Ask HN: Is programming a drug?

ADHD brains tend to lack dopamine in the frontal lobe (afaik). People with ADHD therefore seek out activities to boost dopamine. Some can be destructive and harmful (drug, thrill seeking, destructive relationships) or some people find hits from problem solving - mathematical problems perhaps, relationship problems, or coding problems. You are creating / building / solving. It probably gives you a hit - and your subconscious is sensible enough to realise some of the other options are really bad for you, so rewards the less destructive way of getting a hit.

there isnt "a pull to code out of hours", there is no pull to stop to code after 5...you dont feel you have anything better to do so you keep coding

Brooks in MMM identifies five reasons people love programming.

“1. The sheer joy of making things.

2. The pleasure of making things that are useful to other people.

3. The fascination of fashioning complex puzzle-like objects of interlocking moving parts, and watching them work in subtle cycles, playing out the consequences of principles built in from the beginning.

4. The joy of always learning, which springs from the nonrepeating nature of the task.

5. The delight of working in such a tractable medium. The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of imagination.”

There’s real pleasure to building software, as long as you stay above drudgery, churn, and/or repetition

I'm not particularly proud of it these days but in the past, I have solved problems in my dreams.

It sounds like you're headed for burnout --- just about the time you discover that no one wants to hire you any more due to your age.

To me programming has always been solving puzzles. Solving those puzzles is a skill I have and has made money for me. I am now retired, but I still need puzzles to solve. You might want to see it that way.