Most halakhically appropriate/acceptable way to deal with sexual urges/masturbation?

Disclaimer: This post and question involves incredibly frank discussion of sexual topics that generally don’t come up in polite discussion with those involved in traditional Judaism. This is a necessity by the nature of the question, and it is asked genuinely . This is an alternate account because I don’t want this question forever linked with me. I take no pleasure in asking this question and rather consider it a sad necessity when I have nobody and nowhere else I can ask.

Some necessary background. I am a conservative Jew with orthodox leanings. I do my best to follow halakha in terms of what I eat, say, and do. I was not raised this way but took it upon myself over the past several years.

However, there is one problem: I am also a straight male in my early twenties, and find myself with fairly strong sexual urges that I am not able to quell in a halakhic way. Keeping kosher, becoming shomer shabbos (as much as I can while still attending services), and praying three times a day, all turned out to be very easy for me to do. The hardest lifestyle change I have undergone as a result of this, and the only one which I have backslid or blatantly failed on, was giving up looking at NFSW pictures on the internet. The difficulty is not even close. This is to put aside my writing of NSFW fanfiction or use of AI chatbots to create lewd scenarios.

I am not anywhere close to a tzaddik or even a beinoni/yeshar, despite my best attempts. I do not think I will be able to stop masturbating or having some kind of stimulus. I attempted to do and when I found myself watching a public presentation at my college about creating human-shaped meshes with machine learning and feeling uncomfortably attracted to one of the meshes with about as much detail as a clothing store mannequin, I realized that that wasn’t going to work – however much a sin any of the other things are, uncontrollably leering at women or at college presentations about human-shaped meshes is definitely worse.

Despite this, I want to at least cull this as best as possible, or do so in the way that involves the least halakhic violation.

Bearing this in mind, which of the following is the most halakhically acceptable for someone in my position to do, who wishes not to sin but will definitely do so anyway so at least wants to minimize it?

• Looking at visual NSFW items online. I guess I would call this “default”.

• Writing NSFW fiction. This is more personally involved but has the benefit of no women being demeaned/leered at in a direct fashion.

• Use of AI chatbots to create NSFW scenarios. Please don’t ask – I experimented to see what I could force them to do at some point. This is neither deeply personally involved nor involving the degradation of another, at least.

• Avoiding any external stimulus and using thoughts alone. I think this is probably the most acceptable if I can do it, but also I think would be very hard to do without transgression.

Please do not give one of the following as an answer:

“All are equally bad, you need to stop altogether.” I know, but I think that this is not possible for me, so this answer brings no great utility to me. (I will, however, accept as a useful answer, “all are equal in their degree of sin so there is no halakhic distinction in doing one over another.”)

“None of these are a problem, you are being sexually repressed by the orthodoxy.” While I understand that and why this is a valid answer for some, I am trying to live my life according to halakha where possible, and minimizing transgression where it is not.

“You need to speak to a therapist.” Tried that. Didn’t help.

“Get married and then you can deal with this halakhically.” I have never met an observant Jewish woman my age in my life and I sincerely don’t think there is a single one in a 50 mile radius. Even if there were, I’m far too much a weirdo to not push them away. I highly doubt I will go on a single date within the next decade or longer.

Thank you in advance – and I’m sorry again for having to ask such a question. I have no rabbi or authority figure I can ask without great humiliation. Needless to say, the Shulchan Aruch doesn’t cover online things or AI Chatbots since they didn’t exist at the time, so I’m out of luck there too. This is the best source I can ask.