I’ve told other people that I feel addicted to the Internet, but that doesn’t really tell the whole story. Sometimes, I masturbate while I’m wasting time (for example, by looking at random useless information). I seem to use masturbation to override bad feelings such as boredom or tension. It seems to be a key factor enabling the addiction. Without it, I get bored of wasting time. Masturbation allows me to override those feelings and continue.
This isn’t something new or confined to the Internet. I’ve also masturbated while wasting time before I was online much, for example, while waiting for software installation progress bars or reading encyclopedias.
I’ve also done it while studying and doing homework, because I found those activities unpleasant. That wasn’t unproductive, but it still doesn’t seem right. It also seems to negatively affect my performance.
I’ve even masturbated while talking to people online. It usually happened when conversations were going slowly, and I was unpleasantly bored while waiting for responses. I sometimes feel guilty about this, like it’s a kind of betrayal.
These kinds of masturbation aren’t really about any kind of sexual content. I don’t think about anything sexual; I merely masturbate lightly while thinking about and doing unrelated things.
I don’t do it very intensely, and I practically never finish in such situations. Nevertheless, it seems to have an intense effect in terms of how it warps my mind. It seems to override normal emotional responses to situations and destroy mindfulness.
The combination of interesting information fulfilling my mind and pleasure from masturbation fulfilling my body is quite pleasant. It’s something I look forward to a lot, as something intensely comfortable. However, it seems that after spending some length of time that way, I feel much worse. It makes me feel worse both in terms of measures such as anxiety and depression, and in terms of warping my whole perspective and burying my feelings.
I need to stop this. Over the last few days I’ve been doing quite well, but I’m concerned about my long term prospects. Sometimes, the availability of that kind of relaxing pleasure seemed very important to me.
I don’t believe that absolutely all masturbation is bad. Absolute anti-masturbation attitudes such as from religion or /r/nofap seem extremist and crazy. I just need to figure out when masturbation has an overall positive effect on me.