Well kinda, it is addicting, but so are videogames (oh boy, this one mobile game I'm playing ), or sports, or foods or anything. I guess poker has the added element of an adrenaline rush and it's more easily available than an extreme sport for example, which makes it more likely to cause addiction, but then again, people get a strong adrenaline rush from games as well. If it's like drugs, don't think it's quite the same process. Yes it might reach a very similar endpoint of addiction in some cases, but as with many of the hobbies you can get addicted to, if you have a healthy approach to them you won't really have anything to worry about, while with most drugs I don't think there's much of a conscious choice anymore after you start to take them routinely. Personally, when I started playing poker I was a bit worried about the addicting aspect of it, so in a way I trained myself to not get addicted, to not have a strong emotional response to wins or losses, to not do it for the adrenaline rush, and more as a business or a job. In a way I kinda regret that approach, since while having an edge, having more of a pull toward the game might have made me way more money, but maybe it would have put me in problematic situations as well, despite my more rational personality, who knows. One thing about poker addiction versus any other type of gambling, it's probably the slowest possible game in terms of what you can lose in a specific timespan, and the slowest to offer those chemical responses in the brain that trigger addiction.
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