My Tinnitus Story

My name is Justin Gurian. I’m the founder of ExtraLife, and I live with tinnitus.

If you’re reading this, you probably know what it’s like. The constant ringing. The way it follows you into every meeting, every conversation, every quiet moment that should be peaceful but isn’t. The way people who don’t have it will never fully understand what it’s like to never experience silence.

I grew up in Georgia, where having a sound system was everything. Hip-hop, punk rock, and house music, all best as loud as possible. I moved to Arizona at 19, discovered house music and the nightlife scene, and fell in love with the whole industry. I spent nearly two decades in DJ booths, multiple nights every week, networking, building, having a blast in the loudest rooms I could find. The DJ booth was always the hardest spot to get into, which meant the most interesting people funneled right to me. It was an amazing time.

All of my friends were DJs or worked in the industry. We all had bad hearing and we joked about it. Scream-talking at each other because nobody could hear. I would catch a quick ring in my ears sometimes, but it would disappear after a second or two. I never knew that ringing could become permanent. I just figured my hearing would get worse over time and I’d keep turning things up louder.

Then came January 18th.

I was in the DJ booth at one of the loudest spots on the block. A place I went to on purpose because I loved how loud it was. But that night, I noticed it wasn’t loud at all. I could barely hear the music. And I heard the ringing over everything. I left, and it didn’t stop. My ear felt stuffy, almost like there was a wall in front of it that hadn’t been there before.

When I got home that night, I remember thinking to myself: if this continues, there is a before in my life and an after.

I started searching online. I asked AI what I might have. That’s when I found the word tinnitus. I had heard the term before but never thought of it as something that could happen to me. When I read what people were saying about it online, it became nightmare fuel. That was not a fun night.

The days and weeks after were probably the hardest times I’ve ever been through. I’ve been through a lot in my life, but nothing came close. I was crying myself to sleep because it was so loud and so disruptive that it was impossible to function. I would fall asleep out of pure exhaustion with a phone playing crickets on my chest, multiple surround speakers in my room, the fan on, and a Dyson air filter running. I would get a few hours of rest and then wake up and it would hit me like a sledgehammer, and I’d have to start the whole day over again.

I didn’t go back to the clubs. I didn’t go back to anything. I stayed in my apartment in survival mode.

On the third day, I was researching ways to make myself deaf, because I thought if I went deaf, at least the sound would stop. Then I read that if I did that, I would only hear the ringing. There would be nothing else.

I went to an audiologist hoping it would be something simple. A bunch of earwax they could pull out. “Oh, everything’s fine, Justin, your hearing is actually fantastic.” But that wasn’t the case. I tried hearing aids. I tried over-the-counter supplements that I knew were scams but was so desperate I tried them anyway.

But I’ve always been someone that, when my mind is set on something, it’s pretty much unstoppable. I called my mom and told her: I’ve built startups before that nobody had ever done, in areas I had no experience in. Just because nobody has the cure now means absolutely nothing. We are living in a time where AI can compound knowledge in ways that were never possible before.

And then I had a big unlock. I realized that I got tinnitus so that I could cure tinnitus.

I was in a unique position. I jumped on AI early, way before most people. I had a great network. I had startup experience. I could apply everything I’d learned from past businesses to attack this problem. Not just for myself, but for the 740 million people suffering worldwide.

That’s why I’m doing this publicly. I’m not gatekeeping anything. If something works, there are millions of people who need to know immediately. Every treatment I try, every biomarker I track, every result I get, positive or negative, gets published.

I’m not fighting this. I’m going to win. Because right now is the best time in the history of the world to compound knowledge. I’m a small part of it. The real power is combining the knowledge of everyone smarter than me using AI that can learn from all of it like a single hive mind. What a blessing that would be for everyone if I can be even the smallest piece of that puzzle.

But first, just like anything, I need to get started. That’s the phase I’m at right now. I’m asking people who align with this, who either suffer from tinnitus themselves or know someone who does, to contribute to my experiment and follow the journey. This isn’t something I’m doing just for myself. I’m willing to try new experimental treatments and share it all with the world.