I lay half asleep in my bed lulled away by the sound of morning traffic and birds chirping their waking songs on the ledge of my window sill. The light beings to peak through my blinds piercing the sheets beside me with its warmth. As the room that I’ve called my home for the past two months appears through my morning eyes I can’t help but feel imprisoned. Not so much by the room, the house, the city, or the country, but by the comfort it all provides. Have I grown so accustomed to adventure that I can no longer feel comfortable in a world where I don’t need to always be on my guard? Have I become an addict to adventure, mis-adventure and everything in between?
I walk out of my house wearing a t-shirt that says “Kidnap me please! I’m running out of material” and head down to the local zoo to ease my sense of boredom. As I look into the cages that hold the monkeys I feel their pain. They should be swinging from trees, searching for food, and avoiding their enemies in the wild. Like the monkeys I am starting to believe that I’m not meant to be kept somewhere safe and caged. I am meant to be packing a lifetime’s worth of low cost travel insurance, a sense of adventure and a willingness to never say no to an experience.
In the end though, I realize that I am not like the monkeys, I have a choice. I have caged myself for a reason. I wanted to remember what it felt like to have a home for awhile, and I’d be lying if I said that I haven’t enjoyed it. I’ve met great friends, I’ve actually enjoyed a bit of routine, and it has been nice waking up in the morning and not laying confused for a moment’s time trying to remember where I am. However, I miss the rush. I miss the nerves of being late for a bus, I miss the thrill of knowing I’m somewhere I probably shouldn’t be, and I miss seeing things that I have never seen before. 
I wonder to myself as I type the words that you are now reading if the drug of adventure is something that can be shaken. I wonder if this happen to everyone that lives a part of their life in this way. Will there ever be a point in my life where I wake up to the feel of warm sun rays on my cheek and smile in content. The drug of adventure has taken such a hold on me that I can’t go a month without the rushing desire to jump of a bridge with an elastic band strapped to my feet, or rush down a river on a raft, or even do something so simple as purposefully getting lost in a strange city.
They say that the only real way to get yourself off of a drug is by cutting yourself off cold turkey, but what if I don’t want to come down off of the drug of adventure? I have told myself time and time again that our world is a jungle gym waiting for us to play in. However a jungle gym is what you make of it. One can sit on the swing set without swinging, or one swing away trying to see if they can wrap around the top in a full loop. What I’ve learned during my brief captivity from adventure is that we don’t need to be travelling to have our adventures, because each destination, even if it is a place called home, is essentially a swing set. Sure being in a new destination makes it easier for us to push free from our comfort zones, but the bars of our zoo are constructed by our own empathy.