I also as Pony One said didn't care about sredding and theory at all in the past 2-3 years. When I was 14 when i started playing electric guitar I started playng Metallica and Guns right at the beggining because I had played classical guitar before and I just grabbed the pick and started to play. Then as my musical tastes evolved from that heavy metal stage I started digging into alternative music and all my practice would consisst of composing riffs and songs eventually.
At some point I felt that I should have some lessons in electric guitar and I had some private instructions from one of the best teachers in Bulgaria. There however I was surrounded by a gang of sredders and I felt kind of a looser there because I had not done any sredding before and stillat that time I had had 8 years of playing. And I could have acheived some decent level of sredding but that is not what music is about. Anyway I put some effort in learning some shredding just to have some experience and to put a solo or two here or there.
i agree that it is better to learn theory when you have some experience -- you get much clearer picture of what you have been doing by following your instinct. For example I figured out that I was using quite frequently mixoladian before even knowing what mixoladian is.
also i think that sredding has no place in contemporary music. The easiest way to sound banal is to start shredding in the middle of the song -- the best possible result would be that you would sound as a copy of Ynguie, Vai or somebody else, we just have such a wide variety of big names that chances are that you will sound quite closely to somebody else. This doesn't mean that you should not at all, what I mean is that you should try to be as diverse as possible because you know what happens you are doin only one-finger-Dropped D riffs. I am far from giving advice here, just sharing some thoughts.