It feels like I am on Dead Center – totally frozen – unable to perform deadline tasks – edgy – no chance at all of doing anything creative. All those energies are blocked. The only things I can do successfully are routine tasks that require little effort and minimal concentration. Finally I simply stop and say to myself, "This is ridiculous." At that point, I set the stage for a very good session: magazines, video, battery-powered oral toy, lube. Then I take care of business. After that, I no longer see through a glass darkly; all vistas are clear and I am the most creative guy on the planet. The resulting climax is always so powerful, and I am so relieved, I always wonder why I didn't "fill the prescription" earlier.
- age 63, California
This Week's Wackiest Response:
Like there is a monkey that keeps slapping me with a rubber banana until I finally do it.
- age 17, Virginia
When I have held off for a few days, my penis seems to get a mind of its own. It is sensitive to my shorts and pants. It feels alive, demanding, and even eager to be stroked. I can feel it down there, whereas normally I don't. When it touches things, like the edge of a table, it starts becoming erect and sometimes proceeds to full hardness requiring a hand in one pocket for concealment. And when the bare hand finally closes around the naked penis and the sweet trip starts, those two parts of my body seem made for each other, glad to be together again, doing what they are supposed to do.
- age 39, Texas
It's much like a deep hunger. My entire mind focuses on sexual thoughts, and specifically, on masturbation – how good it would feel to be able to stroke my penis. I'm yearning to feel my palm against my erect penis again. And when I do get an erection, it's like a miniature orgasm in itself – the feeling of blood pumping into my shaft and making my penis stiff and large. It's all coupled with an acute awareness of my penis. It somehow seems twice as big as usual, but only in my mind.
- age 19, Sweden
My first symptoms are mental. I begin to contemplate encounters and/or new partners. I'm more interested in discussing sex and related topics. My vocabulary begins to deteriorate after a while; becoming a bit more peppered with innuendo, and later, Anglo-Saxon vulgarities. When I'm not medicated, erections increase and "innocent" scratching and rubbing increases. After a certain point, all interests begin to focus on "getting off" and I have to find a way to succeed.
- age 49, Colorado
I can't go even a few days without masturbating. Last week, I was at my friend's house, saw his little sister (she is about 14), and it drove me *crazy*! I felt like jumping her right then and there. I started shaking; I would get an erection at the drop of a dime; I felt queasy and started doing some of my nervous habits (nail biting, pacing, uneasy breathing). The urge was so great that I had to take a little "trip" to the bathroom to relieve myself. I hope no one has to go through the experience I did. I masturbate at least one a day to feel healthy.
- age 15, California
I feel an incredibly strong desire to have sex or masturbate. It becomes all I can think about. My penis seems to be hard all the time. The best thing about a long dry spell is when I actually get to masturbate. My penis and testicles become highly sensitive to touch, so the session feels even better than most. I especially like to play with my testicles then. Although they usually aren't very sensitive, they always are after a dry spell. Rolling them between my fingers is just exquisite! I also ejaculate a lot of semen.
- age 38, New York
I feel powerful. No other word comes as close to describing how being horny makes me feel.
- age 48, Missouri
When I don't masturbate for a long time, I must go someplace and just do it. I can't stand not doing it for more than two days in a row. After I come back from not doing it, I try to make it last as long as humanly possible – *one hour*. If I ever go more than two days without masturbating, there must be something seriously wrong with me; otherwise, I'll make time for myself.
- age 15, New Jersey
I always thought the need to masturbate was due to a buildup of semen. And while I still think that's true, I still get the intense desire to masturbate to orgasm even though I can no longer ejaculate due to a prostatectomy [surgical removal of all or part of the prostate gland]. The inner call to masturbate takes many forms, ranging from a barely conscious but persistent message to extreme sensitivity of my penis and scrotum. Even though I can no longer ejaculate, I still highly value the orgasms I can achieve.
