And you may ask yourself... "How did I get here?"

I'm not normally one to spew my brains all over the internet, but this is something I've needed to get off my chest for ages. So here we go.

Okay, a little about me: I'm 35 years old, and I've been suffering from sensorineural hearing loss for the past seven years or so. Those closest to me already have some idea of this, but lots of friends and acquaintances might have no idea, or might not know just how bad it is.

At present it's classed as 'moderate', which on the face of it is a slightly meaningless label - so I'll let The Flintstones explain:

In plain terms, it's probably worse than your grandad's mild loss that makes him turn the TV up loud, but not so bad that I'm 100% reliant on hearing aids, and certainly not as bad as those in the deaf community that rely on sign language. But I do struggle with hearing and understanding speech in the majority of situations. That's why I sometimes smile and nod like a goon when you say that your dog just died, or something equally inappropriate.

Here are my most recent hearing test results (also known as an audiogram), in case you understand such things:

Technically the cause of my hearing loss is 'idiopathic', which means that no doctor has been able to give me a definitive reason for it happening, although it's probably a combination of loud noise and bad luck in the genetic lottery. My grandma on my father's side had hearing loss for most of her life, and my great-grandma on my mother's side had significant hearing loss by the time she reached her 30s.

I've been playing guitar in bands since I was 16. Back when I started making a racket with friends in the garages and pubs of rural Lincolnshire, I honestly can't remember anyone suggesting we should wear ear plugs - not even our parents. It just wasn't a consideration.

As I got older, occasionally after a really loud gig I'd get a bit of tinnitus for a few hours, but it always subsided by the next morning. Then one day in 2009 I woke up after a gig with ringing in my left ear that never went away. I freaked out and got my hearing tested at the local hospital, who said that while there was no hearing loss, I should be careful in the future. At that point I bought some cheap-ish ear plugs and vowed to protect my ears. I was the singer in my band at the time and initially found it difficult singing with two ear plugs in, so I took to wearing one in my right ear when playing - the rationale being that I should be more careful protecting my better ear (it made sense to me at the time).

By the summer of 2010 I was saving up for a pair of custom-fitted musicians' ear plugs, which are moulded perfectly to the shape your ears and sound a million times better than anything you can buy off the shelf. Unfortunately I didn't get them in time for what happened next.

That August I played a small festival in Somerset with my band. It wasn't even a real festival, more a big piss up in a field owned by the parents of someone I vaguely knew. There were loads of bands and DJs playing, and the local cider cost £1 a pint. I wore one ear plug for our set as usual, but then accidentally packed my ear plugs away. Later in the evening, drunk on cider in the midst of a DJ set, I went too close to one of the massive speaker stacks. I don't remember why - maybe I'd forgotten that I wasn't wearing ear plugs. I can, however, remember that the song playing at that ill-fated moment was "When Doves Cry" by Prince.

The next morning I woke up in a hot tent with the mother of all hangovers, along with screaming tinnitus and a massive hearing loss in my right ear. What remained of the hearing in that ear was muffled and distorted. Over the next few days the hangover subsided, but my hearing never came back.

For some reason, I don't think I went to the doctor that time... Or I did and was told to wait and see if the hearing would return... That whole period of my life is a bit hazy now. I'd been suffering from depression, so maybe I just didn't have the energy or confidence to make a nuisance of myself and insist on a hospital referral. Or perhaps I just didn't think anything could be done about it. Whatever the reason, I suffered in silence and got used to only being able to hear properly out of my left ear, which seemed to be unaffected, other than by the tinnitus I mentioned earlier. I think I had a hearing test at Boots a year or so later, which showed I'd lost a bit of hearing in my left ear, but not much.

Soon afterwards I got some the custom ear plugs and started carrying them everywhere, wearing them whenever I played or went to gigs, clubs, even loud pubs. I became obsessively protective of what precious hearing I had left. Despite this, in the last seven years my hearing has slowly faded in both ears, to the point where my left is pretty much as bad as my right.

One horrible irony of hearing loss is that it usually comes with tinnitus, so as the world gets quieter, you also lose the ability to ever experience silence. Along with my muffled hearing, I have pulsatile tinnitus - a high-pitched whistling that swells in and out in time with my heartbeat, making it almost impossible to ignore. When I'm stressed or tired (or drunk) it gets louder, like a cacophany of bastards. And it never skips a beat. Sometimes it stops me sleeping, sometimes it drives me mad.

The other hearing issues I suffer from are diplacusis and hyperacusis.

Diplacusis means I sometimes hear a different note in my right ear to my left. My left is the accurate one, and usually manages to overrule the right, but occasionally I'll hear a song and be convinced it's in one key, only to realise it's in another when a lead instrument or vocal comes in. It's pretty frustrating - and worrying, given my career as a musician relies on me being able to hear notes clearly.

And hyperacusis means that I'm often more sensitive to loud sounds than someone with normal hearing. If I walk into a club these days without ear plugs, a mild panic sets in, and I'll be desperately reaching for my ear plugs or trying to get the hell out of there. It's a weirdly complex condition, in that sometimes I'll very quickly go from not being able to hear a certain sound to it being uncomfortably loud. For example, I might ask you to speak up, then when you do it can feel like you're shouting.

In amongst all of this, I'm trying to come to terms with wearing hearing aids. I don't much like them, but unfortunately they're a necessary evil for me now. I'll write another post about the trials and tribulations of that another day...

I still play and record music semi-professionally, and I still seem to be holding it together without playing too many bum notes. I've toured the UK and Europe a few times in recent years, experiencing the kind of shows that I dreamed of when I was a teenager starting out, and my band is reasonably successful in the grand scheme of things. But every time I rehearse, play live or go into the recording studio, I'm constantly trying to manage the stress that comes with it. Can I still hear ok? Are my ear plugs protecting my ears enough? Is today going to be a day I lose more hearing or can't follow the song properly? That's not to say I don't still enjoy playing, but it can be exhausting dealing with those emotions all the time.

Anyway, this has turned into a rather long post. Thanks for taking the time to read it, and hopefully it gives you a better understanding of hearing loss and how it affects me.

Want to learn more about hearing loss and tinnitus? Try the following places:

Action on Hearing Loss
British Tinnitus Association