other helm commands from my emacs setup seem slow to, like just bringing up the command history takes 2-3 seconds.

Switch to Vertico/Consult/Embark stack, it's not that complicated and totally worth it. It's faster, it's predictable, it's easily extendable. It already has tons of extensions.

Shouldn't be so slow. Try the usual M-x profiler-start , use helm a little bit, then M-x profiler-report .

Thanks @U0G75ARHC and @U06PNK4HG for suggestions. I'll probably try both and see which yields results for me.. I might combine the vertico/consult/embark switch with trying Doom again.