- age 66, Pennsylvania
I start to feel quite horny if I haven't masturbated for a while. In the past two or three years, the longest that I've gone without masturbating has been two weeks. By then, I feel horny toward anything even remotely sexual. I was on vacation with my grandparents and couldn't masturbate. After about two weeks of having horny thoughts about everything, I told them I was going for a hike (they live in a forest). I made my way to a cave and sat there, masturbating again and again – probably 5 times in 25 minutes. From then on, I returned to that spot every day until it was time to go home.
- age 16, California
Sometimes, perhaps due to fluctuating hormones, my 3-times-a-day routine dwindles to something like nothing-for-a-week-and-a-half. I just have absolutely no sexual interest for days on end. If I think about it too much, I'll feel obligated to go ahead and masturbate, even though I'm not in the mood. Then the results are usually disappointing. I just have to wait until something turns me on naturally, and at that point it's an amazing release (usually repeated several times!).
- age 21, Tennessee (female)
For me, it's largely an ache in my testes as well, and the head of my penis becomes very sensitive to touch and movement in my underpants. These sensations induce me to get my hands onto my genitals at the earliest possible time.
- age 13, Ireland
I find that my senses become more attuned to girls. Everything that I find specifically attractive about girls is magnified. Not only that, I generally get erections more often. It gets somewhat annoying. I'll be in my car driving, or something similar, and I'll get one.
- age 19, Oregon
When I haven't masturbated for a while I get really horny. Looking at any girl even remotely interesting gives me a boner. After a while, it gets so uncontrollable that I must masturbate or I will just ejaculate in my pants (it has happened before in study hall when I was sitting behind a hot girl whose thong was showing; it wasn't too pleasant).
- age 14, California
If I ever go more than about 3 days without masturbating and then I am sexually aroused by something, my erection will not go away. It could be an erotic picture, an attractive guy I see, or just my imagination. A lovely, tingly sensation flows from the tip of my penis up through my stomach and into my chest. It is very pleasant, but it becomes quite uncomfortable to have a firm erection for a long time. Then the urge to masturbate becomes overwhelming. When finally I can masturbate, I try to last as long as possible – maybe up to an hour – to prolong the sensation. And when I ejaculate, the orgasm is very intense.
- age 19, United Kingdom
When I go for too long without an orgasm, it becomes an all-consuming itch in the head of my penis. I become semi-erect and lose interest in anything I happen to be doing. Sometimes I can fight it off; but often I have to find somewhere quiet and masturbate at once. I always become very hard and the sensations are never limited to my penis but all over my body. It has led to some of the best "full body" orgasms I have ever had.
- age 32, United Kingdom
It feels like I need a big pee.
- age 17, Sweden (female)
It feels annoying. My mind is always thinking about sex. I can feel it whenever my penis rubs against my pants. And when I start masturbatingÅ Oh, wow! Instant relief.
- age 22, Finland
Sometimes it gets so bad I have to stop whatever I am doing and masturbate in the closest place possible.
- age 16, France
My anus and the inside shaft of my penis tingle unbelievably – almost like an itch that's hard to ignore. I guess this is what's called getting "the itch."
- age 35, Massachusetts
A great desire consumes me. It's as though my senses are subdued and everything around me becomes secondary in importance. All I can think about is the fantastic ecstasy that I have denied myself for so long. The pressure builds up inside of me until I reach the point that I find myself caressing my body without being aware of it. When I finally do give in, the pleasures are astounding.
- age 17, Canada
It doesn't bother me in any way. I can go for weeks without masturbating, and then I only do it to do it.
- age 30, Alabama
Frustration – deep frustration. Often at school, I can't concentrate on my studies because of this burning fire in my crotch. All I can think about is masturbation. It feels as if my pants are about to explode or I am about to catch fire. It feels like every inch of my penis is just screaming inside, "Rub me, rub me! You know you want to – no one will find out!" Now if you'll excuse me, I'm feeling a tad frustrated.
