>>12564097>Is masturbating unhealthy?Physician here.
In itself it is not unhealthy. You're not getting ill from doing it, it doesn't rewire your hormonal system. It doesn't give you high blood pressure. It might even be protective against prostate cancer in the long term.
Where it does make a difference is that it regulates how horny you are and thereby influences the mate seeking behaviors you participate in. And this in turn can affect your chances of finding a partner, both short term and long term. For many people this have a strong influence on your mental health.
Examples: If you masturbate five times over a saturday and then go out for drinks with some classmates you're not going to feel particularly attracted to the females, you'll have a pleasant friendly chat, then go home early and sleep, wake up alone. Which isn't necessarily wrong, but if you're feeling lonely and lacking sex, it might feel a bit depressing.
If you haven't touched your dick for two weeks, you're more likely to feel that you need some release, emboldened by a beer or two and driven by your horniness, you'll get together with someone, go home and have sex, you'll wake up next to someone and have a better feeling over your life in average because you're having interpersonal success.
In this way it can make a difference. For some people it can be significant. Of course someone with no impulse control could on the other hand end up being a drunken rapist. Or someone with no interpersonal skills would come home alone anyway, sexually frustrated to the extreme, comes home really drunk and gives his shotgun a blowjob.
My personal experience is that abstaining for a few days helped me when I was actively seeking and going to dates. If I only expected a workweek with no social interaction I'd masturbate. But if I was having some dates lined up I'd abstain to let sexual attraction do its magic.
