It's the intermittent reinforcement caused by a useful thread once in a while that contributes to the addiction. You could choose to just check the topics you find useful, using https://histre.com/hn/
This is exactly what keeps me on this site, and Twitter as well. Sometimes there are long spells of nothing interesting and I start to wonder why I'm even checking, but then something pops up and browsing HN becomes positive in my head again for awhile.
For example: https://histre.com/hn/?tags=+programming+python-ai
(disclaimer: mine)