- age 16, Arkansas
I don't notice any problems for several days; but sooner or later, I begin to feel a growing pressure in my genitals and groin, which my best friend describes as "a fullness down there." Nocturnal erections become stronger than usual and occasionally awaken me due to the pressure of my penis throbbing and pressing against my boxer-briefs. If I go to urinate then, I must wait for my erection to subside before I can begin the flow. After I finish, my penis again throbs and often stiffens almost immediately. Nevertheless, I can usually resist the urge to masturbate until I consciously begin to fondle my penis. Immediately, large amounts of pre-ejaculate begin to flow freely. As I begin to stroke with the "Stop & Go" method, small amounts of semen may suddenly appear with the pre-ejaculate, until the urethral slit opens dramatically – a clear indication that I am about to ejaculate. Ironically, orgasms under these circumstances are often not as pleasurable as those from more frequent masturbation sessions.
- age 62, Michigan
I like to keep at least one day between masturbation sessions. Sometimes, when I go for weeks, something that wouldn't normally turn me on gets me really hard. The urge is almost unbearable. These are often my quickest sessions.
- age 14, Canada
At first it's a mental pressure – *the need*. I begin thinking about it more and more until eventually it has taken over my thoughts completely. Then if I haven't enjoyed the pleasure, my body begins to let me know it is interested just by being there. If that doesn't work, it rises to the occasion and demands some attention. Of course this is all from memory since I hardly go a day without some joy and pleasure now.
- age 68, Texas
Usually, my penis gets pretty ripe if I haven't masturbated for a while. The resulting smell can get me hard quickly. It's difficult to keep it going [by edging], because I get too horny smelling my penis and my armpits; but when I ejaculate, it's great – lots of semen that I like to taste and swallow, and spread over my shaft and balls.
- age 19, California
It doesn't really feel all that bad. I masturbate when I have nothing better to do. I have even gone for a month without masturbating, even though I had the chance. I had several "wet dreams" during that time.
- age 16, Arkansas
It's very frustrating! I remember going on a group camping trip for a month, and eventually setting up my tent far away from everyone just so I could masturbate. I think I did it three or four times that evening. It had been probably two weeks since my last orgasm, and I was just going nuts.
- age 32, California (female)
Well, "a while" for me can mean going without masturbating from one day to two weeks. The longer that I haven't masturbated, the more I want to do it. If I don't masturbate the night before, generally the next day (half the time I'm in school) I have an extreme urge to masturbate (especially when I'm bored). Sometimes I ignore it, and sometimes I fulfill the urge. I feel hot, extremely horny, and sometimes unable to concentrate on anything but the idea of achieving orgasm. I am irritable and annoying. But, when I go to music camp, I can go the full two weeks without the urge because then I'm always busy.
- age 16, Illinois
My scrotum tightens against my shaft as if I'm about to ejaculate and then stays that way until I do. My penis becomes half-hard and I find I get erections more easily. My balls occasionally ache, feel swollen, and the head of my shaft becomes increasingly sensitive as time goes on. Sometimes if I am just sitting down, I will become half-hard for no reason and my balls will tingle. Occasionally, my friends and I will try to abstain from masturbation as long as we can because we know that the longer we wait, the better our orgasms will be – we will ejaculate more semen.
- age 19, California
Physically, I have more frequent and more insistent erections both during the day and at night. I have a tough time not thinking frequently about sex or masturbation. With each erection, the desire to masturbate grows. I touch myself and enjoy the surge of pleasure as my erect penis rubs against my clothes or bed at night. Ultimately, I must find a place and time to masturbate, even if it's at some risk of being discovered. I normally masturbate daily and it is unusual for me to go long without masturbating. It would have to be a situation where I wouldn't have privacy, such as pre-season football camp. Even there, I would take a sock to bed with me and get off sometime in the middle of the night. I no longer feel guilty about masturbating, and ultimately I will get off.
- age 21, California
I get different types of feelings. First is an increased physical awareness of my genitals – they feel bigger and more sensitive. Second is the increased lack of concentration toward any task I am involved in, with corresponding increased sexual thoughts. Third is the increased frequency of sexual thoughts about people around me, such as my wife, fellow shoppers, and co-workers.
- age 47, Florida
It is all I can think about. Everything reminds me of masturbating and I constantly look for an opportunity to do it. My testicles are usually sore and no amount of rubbing them helps. My penis becomes very sensitive and requires little stimulation for orgasm. It seems that I am always hard and can't keep my hands off of my penis or testicles. When I do get to have an orgasm, it is *so* good! If someone helps me or watches me, they are always amazed at the amount of semen I shoot and the distance it flies.
