Another thought I had on this was that you should bear in mind that being so focused on pickup is something that should be a transient stage of your life. Being blokes we have a tendency to be obsessed with learning and mastering something to the exclusion of other things and theres no real harm in that so long as you re balance your life at some point. So you may find you gravitate back to certain friends later on once you have integrated pickup into a more balanced approach to life in general.