The Road of Excess
Should we always aim to avoid temptation and excess?
William Blake expressed the idea that we should follow our appetites until the very end so that we may find their bottom and come back up to the surface with new knowledge.
If we don't go all the way down, we cannot fully know why the appetite was bad. This could lead to dipping in and out of a bad activity for the rest of our lives. But if we go all the way with it, we come to know the desire fully, which increases the likelihood we can purge it.
William Blake has a wonderful line in his work, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793):
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
It's like diving in search of gemstones on a lakebed, having the courage to risk drowning in the process, but eventually finding the gems and bringing them up.
This isn't to say we should recklessly pursue harmful behaviours, but rather to acknowledge that sometimes great understanding can come from some of the lowest periods of life, and that these periods were necessary, indeed vital for our development.
From this perspective, understanding does not come from avoiding temptation or suppressing desire, but from fully experiencing them.
On the other hand excess can lead to ruin.