[mrnoodle]

The moral component comes into play the first time you use/screw/steal. Naturally, you always have a choice, but if you never take the first step down the wrong road, you don't have to worry about the 1,000th step.

Once you've done it, though, a new set of rules comes into play. I'm a christian, so in my world, we're talking about sin, grace, repentance, stuff like that. To be "set free" from sin doesn't mean that you don't have the urge to do it anymore -- to the contrary, it becomes almost an obsession, at least until you finally accept the good things you're meant for, and turn away from the bad (not an instantaneous happening -- see below). If the thing you're doing has a physically addictive quality, you compound the problem.

Use heroin as an example. The first time someone uses heroin, they know it's a bad idea. They may think it's not "sinful" in their worldview. But it is at the very least dangerous and potentially earth-shattering to themselves and those around them. Knowing that and still choosing to use is the sin -- you put your own desires above everyone else's and did something you know was wrong. It doesn't matter why.

But after awhile, you repent. You turn your back on heroin and decide to live a positive life from this moment on. You swear before all that you believe is holy that you'll never do it again. Problem solved, right? I mean, you've made the correct moral decision.

Nope, your problem is just beginning. First of all, you sold yourself into slavery. You made a deal with the devil that in exchange for a high, you would take the consequences of that choice. The price of breaking free appears to be higher than the price of staying a slave. You aren't thinking of long term consequences anymore, you're thinking of how to get rid of the pain you're feeling right now. If you please your master, you won't get beat.

Second, you're battling yourself. The good nature inside of you (which I believe is God-given, and not our own will) has atrophied for so long that it only makes occasional, if well-meaning, appearances. You've allowed your self-destructiveness to reign for so long that it's the default mode. "Doing the right thing" is as genuinely impossible as learning a foreign language overnight.

So, is every instance of buying a bag, putting something in the spoon, heating it, injecting it, and passing out a separate act of defiance, immorality, or sin? Not to me. I think it's a state of being that has to be changed. First, you have to detox. That's the easy part.

But then, you have to learn that foreign language. You have to reacquaint yourself with what is good a little at a time, and start to work those atrophied muscles. Not much at first -- even getting the synapses to fire is a good start.

Here's where people's paths diverge. My faith teaches that you are always a slave -- if not to one master, than to another. And you can't serve both. Serving your own "fleshly" desires means you can't serve good, because you don't automatically want to do good -- it has to be a trained response. (This is a debate for the religion thread at this point, but if you doubt me, watch a 2-year old who gets his/her will thwarted for the first time, or examine that first, fleeting thought in your head when someone cuts you off in traffic -- that's the default, I think).

The secular answer is therapy, self-awareness, and things like that. I don't personally go in for that kind of thing, so I can't really speak to it. But either path you choose, you have to do the same thing: Find something positive to fill the void left by the bad behavior and become the new instinct.

I have a feeling I've talked in circles or lost my original point somewhere (chalk another post up to the long-term effects of weed?)