We have to make a distinction here. The addiction is due to Stackexchange network elements not TeX itself. There is also question answering addiction which is even more damaging because you end up working on things way way more than your life permits and the result is absolutely useless such as my many pointless TikZ answers. Unfortunately that's the norm for many PhD students due to procrastination. That is an absolutely different type of addiction and requires either career change or a reorganization of life.
In this case, however, something which is sometimes called "idle-game addiction" type of behavior creeps in. I'm not a neuroscientist obviously so I can't discuss the causes and mechanism but the general trend is there is a reward that comes ever so slowly that it borders on your patience. If it is a bit more slower you get bored if it is a bit faster then you run out of rewards too quickly.
That's the part SE network taps into with the badge and reputation stuff. It diminishes the value of an answer and emphasize on the success. But anyway there are better people suited for such analysis.
What I would really suggest is to stay away from that reward part of the site. It has nothing to do with TeX and gives you uber-falsch incentives. That would also avoid the fake "we own this place" attitude.
It is just a place where you ask and answer questions. Regarding the TeX-SX addiction itself, try switching to package writing or other open-source avenues such that you can pace yourself in your own time.
PS: I never did the statistics (because I don't procrastinate anymore, see?) but if you ignore our few wizards who write code without even testing, most popular package authors either don't have or very little activity here. My premise is that this should be due to the satisfaction of seeing their work being used by many people.
Long story short, don't put all your eggs in one basket, here procrastination being your eggs.
DISCLAIMER: I have been openly criticizing Papiro and others whenever I could because for quite some time I have argued that they abused the review system for that stupid colorful dots and they have replied for themselves elsewhere that they strongly disagree (search on meta).
Then s/he got into the voting badge hunt apparently which is much harder than the other badges because you have a limited vote numbers to cast. And it borders on your patience very nicely. I know because I was one of them for some time when I was drawing fireworks or other weird stuff on this site.