Those are all great questions to analyze who is behind the beast, but ultimately can't it just be that we want to numb things for a bit? For me I like to drink a bunch of wine to get numb and unwind. There is no deep meaning behind it, just a pure selfish desire to numb up. Maybe in my case that is all there is to the beast, I guess it is different for each person. What I will say is I know it is a "net-loss" but I do it anyways.