Basically, you have a positively charged and a negatively charged side within the battery. Using the battery means letting the charge slowly tend towards equalization. The path you allow is your circuit using the flowing charge in the process. Once enough of the charge within the battery has drifted towards more equal charge, the difference in charge means the process becomes slower and slower until you can’t extract usable energy. Letting it discharge too much would also cause damage in the sense that you might not be able to use the full battery for this process again after recharging.
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