I would agree that it is the buzz rather than winning or losing that gives you the ‘hit’ of dopamine that our brain needs to quell the craving. It’s the anticipation of the result rather than the actual result that we are addicted to. That is why we are very rarely able to cash out because we need to keep playing just to see what’s going to happen in the next spin.
Time passes without me even noticing while I am gambling. When reel king first came out on the arcade machines with £500 jackpot, I played it so much that when I went to bed at night I could still hear ‘ding ding ding ding…….<nothing>’ in my head even though I wasn’t even thinking about the machine!