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.