- age 16, North Carolina
I get a dull aching sensation in my scrotum – "blue balls" – and a raging erection that just won't go away until I satisfy my urge. When it's been a particularly long time, I must masturbate two or three times in a row to make the sensation go away.
- age 42, California
Going more than a couple of days makes me feel really desperate. More than a physical feeling, I get continuous distracting thoughts about sex that drive me mad. I cannot concentrate, I fantasize about any attractive male that I can stare at for a few seconds, and if I don't get sorted out fairly quickly, I get grumpy and short tempered. School field trips were terrible for this. I remember a couple of times girls joking that I must have had PMT because of my mood. If only they knew – if PMT meant "Pre-Masturbatory Tension," they would have been right! The final stage (or as bad as it ever got before I could relieve myself) was a kind of focus on my clitoris such that any contact with my clothes, toilet tissue, etc., would feel so much more intimate than usual. The other thing that may be worth mentioning on the subject is that my judgment as to where I could safely masturbate would fall off as I became more desperate. My normally cautious approach to "private moments" would slip and my risk taking would increase.
- age 39, United Kingdom (female)
Abstaining feels just great. I seem to have much more energy when I haven't ejaculated for five days or more. Not only my penis, but also the rest of my body becomes more sensitive and feels more "alive," even when I do things that have nothing to do with sex or masturbating. Even getting up early in the morning is easier when I wake up horny with an erection. Just masturbating without ejaculation or giving my hard penis a nice massage can feel great as well. Once or twice a week, I lie on my back and stroke the shaft of my erect penis very slowly up and down with the foreskin retracted, without touching the glans, while completely relaxing the PC muscle. After five or ten minutes, I can stroke faster and faster without contracting my PC muscle. After a half-hour or more, I'll start feeling an orgasm coming up very slowly, going through my whole body. This feels fantastic if I can control my PC muscle and relax it. Then when I decide to let go, I always ejaculate a big load of semen.
- age 28, Belgium
It's like lighting up a cigarette after a long no-smoking flight – you look forward to it forever, but it's never as enjoyable as you think it should be!
- age 46, United Kingdom
After not masturbating for a while, the ordinary genital stimulation encountered in everyday life starts to become pleasurable. A simple touch or stroke seems to resonate to the very core of the penis. Often there is a mild "itch" (not a literal itch, of course) that resonates upwards from the base of the penis. There is really only one way to get out of this distracting situation.
- age 23, Canada
I'd have to say that my perception of sexual things changes radically. People and objects that seem normally benign can take on more erotic roles. Smells can become more thought provoking, a touch between two people can magically take on significance. I've never experienced "blue balls" – frankly, I think it's a myth. What guy in his right mind would ever let himself get to that point? When I haven't masturbated in a day or so, I notice that my dreams become more sexually vivid, and I might actually get a little short tempered.
- age 34, Indiana
I rarely go long periods without masturbating; however, this past summer I went two weeks. I went on a vacation with a friend, and though I didn't plan to, I never masturbated. It's the first time I ever went that long since I started masturbating. There were moments that I got horny and had strong erections, and took opportunities to fondle myself some, but in the evening when I was alone, I just went to sleep. After a week, I actually enjoyed holding off. I felt as if I was giving my much-used hand and penis a break. I usually masturbate at least twice a day. After a while, it became a mission to hold off and when I got home, I was so excited to be alone and masturbate, I could barely contain my excitement. My first session turned out to be rather weak. I was quite surprised. Then, my second session the following morning was one of the most powerful and satisfying of my life.
- age 43, California
If I haven't masturbated for a while my penis and testicles seem to hang heavier than normal, as if all the sperm stored up in them is weighing them down. My penis feels very plump, like a ripe piece of fruit. It makes me feel bigger "down there."
