WHY SMART PEOPLE BUILD THE MOST SOPHISTICATED CAGES

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I was not just a curious kid.

Curious makes it sound innocent. Like I was taking apart radios to see what was inside or

asking too many questions in class.

This was something else.

I was obsessed with figuring things out. How they worked. Where the weak spots were.

How far I could push something before it broke. And maybe more than anything, I wanted

to know if I could make the world behave the way I wanted it to.

At the time, I did not think of it as manipulation.

I thought of it as creativity.

As problem-solving.

As being smart enough to see things other people missed.

In Chapter 7 of After the Trident, I wrote, “I wasn’t just curious about how things worked; I

was obsessed. I not only wanted to figure out how things worked, but I also wanted to

know how to break them.”

That line hits me differently now than it did when I first wrote it.

Because looking back, I can see that before I ever struggled with addiction or compulsive

behavior in the obvious ways, I was already learning something dangerous:

How to bend systems in my favor.

It started small.

Tripwires in the backyard. Homemade nets. Pressure triggers. Little setups that let me

build something, test it, and sit back to see if it worked.

That feeling hooked me early.

Then construction sites entered the picture.

This was San Diego in the early ’80s. BMX bikes everywhere. Long afternoons outside. Half-

built neighborhoods scattered around the city like unfinished playgrounds.

After my paper route in the mornings, I would ride by these construction sites while the

world was still quiet. No workers yet. No supervision. Just tools, lumber, cables, open walls,

and possibilities.

To me, those places felt alive.

At first, the traps were simple. Nails under tires. Paint buckets balanced over doors.

Then I started escalating.

One of my favorite setups involved a suspended power tool hanging from an extension

cord. I rigged it so that when someone opened a door, the plug jammed into the wall and

the tool would roar to life swinging through the air like some kind of mechanical pendulum.

Looking back now, it was unbelievably dangerous.

Totally illegal.

Absolutely insane.

But at the time, it did not feel malicious to me.

It felt brilliant.

That is the part I understand differently now.

I was not only chasing the outcome.

I was chasing the feeling the setup gave me.

The real payoff was not always the explosion or the chaos afterward.

It was the process.

The planning.

The timing.

The hidden trigger.

The satisfaction of knowing I could build something, disappear, and still control what

happened next.

There was a rush in staying one step ahead.

A rush in creating a moment nobody else saw coming.

That feeling lit me up long before drugs ever entered the picture.

And honestly, that matters more than people realize.

Because when people think about addiction, they usually picture the obvious things.

Alcohol. Drugs. Gambling. Affairs. Compulsive behavior.

But sometimes the real pattern starts way earlier than that.

Sometimes it starts with a feeling.

For me, control became stimulating.

If I could predict the outcome, I felt powerful.

If I could outsmart the system, I felt untouchable.

If I could manipulate the environment and walk away clean, I felt alive.

That is a dangerous lesson for a kid to learn.

Cars became part of the experiments too.

At one point, I put nails under every driver-side tire on the street because I thought it

would be hilarious watching everybody get flat tires at the same time on their way to work.

That failed.

So naturally, I got more ambitious.

I discovered that if you put a lit Sterno can under a tire, it would slowly weaken the rubber

until the tire eventually blew out later.

Then I figured out how to disable a car completely.

I would slide underneath on my skateboard, wrap a chain through the driveshaft U-joint,

hook it to the frame, and wait for the moment the driver pulled away. Once the driveshaft

spun, the whole system would tighten and tear itself apart.

The first time I saw it work, I remember feeling proud.

Not because somebody got hurt.

Not because I hated anyone.

But because I had figured it out on my own.

That is the uncomfortable part to admit.

A lot of the payoff was pride.

I had imagined something complicated, built it from scratch, tested it, and watched it work

exactly the way I designed it.

That feeling made me feel capable.

And that is where some of the most destructive patterns begin. Because sometimes our

unhealthy behaviors are tangled up with real strengths.

My creativity was real.

My ability to solve problems was real.

My imagination was real.

But without structure, empathy, or healthy boundaries, those gifts could turn destructive

fast.

Not everything I did was sabotage.

Some of it was about learning how to beat the system entirely.

Growing up, one of my favorite places was the antique carousel in Balboa Park. I can still

hear the music from that old military band organ if I think about it long enough.

The outer horses had something called the Brass Ring Game.

As the carousel turned, you would lean out and try to grab rings from a dispenser. Most of

them were steel. But every once in a while, there was a brass ring mixed in.

If you grabbed the brass ring, you got a free ride.

That became my mission.

Every ride, I studied the rhythm. The timing. The angle. Which horse gave me the best

reach.

Most of the time I grabbed steel.

Then one day, I finally got brass.

And honestly? The free ride barely mattered to me.

