Pathological earworms

When the broken record in your head stops being funny

Sep 06, 2025

I was middle-aged when my earworms started. Out of the blue.

Every day and every night (even in my dreams) for over a year I had one or more song snippets stuck in my head, constantly playing over and over again so loud I couldn’t hear my own thoughts.

This was seriously interfering with my ability to work.

I tried mowing the lawn to drown them out. Listened to audiobooks turned up loud on headphones.

Nothing worked.

If this had continued much longer I knew I would have ended up in a loony bin or worse.

I saw various doctors, had an EEG, but nobody could figure out what was going on.

Finally, I thought, “Maybe I’m going through menopause,” and went to see my gynecologist.

When I told him about my affliction, he said it couldn’t possibly be menopause because I was still having periods.

Period.

By that time, I knew a woman could be hormonally menopausal while still getting periods. But, hey, he was the one with the MD.

“Then what could be causing this?” I said.

He replied with the snottiest tone I think I’ve ever heard, “Either you have a thyroid problem, or you have a brain tumor...and you don’t have a brain tumor!”

But to humor me, he ordered a hormone test.

A week later the nurse called to tell me, “Oh yeah, you are definitely menopausal,” and that the doctor had called in a prescription for hormone replacement therapy (HRT).

So there’s a hormone connection?

Not to make this article about HRT, but as soon as I started taking my first hormone prescription, PremPro, the earworms went away. Like magic.

However, as I learned more about hormones and considered how my doctor had treated me, I decided to dump him and his horse estrogen/synthetic progesterone HRT combo.

The problem was that, once I found a better doctor and started on bio-identical (identical to human) hormones, the earworms crept back in. Not full blast. But still more than I wanted.

So a hormone connection became my first clue in this puzzle, though not as useful as I’d hoped.

What was different about Prempro’s “bio-deviant” estrogen and progestin that shut the music off, but the more natural bio-identical hormones didn’t?

Twenty years later, I’m still assembling pieces and meeting new sufferers with heartbreaking stories.

Looking for a cause

Everybody gets a song stuck in their head once in a while. It had happened to me when I was younger. But what suddenly caused music to stick for weeks or months or even years?

As time went on, I began to formulate a theory that these earworms had something to do with cortisol.

But that couldn’t be the whole story because I’d been stressed before in my life, pumping out cortisol, without getting these non-stop earworms.

What was the connection between cortisol and waning or imbalanced hormones?

Quest for a cure

My first small glimmer of hope came from a botanical supplement called Relora that was advertised as a weight-loss aid. What attracted me was its ability to reduce cortisol.

Sure enough, when I tried it, it took the edge off the earworms. Just enough that I could focus my mind on the steady drone of the big box fan in the bedroom as if it were a song and drift off to sleep.

Relora was fast-acting but short-lived.

Eventually, I discovered that a supplement called phosphatidylserine (fosfa-tidal-sair-een), or PS, a natural brain lipid (fat), also happens to reduce cortisol.

And because it’s fat soluble, it stays in your system longer, so you can miss a few doses without any noticeable withdrawal symptoms.

It took quite a while to feel the full effect, but PS was ultimately the key to getting my earworms tamed.

Years later, I decided to try a cheaper brand of PS.

I didn’t notice the difference right away. But eventually the earworms came back.

What’s worse, we had been on a long road trip, listening to the double album of Eric Clapton’s greatest hits, so I came home with multiple song snippets playing in my crazy jukebox.

It took about a month back on my original brand of PS before I finally noticed the music getting quieter, and about six weeks total for the music to be back to its normal tolerable level.

What’s the major malfunction?

Even though I had a solution that worked reasonably well, I didn’t know why it worked or what the root problem was.

Was it a malfunction that inappropriately turned the music on? Or was this a failure in a system that normally turns the music off after you’ve heard it or remembered it?

Sticky music or sticky brains?

Several researchers and doctors I found had written about earworms.

