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What is mortal sin?

You were talking about a sin committed and blah blah blah, without committing a mortal sin. So than that sin that you are talking about MUST be a mortal sin. Right?

As I understand it, “mortal sin” is no longer considered rigidly defined, but revolves largely around the idea of a mature, informed conscience, and knowingly undertaking sinful action. For instance, procuring an abortion is not mortal sin if you have never heard the teachings of the Catholic church against it, but if you have heard the Good (?) News, then it is, because you are supposed to know better. Maybe sometimes ignorance is bliss (although it leaves you with fewer fairy tales about imaginary friends to laugh at).

CPAP stands for continuous positive airway pressure, and is a machine that forces air into a mask, which is used to keep the throat open during sleep, preventing obstructive sleep apnea. The condition can also be treated surgically, but I try to avoid surgery whenever possible. The machine works well for me.

No, my sleep apnea and other sleep oddities most certainly are not a side effect of drug abuse, since most of the symptoms date back to childhood. I also know of a family history of the condition (although retrospectively diagnosed), and my stopping breathing during sleep was noticed early on by my college freshman roommate, who was premed, at a time when I had scarcely started to abuse drugs, and when my loud snoring (a symptom of obstructive sleep apnea) had been well known for years before. Abuse of alcohol and other downers worsened the condition at the time I did them, but I never sought treatment for it until I had been sober 14 years, at a time when the quality of my sleep had deteriorated to the point that I was waking up more tired than when I went to bed. It is a rather common problem that can have serious, even deadly, health consequences. People with sleep apnea do have a higher frequency of other sleep abmormalities, but most, unlike myself, do not have sleep-onset REM or the hallucinations. (I recall one particularly vivid episode of hypnogogic hallucinations that I can date to when I was 7, which (believe me!) was long before I took up substance abuse.

No, I am one of the lucky few who managed to emerge from serious alcoholism and drug abuse with my health apparently intact. All of the chronic health problems I have now emerged only after I’d been sober for years. Of course, it is possible that some of the bad habits set off a cascade of events that only surfaced as illness years later, but I tend to doubt it.

The toilet was first named The Crapper, named after its inventor Thomas Crapper.