I have my own problems with GrapheneOS, but I thought they made a great effort to make sure that it didn't really have that kind of downside. What problems did you hit?
I put all of my social media apps on a secondary profile or in Private Spaces. Never got notifications and checked the apps very infrequently. Not a great experience when i would take hours/days to respond to people I'd imagine.
I suppose that if you use GOS without Google Play Services, you'll have a hard time using lots of services like WhatsApp etc.