- age 23, Georgia
Since I began masturbating, the longest I have gone without is probably about a week. The first couple of days weren't so bad, but days four, five, and six were miserable. The slightest touch of my underwear on my penis drove me nuts; it was even enough to get me erect. When I finally got home and could masturbate, I was in heaven. I ejaculated in less than five minutes. It seemed a little strange to me at first (but no longer does because I have had to go extended periods without masturbating since then) that my penis seemed much thinner than usual.
- age 19, Texas
If I don't masturbate or have sex in a few days, I get so horny it is *torture*! I feel my testicles tingle with pleasure just from all my built-up sperm in them. I get erections every few minutes. There is also a weird feeling of fullness in my groin from all my accumulated sperm and sexual fluids. But the weirdest part of all about abstaining for a while is how pleasurable it is to have a bowel movement. When I push it out, I can feel my prostate tingle with pleasure and it feels almost like a mini-orgasm! When I finally ejaculate I shoot out so much sperm that it could get a woman pregnant.
- age 32, Arkansas
Even though I have always had either the freedom or privacy to masturbate whenever I wanted or had to, I still get attacks of the "screamin'-red-hornies," as I like to call them. At these times, I begin to fantasize about current partners, past partners, or whatever; and, I find it truly difficult to stay focused on whatever I am supposed to be doing. Physically, my nipples become and stay erect and very sensitive; my vulva feels "congested" (as the books say); I constantly feel as though I have to urinate, and indeed do urinate more frequently; I can feel myself lubricating and become super-conscious of my clitoris. When I get home and can address the situation, my orgasms are fast, intense, and generally multiple – like three or four! Finally, when I uncurl my toes and uncross my eyes, I feel a whole lot better.
- age 26, Florida (female)
After three days without ejaculating, my balls feel sensitive and whenever I touch my penis, say in the shower or having a pee, it feels pleasurable. So my body is telling me it's time to ejaculate! If I hold off much longer, I find I'm having sexual reactions to most of the women I see. After four days, I'm conscious of it at night as well. I think the longest I ever held out was six or seven days – and that was only to see if I could get a wet dream (but I never did)! The only reward for holding out is a more intense orgasm with lots of extra thick and white semen when I finally do let go!
- age 49, United Kingdom
Sometimes, when a lot is going on and I don't have time to do it or I forget, I can get the most random urges in the oddest places. And once the urge strikes, there's no stopping it. I usually run up to my bedroom, rip off my pants, grab my penis, and pump away – and it feels like I'm doing it for the first time all over again. When I start to feel the semen rush to my penis, it feels like I'm a geyser just building up and on the verge of exploding any second. I pump faster and harder as I near climax and then finally the semen shoots straight out of my penis like a water gun – and usually there's a lot of it since I haven't done it in a while. By waiting and building the semen up, it makes for some of the strongest and best-feeling climaxes I have ever had when I finally get it all out.
- age 15, South Carolina
A cloud of confusion and frustration hangs over my head. Both my mind and body suffer when I haven't had the opportunity for self-pleasure in a while, but I think my mind suffers more. Every ordinary scene, conversation, and situation seems to inflame the problem and distract me from whatever I'm doing. It's the first thing on my mind when I wake up, stays at the tip of my thoughts during the day and it's the last thing on my mind when I fall asleep. Even the simplest task is almost impossible to do. I no longer feel guilty about masturbating, considering how bad I feel when I abstain.
- age 21, Delaware
When I was 15, I managed to go without masturbating for almost 4 months. The feelings in my scrotum and penis were often agonizing. This was especially bad when I went to bed (always with a very full erection), since I felt that just the feeling of the bedclothes was likely to cause spontaneous ejaculation. Eventually, the aching in my testes caused me to return to my thrice-daily routine.
- age 16, United Kingdom
Sheer, utter madness! The inability to focus on anything but masturbating is overwhelming. The anticipation of engaging in a long-awaited session is too intense for me. I often must conceal my erection by any means available. The desperate need to find privacy and sufficient time is exhilarating. Also, my fantasies intensify to the point where I begin to breathe heavily, my facial expression goes relaxed, and my legs start to jiggle. I become very secretive and aloof.
- age 33, Florida