• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Contact | 360-778-1266

Center for Hearing Loss Help

Help for your hearing loss, tinnitus and other ear conditions

  • Home
  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Reference
    • Glossary of Ear Terms
    • Drug Pronunciation Guide
    • Looping Information
    • “Learn About Hearing”
    • Useful Links
  • Museum
  • Blog
  • Shop
    • Alerting Devices
    • Assistive Listening Devices
    • Books
    • Loop Systems
    • Speechreading CDs
    • Telephones, amplified
    • Visor Cards

Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) and the Permanence of Their Side Effects

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man asked:

Do you have any information as to the permanence of the side effects (especially hearing loss or tinnitus) of the following SSRIs?

Celexa (Citalopram) 2
Lexapro (Escitalopram) 2
Luvox (Fluvoxamine) 3
Zoloft (Sertraline) 3
Paxil (Paroxetine) 4
Prozac (Fluoxetine) 4

I’m curious as to why two of these SSRIs receive a severity rating of 4 when the worst antibiotics receive a 5. Are the SSRIs really that dangerous at prescribed levels? If you don’t have the answers perhaps you could recommend a place I could find further information (i.e. The Physicians’ Desk Reference, or a web site database on drug side effects?)”

You ask some excellent questions and I wish I had definitive answers to give you. I have scoured all the sources you mention, and many more, and what I have reported in my book Ototoxic Drugs Exposed is what I have found.

The truth is, the ototoxic side effects of drugs are seldom specifically studied during drug trials. As a result, information on ototoxicity is sketchy at best. That is why little or nothing is officially known about the permanence of the ototoxic side effects of most drugs, including the SSRIs.

When I rate any drugs for their risk of ototoxicity, it is my own personal and subjective rating based on very incomplete data. This rating is based on any information available to me at the time I made it. It is typically not based on the results of double blind, or other studies. I may be totally off the mark, but this rating is still my best guess. You can use these ratings as a guideline if you want, or totally ignore them. However, if you don’t have a clue about the ototoxic risk of a given drug, this risk rating could be a good starting point in deciding whether you might want to risk the ototoxic side effects of taking that drug or not.

My purpose is to warn people ahead of time that many drugs are ototoxic, and also give them the best information I have found about any given drug’s degree of ototoxicity.

“Are the SSRIs really that dangerous at prescribed levels?” This is a difficult question to answer because there is very little concrete data available. Furthermore, doctors are free to prescribe drugs at any dosage they want, for as long as they want. However, if the dose exceeds the levels used during the drug trials, no one knows what the risk of any resulting ototoxic side effects may be. To complicate things further, some people are very sensitive to drugs in general so they might have an ototoxic reaction at the “recommended” dose, while others may not experience any ototoxic side effects even when taking the drug at higher than recommended levels.

However, I have heard from a sufficient number of people that have had ototoxic side effects from taking SSRIs that I believe these drugs can be dangerous to our ears.

Unfortunately, all too often, ototoxic side effects are not reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) like they are supposed to be. It seems that doctors very seldom report any side effects to the FDA, so the few side effects reported actually represent an enormous number of people who got these same side effects. Thus, ototoxic side effects are not the rare occurrences they might appear to be. Even the FDA estimates that less than 1% of all the side effects of drugs are ever reported to them. In the case of the side effects of ototoxic drugs, I believe the true number reported is only a small fraction of 1%.

Getting back to the permanence of ototoxic side effects, what I included in Ototoxic Drugs Exposed is pretty well everything I had found out about that drug up to that time. So if I don’t indicate anything about permanence, nothing was specifically said about it. As time goes on, and as people tell me their stories as to the permanence of a given drug’s ototoxic side effects, I gain more information and will include it in future editions.

For all the drugs on your (above) list, I have not seen any studies to indicate whether their ototoxic side effects are permanent or not. However, for Zoloft (Sertraline) and Prozac (Fluoxetine) I have a number of anecdotal reports from people taking them that indicates both good news and bad news. The good news is that for some people part of their hearing loss is
temporary. The bad news is that most of these people also reported a significant degree of permanent hearing loss. One anecdotal report revealed that the resulting hearing loss and tinnitus were permanent, and gave no indication that any hearing ever came back. That is why I urge caution whenever you are considering taking any drug thought to be ototoxic.

For general information on the side effects of ototoxic drugs, search this website for the many articles on various ototoxic drugs.

For more complete information and for individual listings on each of the known ototoxic drugs and chemicals, check out Ototoxic Drugs Exposed.

Primary Sidebar

Hearing Loss Research & Resources

Free Visor Cards

Download your free Visor Cards for hard of hearing or deaf people here.

Loop Systems

Loop your home or meeting room. Discover how you can hear wonderfully clear sound again when listening to the TV/radio, etc, or when listening to a speaker at a meeting.

Loop systems are one of the best-kept secrets in town. To learn more about Loop Systems and what they can do for you, click here.

Take Control of Your Tinnitus—Here’s How

If your ears ring, buzz, chirp, hiss, click or roar, you know just how annoying tinnitus can be. You do not have to put up with this racket for the rest of your life. This book teaches you many things you can do to help bring your tinnitus under your control so it no longer bothers you.

Learn More | Add to Cart—Printed | Add to Cart—eBook

Sounds Now Too Loud for You?

Hypersensitive to Sound front coverIf some (or all) normal sounds seem so loud they “blow the top of your head off”, or make you wince or jump, or cause you headaches or ear pain, or affect your balance, or result in fear or annoyance of sounds so you feel you have to avoid these sounds, this book is for you!

Learn More | Add to Cart—Printed | Add to Cart—eBook

Hearing Phantom Sounds?

When hard of hearing people begin hearing phantom voices or music, they immediately worry they are going crazy. It never crosses their minds that they are sane and are just experiencing Musical Ear syndrome.

To learn more about the strange phantom sounds of Musical Ear syndrome and what you can do about them, click here to read a comprehensive article about Musical Ear Syndrome.

Or get the book—Learn More | Add to Cart—Printed | Add to Cart—eBook

Glossary Navigation

  • Full List of Glossary Terms
  • A to Z Index

Footer

Center for Hearing Loss Help

Neil G. Bauman, Ph.D.

1013 Ridgeway Drive, Lynden,
WA 98264-1057 USA

Email: neil@hearinglosshelp.com

Phone: 360-778-1266 (M-F 9:00 AM-5:00 PM PST)

© 2025 Center for Hearing Loss Help – Help for your hearing loss, tinnitus and other ear conditions

"The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life [which also includes perfect hearing] through Jesus Christ our Lord." [Romans 6:23]

"But know this, in the last days perilous times will come" [2 Timothy 3:1]. "For there will be famines, pestilences, and [severe] earthquakes in various places" [Matthew 24:7], "distress of nations, the sea and the waves roaring"—tsunamis, hurricanes—Luke 21:25, but this is good news if you have put your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, for "when these things begin to happen, lift up your heads [and rejoice] because your redemption draws near" [Luke 21:28].