My phantom smells just about disappear when taking Benadryl. I would be interested to know if you experience the same thing, you might want to experiment. My phantom smell symptom is also much worse when I'm worn down or have a lack of sleep. Have you noticed any pattern?
Interesting. I don't think I've ever taken Benadryl. I should experiment. I haven't noticed any pattern to the phantom smells, in fact, I always think of them as totally random. I did notice that asparagus, which I used to strongly smell in my pee, is barely noticeable now. I know that pre-covid studies were done regarding people who could or couldn't smell asparagus in their pee. Now I'm one of the "no smell" people.
Another interesting thing that has started happening to me, and I have no idea if it is long covid or something else, is that when I lay on my back on the floor in the morning to do my stretches and situps, I start to get really nauseous. Like seasick nauseous, which is unusual given I spent my career in small aircraft, ships, and boats. Of course it could be something totally unrelated. One of the problems with covid has been, I think, making it somewhat easy for people and even doctors to default to, "it must be long covid" when it could very well be something completely different, which ends up going undetected because covid is the easy explanation. I actually brought it up in my physical yesterday, and we're pursuing a couple of non-covid avenues -potentially esophageal problems I have and a hernia that was repaired, but seems to be returning. Though this paper on post-covid brain changes could, in fact, be an explanation.