Man. It hasn't directly impacted other areas of my life, but I get a similar feeling from HN. Sometimes I have to log myself out to get out of the cycle.
HN gets pretty boring for me after 15 minutes. reddit just keeps it interesting all day long. From my early days on BBSes to Usenet to IRC to Slashdot to digg, etc I’ve never witnessed anything as addictive as reddit.
I stopped using it completely five years ago.
It might just be my cynicism but not believing most of the self posted stories that populate the front page, or, while I love dogs in real life, not caring for another dog photo, or, a post trying to pull at your heart strings. I don’t get the modern appeal of reddit. It’s of course a hugely popular site.
The comments for big stories are usually filled with tepid jokes or repeating some part of the post or some meme. Or there’s a good chance a reddit post is just plain wrong or the comments are by and large uninformed.
Most of my friends also by and large aren’t into reddit. But I recognize it’s a top 5 most popular site and so likely is addicting to a ton of people.
On the other hand, while I waste too much time on H, I’ve never made any social connection here. This is the only social site where I spend substantial time and have no social connections at the end of it.
Basically I've maxed out the filter on /r/all (yes, it's actually called /r/all and there was a time when it wasn't...) And then I visit just the communities that I'm interested in. I am subscribed to some of them, but I don't use the home page at all.
Perhaps I need help? :)