I would highly recommend Youtube Revanced, even if you already have Premium or don't care to block ads. The Vanced Manager app can selectively apply patches to the official APK, removing shorts being one of them.
I had a similar experience to yours. It's very hard to not get sucked into them. I would keep scrolling even when I am actively disliking the actual content being shoved into my face.
It was a very sober realization for me that our brains can hijacked like this using the TikTok formula.
I find my consumption to be way down because the YouTube site is... good, but not great, on Safari, but I can still readily consume what I like.
It also supports picture-in-picture and I've never seen an ad on YouTube in the past 3 years except when I load them on my TV. I didn't even know there was an adblock competition going on except for in the news because I've just never seen any.
I had a similar experience to yours. It's very hard to not get sucked into them. I would keep scrolling even when I am actively disliking the actual content being shoved into my face.
It was a very sober realization for me that our brains can hijacked like this using the TikTok formula.