hidden Cost

You can patch up a broken bone. You can rehab a bad knee. But tinnitus? There’s no cure. It’s not something you treat; it’s something you learn to survive.

People see the medals and the parades, but they don’t see the vets lying awake at 3 am with their ears screaming. They don’t see the way exhaustion messes with your head, or how that constant noise chips away at your peace.

For me, mindfulness, breathwork, and cold water have become coping tools. Not to silence it — that’s impossible — but to make it fade into the background for a bit. To remind myself that the sound doesn’t control me.

Why I’m Sharing This

Because there are thousands of us walking around with the same noise.
Because a bit of awareness goes further than any painkiller ever will.
And because on a day like today — 11/11 — it feels right to talk about the price that doesn’t make the news.

So if you’re reading this and you’ve got that ringing, that hiss, that hum that never stops — get it checked. Log it. Claim it. Don’t shrug it off like I did. Silence is priceless, and once it’s gone, you’ll do anything to get it back.

Written by Ian Callaghan – Veteran, Coach, and Creator of Sober Beyond Limits
If you’re a veteran dealing with tinnitus or mental health struggles, reach out. You’re not broken, you’re just carrying the echoes of what you survived.

How Can You Stay Alcohol-Free When Your Partner Still Drinks?

This is one of the toughest questions I get asked, and it hits close to home. For 45 years, drinking was my default setting. It was the background noise to my entire adult life. When you decide to turn that noise off, but someone you love keeps their volume on full blast, it creates a unique kind of hell. It feels personal. It feels like a betrayal, even when it isn’t meant to be. You’re trying to build a fortress of new habits, and it feels like you’re sharing a bed with the enemy. Let’s be clear: this isn’t about them. This is about you. This is about you learning to hold your ground, secure your perimeter, and win the war inside your own head, regardless of the battle raging outside. It’s not easy, but it is possible. You just need the right strategy.

WHY DOES YOUR PARTNER’S DRINKING FEEL LIKE A PERSONAL ATTACK?

It feels like a personal attack because your brain is a highly efficient, pattern-recognising machine that has been programmed for years, maybe decades, to associate the sight, sound, and smell of alcohol with a specific reward. When your partner cracks open a beer, your subconscious mind doesn’t see your partner relaxing. It sees a trigger, a cue, for a deeply ingrained habit. As an NLP Master Practitioner, I can tell you this is pure neurology. The ‘pop’ of a cork is an anchor, a sensory input linked to a powerful emotional state. Your conscious mind knows you’ve quit, but the old programming in your subconscious screams, ‘That’s for us! That’s our reward! Why are we being left out? This creates a massive internal conflict, which your brain interprets as a threat. The resulting emotions—anger, resentment, self-pity—are defence mechanisms. It’s not a logical response; it’s a primal one. Understanding this is the first step to disarming it. It’s not about them, and it’s not a sign of your weakness. It’s a sign that your brain is still healing and rewiring.

HOW DO YOU CREATE A MENTAL FORTRESS IN YOUR OWN HOME?

You create a mental fortress by building non-negotiable systems and routines that are stronger than the external triggers. This is the core of the MIND pillar in my Midlife Reset system. Your mind is the battlefield, and you need to fortify it daily. First, visualisation. Every morning, before you do anything else, you spend five minutes visualising your day. See yourself navigating those trigger points successfully. See your partner having a drink, and see yourself feeling calm, centred, and indifferent. See yourself reaching for your sparkling water. This pre-paving technique primes your brain for success. Second, you must externalise your resentment through journaling. I call this ‘The Darkness’ journal. It’s a place for the raw, ugly, unfiltered truth. Write down the anger. Write down the jealousy. Get it out of your system and onto the page so it doesn’t poison your interactions. This isn’t about stewing in negativity; it’s about lancing the wound to let the poison out so it can heal. Finally, you reframe the narrative. When the thought ‘It’s so unfair’ pops up, you consciously replace it with a more powerful one: ‘I am choosing a different path. My path leads to freedom.’ You are not being deprived; you are being liberated.

WHAT PRACTICAL STEPS CAN YOU TAKE TO SECURE YOUR ENVIRONMENT?

