The only thing that separates humans from animals is the ability to self-correct after declaring “that’s not good for me” about something that feels good (food, drugs, sex, etc).

This is a cognitive skill to understand in your life; you are both the actor and the writer of the play. Many people don’t have this ability to look at their life and change the script. Even smart people fail to self-correct for various reasons — maybe they don’t think their actions are that bad, maybe their self-destructive behavior connects them to other people connected by the self-destructive behavior, maybe they can delude themselves into thinking they are succeeding (this happens in startups all the time).

One of Jesus most powerful teachings is “if your right eye causes you to sin, dig it out and throw it away.” Self-correction takes extreme actions (please don’t dig out your eye though).

To the rich man who wanted to get to heaven, he said “go and sell all your riches”, and the guy just went away said because he was addicted to his riches. Self-correction takes extreme actions (IMO, Christians who think heaven only happens after death are equally delusional).