I'm glad you cut them off. That's a great first step.

(Sorry, this is going to be long. This topic hits close to home) Yes, it's 100% possible to make friends in your late 20s. The internet makes it so much easier. There's always people that are in a similar position to you.

There's also people that are always open to making new friends and actively look to add new people into their friend groups. Some people are really nice and give new people a chance.

My personal story: at like 25 or so I broke up with my GF and realized that I had cut off 99% of my friends. All my friends at that point were basically her friends. It was awkward to continue to hang with them. I basically cut everyone off and started over. (Not the greatest idea but I started cutting off negativity without hesitation)

One day I was just tired of staying in every weekend and on some forum I posted on, I was basically like 'Does anyone want to hang out in NYC? I'm pretty lonely at the moment.' Nothing overly serious, just throwing it out there. Some guy hit me up and said, me and my friends normally chill in the city, let's grab food + a drink. Basically like a straight guy date. We really clicked, had chipotle and got drunk together.

After that, he introduced me to his friend group. They basically adopted me in right away. The 1st dude is basically my best friend now. Checks up on me weekly even when my introversion pulls me away from the group. Everyone else is a really close friend.

All I'll say is that it definitely takes effort and you need to be willing to go to things alone. You need to make the effort to talk to people. They're usually way more willing to open up than you'd expect. You also can't expect to have a buddy to go to things with. Concerts, bars, festivals, etc. If you stay home because you don't have friends and you don't have friends because you just stay home - you're going to be stuck.