Unfortunately, nearly all the studies were superficial. Some tried to induce earworms in normal subjects, then determined which kinds of songs were the stickiest. Others were silly surveys online or on the radio.

But they were on the wrong track, at least for those of us with the pathological kind.

It wasn’t the music that was sticky, it was our brains.

Musical imagery, not musical hallucinations

The other group of researchers studied musical hallucinations: the perception of hearing music when there is none.

But people with earworms never perceive that music is actually playing in the environment.

We all know the music is inside our heads, like a memory of music.

But it’s not always a memory

If these were only memories of music we’ve actually heard, maybe research could focus on the hearing and sound-recall mechanisms in our brains and how those might malfunction.

But I’ve had things stuck in my head that I’ve never heard with my ears.

When I was writing a book about hormones, I had to prepare for presentations where I would mention the long scientific names of things like the synthetic hormone called medroxyprogesterone acetate.

I’d never heard the word spoken, but I had sounded it out in my head, and the never-heard “sound” of that word stuck in my head.

The same thing would happen with complicated names I might see on movie credits or in a book or article.

Stuck.

Intrusive musical imagery (IMI)

That’s why this phenomenon is more properly considered “imagery” rather than “hallucination.”

This puzzle prompted me to create my first blog, one about the thing I called “broken record syndrome,” “auditory memory loops,” “stuck music,” and eventually “earworms.”

One research group calls the phenomenon “intrusive musical imagery,” which seems about right for an official name.

Whatever you call it, it’s maddening. Literally.

Sadly, I’m not alone

So far, more than 100 people all over the world have contacted me, seeking help for themselves or people they care about.

Their stories have helped refine my hypothesis over the years and provided glimmers of help.

What triggers this pathology?

Most people have developed earworms after an emotional crisis (stress = cortisol).

A few, like me, developed them after a hormonal change.

One young woman’s earworms started after she gave birth. But they continued long after her hormones should have returned to normal.

A significant number of sufferers developed earworms after taking psychoactive drugs, whether antidepressants, anti-anxiety medicines antipsychotics, or anticonvulsives for other reasons.

But these medications only muddy the diagnosis and treatment.

This might still implicate the cortisol connection, but the drugs might also alter or damage the brain in such a way that a simple cortisol-reducing solution like PS will no longer work for those people.

My earworms were gone or almost gone when I tried the antidepressant Wellbutrin for three days. The earworms roared back with a vengeance. And they’ve never been as quiet as they were before that.

Every story is different

By the time they reach out to me, many sufferers have taken brain-altering drugs prescribed by well-meaning doctors, and may have forever lost the opportunity for a simple, benign solution like PS.

Mom of identical twin boys

One mom of six-year-old twin boys reported that only one twin had the earworms.

I asked if she’d noticed any other significant differences between the two boys. She said the one with earworms ate nothing but carbohydrates and was thirsty a lot.

Because I knew that diabetes can cause excessive thirst and a craving for carbs, I suggested she get her earworms son’s blood sugar tested.

Last I heard, her son was scheduled for psychiatric tests. I was concerned that a psychiatrist might not look for a metabolic cause before simply prescribing brain-altering drugs. But one can hope.

What connection might insulin resistance or diabetes have to excess cortisol and earworms?

Desperate enough to try brain surgery

By the time he contacted me, one doggedly determined man had been through a laundry list of drugs and sledgehammer therapies to stop his earworms.

Prescriptions he’d tried over the years included: clonazepam (anti-seizure), haloperidol (antipsychotic), risperidone (antipsychotic), mirtazapine (used for OCD and major depressive disorder), Adderal (a stimulant used for ADD) , and Zoloft (an SSRI antidepressant). None worked.

As of our last email, he was taking daily inositol (a powdered vitamin B-supplement).

As for therapies: hypnosis didn’t work.

Something called transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), sometimes effective for anxiety and depression, didn’t work.

