Small question. Do you know all those songs by heart in numbers ? What I mean is, do you know what you play or you just memorised the tab by heart ?
I'm asking that because when I started learning guitar in my teens thats what I was doing. I could play some relatively challenging songs but I had no idea what I was really playing.
I think that when you know what you play (that song is in A, that series of notes in the song are arppeggios of the A major chord and that lick is in B aeonian etc) it brings your playing to another level and you pick up and memorise song a lot faster. Everything becomes less "brainy" and it also enables you to improvise whenever you feel like it.
You can also make a "mistake" and nobody will notice since you can catch up and make it look like it was wanted by improvising a little around that "mistake" ;)