Yeah man I have the constant ringing but mine is very faint but some drugs make it worse, it is a very scary thing so I totally understand your fear! We as gospel drummers do stupid things like play with out protection, have our music way too loud, our head phone mix too loud, have a full size loud speaker as a monitor sitting right next to your ears on a stand, and on and on....I did all those things.
Its funny I still have all of my hearing and mines even off the chart BUT I think its that way because I had to learn to listen past the ringing... ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS have protection on hand!!! Hearos ARE the best! If you don't have the money to get moulded $150 and up ear plugs HEAROS does the same thing. They have some for around $20 that have a filter that lets you hear all the high end but filters out all the bad frequencies and makes everything flat, VATER has their own version of them too.
You should ALWAYS HAVE A PAIR IN YOUR STICK BAG and IN YOUR CAR!!!! You never know when you will come up to a situation like what happened to you!!!
I never to rarely ever play with out some kind of protection....Trust me when you start to get use to always playing with protection (and its something you are going to have to get use to) you will see how loud the drums really are when you sit down and play them at a store or something.