Practical steps are about taking back control of your physical space, a principle I learned in the Army. You cannot control your partner, but you can control your immediate environment. First, establish ‘dry zones’. This could be your bedroom, your office, or even just your favourite chair. These are non-negotiable spaces where no alcohol is allowed. This gives your nervous system a sanctuary, a place where it can be off-guard without fear of ambush. Second, build your own arsenal. Your partner has their wine? You have your favourite kombucha, your fancy sparkling water with mint and lime, and your herbal teas. Go to war with a better weapon. The ritual is often as important as the substance. Having something delicious and special to drink that is yours alone rewires the ritualistic part of the habit. Third, change the routine. If ‘wine o’clock’ was at 6 PM in the kitchen, make sure that at 6 PM you are somewhere else, doing something else. Go for a walk. Take a shower. Put on music in another room. Break the chain of events that leads to the trigger. Don’t just sit there and try to tough it out. Evade and reposition.

HOW CAN YOU USE MOVEMENT TO DISCHARGE RESENTMENT AND ANXIETY?

You use physical stress to override mental and emotional stress. Resentment, fear, and anxiety are not just thoughts; they are physical energies that get trapped in the body. The MOVE pillar is your tool for discharging them. When you feel that knot in your stomach as your partner pours a glass, that is your signal to move. The most powerful tool I’ve found for this is Cold Water Immersion. You don’t need a frozen lake. Just go to your bathroom and splash your face with the coldest water you can handle for 30 seconds. The shock to your system acts as a hard reset. It shuts down the internal monologue and forces you into the present physical moment. I remember one of my first river dips; the sheer cold was so overwhelming that it felt like every cell in my body was screaming. But when I got out, the mental chatter was gone. The anxiety was gone. It had been replaced by a clean, calm clarity. If cold water isn’t accessible, use explosive movement. Drop and do 10 push-ups. Do a minute of burpees. Go for a brisk walk. The goal is to change your physiological state so drastically that the emotional state cannot survive.

WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT CONVERSATION YOU NEED TO HAVE WITH YOUR PARTNER?

The most important conversation is a calm, planned, and non-accusatory one about your needs, not their faults. This conversation should not happen when they are drinking or when you are feeling triggered. Schedule a time. Start by reaffirming your commitment to them and the relationship. Then, use ‘I’ statements. It’s not ‘Your drinking is driving me crazy.’ It’s ‘I am finding this journey challenging, and I feel triggered when I see alcohol in the house. I need your support.’ Then, be specific about what support looks like. ‘Would you be willing to keep your wine in an opaque bag in the fridge?’ or ‘Could we agree to have two alcohol-free nights together per week?’ This isn’t about making demands; it’s about asking for reasonable accommodations. You are not asking them to quit. You are asking them to help you succeed. A supportive partner, even one who drinks, should be able to meet you halfway on small, practical requests. Their reaction to this calm and reasonable conversation will tell you everything you need to know about the level of support you truly have.

WHEN IS IT TIME TO RE-EVALUATE THE RELATIONSHIP?

It’s time to re-evaluate when your foundational need for safety and well-being is consistently and deliberately ignored. If you’ve had calm conversations, made reasonable requests, and are met with dismissiveness, ridicule, or outright sabotage, you have a bigger problem than a ‘wet household’. This journey of reclaiming your life will make you incredibly sensitive to what nourishes you and what poisons you—and that includes relationships. If your partner’s behaviour is actively undermining your efforts to be healthy and happy, if they cross boundaries you have clearly and kindly set, then you must face a hard truth. Your reset is about choosing life, choosing health, choosing a better future. You must be willing to ask yourself if your relationship is aligned with that future. This isn’t a decision to be made lightly, but your life is not a dress rehearsal. You have to be your own fiercest advocate. Sometimes, the bravest move is admitting that your path forward is one you may have to walk alone.

You’re 50 and Hate Your Career: Is It Really Too Late To Find Your Passion?

You look in the mirror. The face looking back is tired. It’s not just the lines around the eyes; it’s a deeper exhaustion. It’s the soul-crushing weight of showing up for a life you didn’t consciously choose, built around a career that drains the very life from you. The question hits you like a punch to the gut: ‘Is this it? Have I wasted it all?’ At 50, that question feels less like a philosophical ponderance and more like a verdict. A life sentence. I’m here to tell you that feeling is a lie. It’s not too late. But the way you’re approaching the problem is fundamentally broken. You’re asking the wrong questions. You think you need to find your passion. What you really need is to build a foundation so you can hear your own voice again.

