Hacker News Reader

To give you some perspective. When I was in drug rehab beside people addicted to substances there was a handful of people with gambling problems. And it was very clear that those are the same kind of issue even if delivery mechanism is different.

Gambling rides on the same pathways that make substances fucking with dopaminergic system addictive.

It's not "addictive", it's addictive.

View on HN

No. It isn't.

They don't get physically ill if they stop gambling to the point of needing hospitalization for the extreme pain it causes.

They don't have to gamble even when they don't want to in order to stave off getting very sick.

medications that are addictive for real vs really wanting to play a game and feeling the dopamine urge....

They aren't the same thing at all, because one of them is something you want to do, and one of them is something you maybe don't want to do but you need to do it because the consequences of not doing it are so extreme.

You’re drawing a line between physical and emotional/mental addiction. You are correct that they differ. That doesn’t imply one is not an addiction. It’s similar to comparing the levels of Maslow’s hierarchy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com