The Cage vs. the Playground

There’s this study I think about a lot. You’ve probably heard some version of it, usually half-remembered and thrown around in conversations about addiction: the rat cage and heroin water. Alone in a barren cage, rats given the choice between regular water and heroin-laced water almost always spiraled into addiction, overdosing until they didn’t make it out. It was held up as proof of how irresistible drugs are, how inevitable the slide into ruin can be.

But then came the second half of the story. Researchers built Rat Park, a playground for rodents. Space to roam, food, toys, tunnels, companionship. Same water, same heroin. And suddenly? The rats barely touched the drug. They chose the playground. The lesson was simple: environment shapes coping. Connection beats escape. The cage makes the drug irresistible.

For a long time, I’ve been the rat in the cage.

My heroin water? Work.

And not the fulfilling, passion-driven, “look at me building my dreams” kind of work. No. The frantic, compulsive, if-I-sit-still-for-five-minutes-I-will-suffocate kind of work. The kind of work that eats your weekends and gnaws at your sleep and convinces you that exhaustion is just part of being “driven.” I drank it willingly, desperately, like I had no other choice.

Because when your home doesn’t feel like sanctuary, when your body remembers things you’d rather forget, when silence feels like a trap door waiting to open beneath you, productivity starts to look a lot like salvation. Nobody questions you when you’re overworking. They applaud it. They call it admirable. They confuse compulsion with discipline.

And I let them.

It was easier to frame it as ambition than to admit I was drinking my own poison just to get through the day. Easier to stack planners and deadlines around me like armor than to admit I couldn’t stand being alone with myself. Work was my heroin water, and I was gulping it down.

The thing is, I still do this.

I still use work as a shield, a distraction, a way to avoid the parts of my life that feel jagged and unlivable. I still pile my desk high with projects until I can’t see over them. I still say yes when my body is begging me to rest, because the alternative—sitting in the quiet—is too raw. I know it. I see it. But I haven’t figured out how to stop.

That’s the part nobody likes to talk about. The seeing. The way awareness doesn’t necessarily equal change. I can name the pattern, describe it in intimate detail, drag it into the light for everyone to point at. And then I’ll still open another project just to drown out the echo of my own thoughts. Self-awareness isn’t a cure. It’s just an unflinching mirror.

And in that mirror, I see the cage.

But lately, I’ve also started to see the playground. Not fully formed, not shining and magical, but glimmers of it. Little pieces I’ve been building without even realizing it.

The playground looks like sitting in my office with the ferrets raising hell in the background, laughing instead of scolding. It looks like a planner spread filled not just with tasks but with Nexus’s emoji stickers reflecting how the day actually felt. It looks like texting a friend instead of picking up another project. It looks like choosing a soft blanket and a guilty-pleasure audiobook instead of another two hours of “just catching up.”

I still drink from the water bottle. Every damn day. But I’m learning there’s another option, even if I don’t always choose it.

And here’s the part I have to laugh at—because otherwise I’d scream: I built half my cage myself. With my own hands. I bought the planners. I stacked the deadlines. I engineered the urgency. I created a system where I could be endlessly busy and then called it “thriving.” All the while, I was just terrified to stop moving.

It’s a ridiculous way to live, and yet, it’s mine.

So maybe the playground isn’t about abandoning the cage overnight. Maybe it’s about slowly, stubbornly, giving myself permission to step outside for a minute. Maybe it’s about creating moments where I don’t need to drown in work to feel safe. Maybe it’s about admitting that I’m still scared, still compulsive, still messy, but I’m also capable of building something different.

The cage will always be there. But so will the playground.

And little by little, I’m starting to believe I deserve to play.