Similar thing happened to me (for promoting my business at networking events, not LARPing), but I never lost the deep creative mental work habit. I just went to networking events constantly, but kept on coding when I wasn't doing that sort of thing.

Now I can do either, without even thinking about it. It's like a lightswitch, when I'm in a group I can just start chattering away, but when I get up a code editor I don't even think about getting down to it, itjust happens.

I have had a similar experience. There is a weird notion in our culture that introversion vs extroversion is a choice between "creative vs outgoing", with the unstated implication being it's really "creative vs not creative". I spent way too long not taking care of myself because I thought I was an introvert. No, I was depressed and I needed help. But some people seem to wear their introversion like some kind of badge of honor. And then, under some perverse guise of being supportive, we don't call people out on it and tell them they are wrong.

It never occurred to me my feelings were depression until my sister revealed her struggle with it as an attempt to get me to go to therapy. Could have saved many years if someone had just told me, "no, this is not a healthy lifestyle, staying in and reading books and playing games, to the exclusion of making any new relationships".

However here you're using a pathological condition (depression) to make a judgment about a normal one (introversion). That is not necessarily reasonable. Introversion doesn't have to imply asocial; but rather just that the person can't socialize or more generally _absorb external stimulation_, _for an extended enough period_. And the world does need introverted people too who prefer to sit around cooking up ideas in their head as much as it needs extroverted people to put together teams to realize those ideas.

Well, there are trade-offs. I probably read less, but I think I'm more creative, since I collaborate more.