For 45 years, my ‘passion’ was drinking. My career was built around it, my social life depended on it, and my identity was fused to it. When I stopped, the silence was deafening. The question wasn’t just ‘what do I do now?’ It was ‘Who the hell am I?’ The idea of a ‘pivot’ felt laughable. I wasn’t pivoting; I was learning to stand on my own two feet for the first time. The principles I used to rebuild my life from the ground up are the exact same ones you need to use to rebuild your career. It’s not about a grand gesture. It’s about a quiet, deliberate, and non-negotiable reset.

WHY DOES 50 FEEL LIKE A POINT OF NO RETURN?

It feels like a point of no return because you’ve been conditioned to believe it is. Society, your family, and your own inner critic have spent decades telling you that life follows a linear path: school, career, mortgage, retirement, death. Any deviation after a certain age is seen as a failure or a crisis. This narrative is reinforced by the ‘sunk cost fallacy’—the crippling belief that because you’ve invested 25 or 30 years into something, walking away would mean all that time was wasted. It’s a cognitive trap, and it keeps people in jobs, relationships, and lives they despise, simply because they can’t stomach the idea of ‘losing’ their investment. On top of that, you’re likely physically and mentally depleted. Years of chronic stress, poor nutrition, inadequate sleep, and a sedentary lifestyle have drained your battery. You’re trying to plan a massive expedition with an empty fuel tank. Of course, it feels impossible. The fog of burnout makes any hill look like Everest. Your brain, starved of proper fuel and rest, defaults to fear and preservation. It will choose the miserable known over the terrifying unknown every single time. It’s not a character flaw; it’s a biological reality.

HOW DO YOU STOP REGRETTING THE PAST?

You stop regretting the past by radically reframing it. The 25 years you spent in a career you hate were not a waste. They were the most expensive and comprehensive education you could ever receive. You didn’t waste time; you gathered data. You now have a PhD in what you don’t want, what drains you, what compromises your values, and what kind of environment crushes your spirit. This is not a failure; it is invaluable intelligence. As an NLP Master Practitioner, one of the first things I work on is the power of the reframe. Your brain is a meaning-making machine, but it’s running on old, faulty software. You have the power to rewrite the code. Instead of saying, ‘I wasted 25 years,’ you say, ‘I spent 25 years discovering my non-negotiables.’ I don’t look back on my 45 years of drinking as a waste. I see it as my apprenticeship. It taught me about the human condition, about rock bottom, about resilience, and it gave me the lived experience—the ‘T’ in E-E-A-T—that allows me to connect with people on a level no textbook ever could. Your past is not an anchor; it’s a launchpad. Every mistake, every soul-crushing Monday, every moment of quiet desperation has forged the person who is finally ready to demand more from life. You don’t get to be this person without going through that. So stop mourning the time and start mining it for the wisdom it contains.

WHAT IS THE FIRST STEP IF ‘FINDING YOUR PASSION’ FEELS TOO BIG?

The first step is to forget the word ‘passion’ entirely. It’s a loaded, intimidating word that implies a lightning bolt of divine inspiration. That’s a myth. The real first step is to build a foundation of energy, clarity, and resilience. You must fix the fundamentals before you can tackle the existential. This is where my four pillars come in: EAT, SLEEP, MOVE, MIND. This is the non-negotiable bedrock of any meaningful change. You wouldn’t build a house on a swamp, so why are you trying to build a new life on a foundation of exhaustion and brain fog? Start here. For 30 days, make this your only focus. Don’t worry about your resume or your business plan. Just focus on the pillars. EAT: As a qualified chef and nutritionist, I can tell you that what you put in your mouth directly impacts your thoughts. Processed foods, sugar, and industrial seed oils create inflammation, which manifests as brain fog, anxiety, and depression. You can’t find clarity in a state of chronic inflammation. Strip it back to basics: meat, fish, eggs, and vegetables. Real, single-ingredient foods. Fuel your brain properly, and the fog will begin to lift. SLEEP: This is your superpower. Most people in their 40s and 50s treat sleep as a luxury. It is a biological necessity. Without 7-8 hours of quality sleep, your emotional regulation is shot, your decision-making is impaired, and your hormones are a mess. You cannot make sound, long-term decisions when you are sleep-deprived. It’s impossible. Create a non-negotiable wind-down routine. No screens an hour before bed. Make your room cold, dark, and quiet. Prioritise sleep above everything else. MOVE: Your body was designed to move. A sedentary life creates a stagnant mind. I’m not telling you to go run a marathon. I’m telling you to start with a 30-minute walk every single day. My ex-Army background taught me the power of simple, consistent discipline. Movement changes your physiology, releases endorphins, and helps process stress hormones like cortisol. And if you want to really kickstart the system, embrace the cold. A 30-second cold blast at the end of your shower or even just splashing your face with icy water is a hard reset for your nervous system. It silences the whining inner critic and proves you can do hard things. MIND: This is the command centre. With the energy from the other three pillars, you can now begin to do the real work here. This isn’t about fluffy affirmations. It’s about practical tools to manage your own psychology.

