I used to have degenerate tendencies with poker. For example the first time I started building a roll, I played 25NL with $50. ran it up to $450 over like a month, got drunk and sat on a 200NL table and lost most of it.

That wasn't the end of my poker degeneracy, but as I kept getting burned by the fire I would get burned less and less. Instead of losing 90% of my roll in a night, I'd lose 50%, then 25%, then 10% as my BRM got more conservative. Eventually I just stopped playing cash games drunk as I just couldn't ignore how bad it made me play anymore.

I'm still a degen, I just learned how to separate work from fun the hard way.