Slavery to Sin

i don't have anything terribly insightful to say; i just want to ask the question--just what precisely do the scriptures mean that talk about bondage and slavery to sin? is this concept merely referring to liking sin a whole lot and not wanting to give it up? Do they mean feeling like it's hard to change when you want to change? Those both seem like pretty weak realities to be represented so dramatically as "slavery." i was just thinking about this in the car today, and i couldn't really answer to my own satisfaction what is the literal sense in which sin has an oppressive ownership of a person. any thoughts?