HOW CAN YOU DISCOVER WHAT YOU ACTUALLY WANT TO DO?

You discover what you want by taking small, deliberate actions and paying attention to the feedback. It’s a process of excavation, not invention. You’re not creating a new passion; you’re uncovering the one that’s been buried under decades of obligations and expectations. The primary tool for this excavation is journaling. Get two notebooks. The first is for ‘The Darkness.’ This is where you dump every fear, resentment, and piece of negativity without filter or judgment. Get it out of your head and onto the page so it stops looping. The second notebook is your ‘Curiosity Journal.’ Every day, write down the answer to these questions: What was I obsessed with as a child before the world told me who to be? If I had a free Saturday with no obligations, what would I do? What topics do I read about or watch videos on that make me lose all track of time? Don’t judge the answers. Just collect the data. Maybe it’s restoring old furniture, or learning about ancient history, or hiking. These are the threads. Your job is to start pulling on them, not by quitting your job to become a historian, but by spending one hour a week engaging with that curiosity. The next tool is the Pattern Interrupt. When your brain starts its favourite song, ‘It’s too late, you’re too old,’ you need to physically and mentally interrupt it. Stand up. Do 10 push-ups. Go splash your face with cold water. Use the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique: name 5 things you can see, 4 you can feel, 3 you can hear, 2 you can smell, and 1 you can taste. This yanks you out of the abstract fear loop and into the present moment. Finally, use visualisation. Every morning, for ten minutes, close your eyes and visualise your Future Self. Not a vague, happy version of you. Be specific. What is this person wearing? How do they carry themselves? What does their typical Tuesday look like? Feel the feeling of being that person—the calm, the purpose, the quiet confidence. You are pre-paving the neural pathways. You are giving your brain a target to aim for that is more compelling than its current fear-based reality.

WHAT IF FEAR OF FINANCIAL INSECURITY IS PARALYZING YOU?

This is the most practical and potent fear of all, and it must be met with strategy, not blind faith. This is where my military discipline kicks in. You do not abandon your post and run into the wilderness. You build a fortified outpost in your spare time. You don’t burn the boats; you build a raft on the weekends. Reframe your current job. It is no longer the soul-sucking cage. It is now the ‘angel investor’ for your new life. Every paycheck is seed funding for your future. This mental shift changes everything. It puts you back in control. Your 9-to-5 becomes a means to a strategic end, not a life sentence. This makes it infinitely more tolerable. Next, you must become ruthless with your finances. Track every penny. Cut out the fat. Every dollar you save is buying you freedom. It’s buying you time on your escape plan. While your job is funding the mission, you use the margins of your day—the hour before work, the weekends—to test your curiosities. That interest in woodworking? Buy a cheap set of chisels and see if you actually enjoy it. That idea for a coaching business? Offer to help one person for free to see if you’re any good at it. These are low-risk experiments. You are gathering real-world data on what might be a viable next step. The goal is not to replace your six-figure salary overnight. The goal is to build a small, parallel income stream that proves the concept. Earning your first $100 from something you created is more powerful than a $10,000 bonus from a job you hate. It’s a proof of concept. It makes the impossible feel possible. This process might take a year, or three, or five. The timeline doesn’t matter. What matters is that you are moving, you have a plan, and you are taking back control. The feeling of being trapped comes from helplessness. A strategic plan, executed with discipline, is the antidote to helplessness. It’s not too late. The only thing that was wasted was yesterday. Today is the day you wake the fuck up and start building.