Here is what I will say as a person with a similar situation. We're not dumb, there is just something in our way. Whether that be anxiety to look dumb or something else. My best advice is don't try to be quick, take your time, formulate a thought and own it. That will make you feel less bad about this perceived negative trait.
I will say a few things. When things like giving up alchohol happen your brain will do a lot of things to trick back into the drug. Like, for example, making the things you previously enjoyed seem not fun or fulfilling like they used to, all a ploy to get you back on the drink. I'm not an expert.
Speaking from experience the number one thing that gave me purpose in life is kids. There is nothing more purposeful that having something that you love more than yourself. I tell everyone this and I understand that you may not agree. Having kids is the greatest thing you will ever do. When you're 60 sitting at home you're going to wish you would have had them.
Non-kid suggestions would be start a project, that you can feel ownership over. You own it and make something of it. You are responsible for its success or failure. Again, I'm no expert.
I will say my energy levels have seriously increased in the last few years and I 100% think it is because I have stopped working out as much. When I worked out a lot I felt like I had a lot more energy and I have noticed similar things from other people.
Semi relatable. Marshawn Lynch "Beast Mode" of the seattle seahawks said that he would take a shot or two before the games to calm his nerves and things just flow.
I have a very similar story. Small startup, 6 developers, 4 other employees and 2 founds. They fired an employee for lack of output and then all but 1 developer left the company.
It's not a data structure but a really cool algorithm. Locality Sensitive Hashing. It allows like items to be hashed to the same value. So instead of a typical hashing functions that wants to avoid collisions this algorithm tries to optimize for collisions.
Here is what I will say. If you always leave when you feel this way you'll never get better. I used to be you, I was always awkward and felt awkward around my co-workers. For me this wasn't just at work this was in every aspect of my life, I was very anxious all the time. It was an underlying insecurity that I hadn't dealt with yet.
It took me years to overcome the anxiety and feeling of awkwardness but it's because I didn't understand why I was feeling that way.
Here is what I'll say as some closing advice. No one else thinks you're weird, or awkward or an outcast. You do. They think you're the new guy and it's just going to take some time to break that barrier. Running away is not going to fix it.
This is part of working and improving yourself, your company benefits from this. Have you ever heard the quote: "What if we train them and they leave? What if we don’t and they stay?". As long as it is relevant to your job and you're getting your work done, I wouldn't worry too much about it.