What distinguishes a bad habit from a harmless one?

AskTRP constantly wants to know if it should swear off masturbation, video games, television, weed, whatever. We hear endless arguments about whether this or that is "bad" or "okay".

This is the reasoning of a child. The dose determines the poison. Everything has a "too much", even oxygen and water. The question is how much. When is a habit simply a habit, and when is it cancer?

cancer (kănˈsər)►
n. Any of various malignant neoplasms characterized by the proliferation of anaplastic cells that tend to invade surrounding tissue and metastasize to new body sites.
n. The pathological condition characterized by such growths.

What this means in layman's terms is that a cell is cancerous if, when its growth is blocked by another cell, it eats into that cell instead of stopping.

This is how you know when anything you are doing is becoming a problem. Does it fill the time, attention, and resources you alot to it, or does it eat into other areas of your life?

Is masturbation reducing your motivation to go out and meet girls? Is weed keeping you idle on the couch? Do the video games stop when you're tired, or do they keep you awake into the predawn hours? Are you reading TRP and then going out and trying what you learned, or has the reading eaten the practice?

This is stupidly simple. Don't ask if it's bad, because enough is never bad, and too much always is. Ask if what it is doing is bad. Is it eating something else it's not supposed to eat? Cancer.