Everyone has them. Those naughty little pleasures. Cravings and indulgences you can’t seem to get enough of. Maybe it’s coffee. Maybe it’s sex. Maybe it’s cigarettes. Maybe it’s Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey.

Whatever the case may be, are those deviant behaviors rooted in something deeper? And hey, what’s wrong with a little pleasure anyway?

It depends on who you talk to. Lust, for example, may be one of seven deadly sins, but perception is reality.

“I guess (my vice) is sex, but I don’t have qualms about anything that I do,” said international relations and psychology senior Cindy Wachowski. “I’m pretty much a straight shooter, and I feel like anything that I do is going to be something that’s natural. I don’t do anything against my own morals or values or harbor any self-loathing.”

Wachowski added that if she were offered a day of complete pleasure and no rules, it would entail several favorite indulgences.

“If I was to have the best day ever, I’d ride rollercoasters, drink a lot, have sex a lot and do a lot of exercise,” she said.

Wachowski wouldn’t call sex a vice, though. She does what she does because she wants to, she said.

Psychology Professor Gary Stollak disagrees that people do bad things for “fun.”

He said those in college may be a distracted and somewhat oppressed lot, looking for an escape in quiet desperation.

“College students are relatively oppressed,” Stollak said. “They’re under the power of parents, professors, employers who don’t pay a lot of money. They’re in physical surroundings they’d prefer not to live in. You’re a relatively poor group of people, although Visa is able to give you as many credit cards as you want.

“So college students in general are not necessarily the happiest people on earth. They’re looking for distraction where they can.”

But Stollak doesn’t think the quest for distraction ends, or begins, with ma and pa dropping you off in the dorms.

“How many people are there at 35 who are eager to go to work, expecting a loving, meaningful, interesting job that taps into their intellectual and creative skills? How do they solve this problem?,” he said. “For some it might be alcohol, some it might be under the blanket, some choose to lose 100 pounds over the next week, vomit and starve. So it’s desperation.”

But bad stuff can’t all be self-destruction. How about those little pleasures that leave you saying “dang that was good” - something like coffee?

“Oh I love it,” said Lansing Community College human resources sophomore Steve Jozwiak. “I like the Red Eye. It’s brewed coffee with shots of espresso in it. I probably drink it about once a day.”

The coffee Jozwiak spoke of contains between two and three shots of espresso. He even took it with him to the Bahamas on a vacation.

“I’d like to think I wouldn’t be addicted to it, where I can’t go without. But I wouldn’t want to go without it,” he said.

“There are way worse things than coffee out there.”

He didn’t want to describe his ideal day of sin from the confines of the Beaner’s Gourmet Coffee that employs him. However, Jozwiak said a perfect, rule-free day would definitely begin with a big, steaming pot of coffee.

Take another seemingly innocent item: the doughnut. Loved by so many, can there truly be harm done by glazed, fried evil, besides some dimply butt cheeks?

No one knows the love of doughnuts like Krispy Kreme Doughnuts employee Raied Kothi. He’s a manager in the chain’s Livonia store.

Kothi said he can’t eat more than one or two doughnuts, as his diabetes keeps his favorite vice in check. But when asked whether he liked the glazed treats, he said with an enthusiastic “Hell yeah I do.”

He said customers can’t get enough of those naughty little boogers. The original glazed version has 12 grams of fat and 210 calories.

“All I know is that every day in the morning whenever I open the doors at 6 a.m., the lobby is full,” Kothi said.

“One of my customers, every single day he’ll be having a glazed lemon-filled, a chocolate cream-filled and a small coffee - plus he gets a free hot glazed doughnut.”

Whether this customer’s behavior is habitual or mildly gluttonous, Stollak said the need to partake in vices, or “deadly sins,” is somewhat instinctual.

“Some of us don’t put a lot of effort to find a lot we could do that’s meaningful and interesting,” he said. “But it’s more fun to sit and drink alcohol. I don’t even think people watch television for fun. It’s one more interesting distraction, whether it’s sports or ‘Survivor.’”