What mattered was figuring out how to win.

That was the real high.

Then I noticed kids missing the target and dropping their rings into the grass. So I started

collecting them, taking them home, repainting them to look like brass, and sneaking one

into my pocket before we returned to the carousel.

That meant I could always win.

I had figured out how to rig the game.

At the time, it felt clever.

Looking back, it was another version of the same pattern:

I did not trust chance.

I trusted control.

Looking back now, I can see how early this mindset took root in me.

If there was a system, I wanted to know how it worked.

If there was a rule, I wanted to know where it bent.

If there was a prize, I wanted to know how to guarantee I got it.

And when you are young, people sometimes reward that kind of thinking.

“He’s smart.”

“He’s resourceful.”

“He’s creative.”

“He thinks outside the box.”

And some of that was true.

But underneath all of it was something I could not name yet.

I wanted control because control made me feel safe.

I wanted to stay one step ahead because being caught, exposed, embarrassed, or powerless

felt unbearable.

And for a while, those strategies worked.

Until they did not.

Because the more I depended on controlling outcomes, the less capable I became of

handling uncertainty.

That gap got bigger over time.

When I look back at Chapter 7 of After the Trident now, I do not just see wild childhood

stories.

I see emotional wiring happening in real time.

Booby traps.

Power tools.

Flat tires.

Fake brass rings.

Underneath all of it was the same emotional payoff:

Control.

Every setup gave me a rush.

Every successful trick reinforced the belief that I could stay ahead of consequences.

That I could manipulate my environment and stay untouched.

That is the shift I understand now.

It was not addiction yet in the traditional sense.

But the emotional pattern was already there.

Control felt good.

Escaping consequences felt even better.

And every time I repeated that cycle, it became more deeply wired into me.

Maybe your life never involved construction sites, booby traps, or sabotaged cars.

Hopefully not.

But maybe you still know what it feels like to build your life around control.

Maybe you manage every detail because uncertainty makes your nervous system light up.

Maybe you rehearse conversations before they happen.

Maybe you manipulate situations quietly so you never feel vulnerable.

Maybe you tell half-truths because the full truth feels too risky.

Maybe you learned early that if you stayed one step ahead, nobody could shame you,

abandon you, reject you, or catch you off guard.

If that sounds familiar, I want you to hear this clearly:

You are not broken because control feels safe.

At some point, control probably protected you.

But survival strategies can become prisons when you keep using them long after the

danger is gone.

Here is something worth trying.

Pick one area of your life where you struggle to let things unfold naturally.

Maybe it is work.

Your relationships.

Money.

Your image.

Your recovery.

Your schedule.

Your body.

Then ask yourself this:

If I stopped controlling this so tightly, what am I afraid would happen?

Would you feel exposed?

Weak?

Embarrassed?

Replaceable?

Out of control?

Now ask one more question:

What does control give me emotionally?

Safety?

Power?

Relief?

Distance?

Superiority?

Predictability?

That answer matters because most patterns stick around for a reason.

Even destructive ones are usually solving something emotionally.

Then try one small thing differently.

Tell the truth without managing the outcome.

Let somebody else take the lead.

Leave one thing imperfect.

Pause before fixing, correcting, or controlling.

Small moments like that teach your nervous system that uncertainty is survivable.

That is how old patterns slowly loosen their grip.

For a long time, I thought winning meant making the odds irrelevant.

If I could outsmart the system, I won.

If I could manipulate the outcome, I won.

If I could stay ahead of consequences, I won.

But I do not believe that anymore.

Now I think real strength looks very different.

Real strength is being able to tell the truth without controlling how people respond.

It is being able to lose without collapsing.

It is being able to sit in uncertainty without turning it into manipulation, distraction, or

performance.

That is a much harder kind of mastery.

But it is real.

Here is what I know now.

Curiosity is powerful, but without conscience, it can drift into dangerous places.

Intelligence and creativity do not automatically make us healthy.

Control can feel like protection while quietly cutting us off from honesty, trust, and

connection.

And some of the behaviors that once helped us survive can eventually become the very

things that keep us stuck.

That kid riding a BMX bike through San Diego was not evil.

He was smart. Restless. Creative. Lonely. Energized. Hungry for a feeling he could not

explain yet.

He wanted mastery.

He wanted excitement.

He wanted to feel untouchable.

He wanted control.

Now, years later, I can look back at him with more honesty and more compassion.

I can see the brilliance in him.

And I can see the danger too.

That is why I wrote After the Trident.

Because before we can change the patterns that are hurting us, we usually have to

understand what those patterns were trying to give us in the first place.

Mine gave me the illusion of control.

For a while, that felt like power.

Real power came later, when I finally stopped rigging every outcome long enough to face

myself honestly.