Yes, this sounds very familiar to me. I started with dates and went to story points used to estimate dates. Then as we turned up the release cadence, we eventually dropped estimating altogether, even in points, because it wasn't really helping anything.

That doesn't mean we refuse to solve the problems that estimates are used to solve. E.g., "Can we have something by the big conference," or "Can we keep our customers happy." We just solve them other ways.

And totally agreed about the corrosive effect of treating estimates as commitments. It's such a negative-sum game, but people play it all the time.