I learned a bunch of social skills in the last 1.5 yrs or so

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After coming from having zero friends in high school and most of college, I've become one of the most popular guys in the activism clubs I'm in. People literally describe me as a really friendly, cool guy. Lots of the girls that wouldn't have looked twice at me before are now really flirty with me. I learned about the power of eye contact (initiating/sustaining it and monitoring others' EC), the way you walk, and the way you move in general. I learned to be comfortable touching people. I learned how to dance. I've learned how to bullsh*t conversations based on just vibing. I learned how to relax in groups of random people. I learned how to approach women and not be scared of rejection. I lost my virginity and had sex with several girls (some attractive, some not so attractive) in this time span. I even got my first girlfriend for four months. I also learned how to do that back forth joking stuff that guys do. I started dressing in a fashionable way.

I started drinking alcohol and smoking more weed than I used to due to all the partying I've been doing. I massively came out of my shell.

I learned almost all of this through learning about Pick-up theory (90% of it is BS) and going out to bars/clubs every weekend to approach lots of women. It really taught me an immeasurable amount about human behavior. About a year and a half ago, I had never had a conversation with a woman outside of professional or family settings that was longer than 5-10 minutes. Obviously I never got remotely physical with any women (I was 23 years old!!). I felt insanely nervous around them. I could barely even talk to guys I considered to be extremely sociable.

This was a lot of information for my brain to process in a very short period of time. In fact, so much so that I can't really stop thinking about this stuff. On top of that, I feel like I need to be in the presence of other people all the time, otherwise I get lonely. I seek validation from women (this was unheard of before). My self-esteem right now is directly linked to being appreciated by women. Unfortunately, I got my self-confidence decimated by a bipolar/borderline girlfriend over the summer and it's worse than ever right now. I'm completely obesessed with finding a new girl that is just as attractive as my ex that's into me. I'm playing the numbers game like I used to (working lots of women at the same time in order to increase the probability of getting a date) and this takes an excessive amount of time. Finding girls like that is taking too much time and energy. I have this sneaking, uneasy feeling that I physically maxed out with her, and furthermore, that she was a fluke in the system because of her mental issues. No girl that attractive would want to get with someone like me otherwise.

I feel as if I was a COMPLETELY different person before this. And in many ways, I feel like I was a much more interesting, intelligent, and overall more productive person. Cognitively, I feel like a shadow of my former self. I took my first exam in grad school this afternoon and probably came out with a B, which was literally unheard of in undergrad for me. I used to feel comfortable being alone by myself for days and thinking about abstract research. I still get immense pleasure from this, but it's not the same. I need to be around people constantly because I get a high from it for some reason. I used to be able to just sit down and study for hours and hours on end. I'd even enjoy it. It was 300x more productive.

Were these social skills worth it? Not really. Did I end up meeting any people that I can say I will be friends with for a very long time? Yeah, maybe one. Have I met ANY girls I can see myself getting serious with? Nope. I want to go back to the old me, at least he had some interesting ideas and opinions. This new guy is, like my ex said, all image and very vain. He's actually more of a loser than the shy, awkward dork I used to be. I feel like I have no idea how to balance a social life like this with being a graduate student.

So, now that I've been to the otherside of the pasture, I can honestly say that I want to go back to being the introverted, shy, awkward dork. It's never going to happen completely again, but seriously, has anybody had this kind of thing happen to them? What did you end up doing? I feel as if being awkward and socially distant more or less kept me out of trouble. What I'm going through right now is something most people went through when they were teenagers, I think.

More or less, I feel like the take home lesson of my experience is that we are gifted in ways that we will only understand once we don't have our deficits. ASD's (mine is a non-verbal learning disability, not quite asperger's) let you have a focus and clarity in one specific area that is unmatched, imo, just because you can cut out all the bullsh*t having a social life brings to the table.

There's gotta be some middle ground there that can satisfy both your old desires and your newfound ones. You don't need to completely throw away your social life. Honestly, if you were to disappear for a while, it wouldn't be so bad. Leave 'em wanting more.

I've had a similar experience over the last year, but to a much more limited extent. But I was just able to drop back to a middle ground after starting college a month ago as there are zero people here that knew me before. But the summer really sucked as I felt the need for social interaction yet had almost none, here I get a lot without trying, often more than I want. Overall it wasn't worth it to me as it just led to a rather depressing summer and some issues I'd always managed to avoid until my final semester of high school.