Seven sessions of shock treatments (electroconvulsive therapy/ECT) didn’t work.

And at one point, his doctors diagnosed him with intractable obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and referred him for an anterior capsulotomy using gamma knife surgery.

Brain surgery.

This procedure sends a narrow, targeted beam of radiation into the brain to destroy an area thought to cause OCD.

But that didn’t work either. Or maybe it did and it simply takes many months or years to yield improvement. I haven’t heard from him in a few years.

If it’s not a malfunction in a certain part of the brain, what is it?

Young man who considered legalized suicide.

The most recent contact was from a young man in Europe.

His answer to my question about what seems to have started the earworms stunned me. He’d been struggling with sleep problems, so his doctor prescribed Quetiapine (Seroquel in the US).

Seroquel is an antipsychotic drug!

To give this drug to a man with insomnia is like driving a pushpin into the wall with a jackhammer.

But insomnia wasn’t his only condition. He had previously been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADD) and anxiety disorder. Still no justification for an antipsychotic.

He had taken venlafaxine (an antidepressant) for the anxiety, but that treatment caused tinnitus (ringing in the ears), though it was tolerable or intermittent.

But after his doctor prescribed mirtazapine (another antidepressant), the tinnitus returned and stayed, even after he stopped taking it.

That’s when the earworms started.

This poor soul has been so tortured by inappropriately-prescribed, overkill medications that caused maddening sounds, real or imagined, that he finally asked his doctor if he would be eligible for euthanasia (legalized suicide)!

His last message to me said, “My parents don't want to lose me so i made a deal, that i with their help i will try to do some therapies (long waiting list). With the hope somethings might work?

His struggles have renewed my drive to find real help from medical experts.

There are so many heartbreaking cases like these of people who are so desperate they will try anything.

And their doctors either have nothing to offer or throw drugs at them, hoping something will help, without recognizing the permanent damage their uninformed experiments might be doing.

Miles to go

My earworms are mostly under control now with the PS. But I have to tell you, the winter holiday season is pure torture, with music in every store and restaurant. Worse when “the season” starts before Halloween.

Right now I have parts of the song, “Hotel California” stuck in my head.

It was triggered, not by hearing the song, but by seeing a tee-shirt with the words, “On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair...” on the front. My memory filled in the rest.

How apropos to this topic: “You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave.”

Desperately seeking researchers

Several years ago I reached out to a number of researchers worldwide who might be willing to study this phenomenon. Few responded. Most of those who did declined the opportunity.

Two research teams in the UK expressed interest, but didn’t have funding or access to functional MRI (fMRI) equipment and expertise.

The studies I propose involve comparing labs (especially adrenal and sex hormones) and real-time brain function using fMRI in subjects who do and don’t currently have earworms.

To further the cause, I’m willing to be tested with and without the earworms. As far as I know, I’m the only sufferer who can turn them on and off without serious risk.

They can test me first with the PS in my system. Then I can stop taking the PS for about six weeks, and go back for a second series of tests with the earworms in full bloom.

I suspect even my baseline will differ noticeably from control subjects who don’t have the pathological earworms at all.

And those differences will ideally give us more helpful clues to causes ... and cures.

If you know anyone who suffers from intractable, persistent earworms, please let them know they are not alone.

Hundreds of people understand what they are going through, and some have even found solutions.

There is hope.

And if you know of any researchers who might be willing and able to take on this challenge, please contact me via my website:

InformedConsentXpress.com/contact

Letter to researchers

Got Songs Stuck in Your Head?- A home for sufferers of the "broken record syndrome"

https://brokenrecordsyndrome.wordpress.com/

Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, by Oliver Sacks

Book available online.

Why do Songs get “Stuck in our Heads”? Towards a Theory for Explaining Earworms

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20592043231164581

Musical obsessions: A comprehensive review of neglected clinical phenomena

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0887618514000851?via%3Dihub