A 2018 meta-analysis that says sugar is as addictive as cocaine led to really significant backlash with nutrition researchers. It appears that the authors of the 2018 study may have straight up misunderstood the animal studies. In this study, rats were offered sugar water, saccharin water or cocaine water. They had the same quote unquote addictive behaviors for saccharin, for your artificial sweetener. So this appears to be about sweetness, not about sugar per se.