[illumination]

It's the same for me. I don't believe that giving myself sexual pleasure is wrong in itself, but for me it involves recalling images from porn or imagining scenes based on those kinds of images, and as several people have said, this reinforces the addiction and the porn-based sexuality.

Interestingly, the Taoist teacher Mantak Chia talks about this. He says that stimulating yourself is healthy if it doesn't involve fantasising and doesn't lead to ejaculation. This involves focussing on the real sensations in your body, not on images in the mind.

When I have tried this, I was dismayed at how difficult it was for me to become aroused without playing images in my mind. That is the extent to which I have damaged myself by using porn.