I ride with real weight on my hands. (I'm a skinny, leaf-like ex-racer who has known for 40 years that horizontal backs = less wind resistance and less work for those skinny legs. Also that a seat pushed too far back closes my abdomen and doesn't work for me.) I have always used drop bars with traditional bends. Now, as I get older and the miles have piled on (50+ years and 200k+ miles) the position of those bars gets more and more critical. (Both the rotation of the bars and size, shape and location of the brake levers.)
My bikes have evolved to: handlebars with the drop flats horizontal or even a touch past to get my wrists rotated thumbs forward. Likewise the levers are forward, close to the forward-most part of the curve, so the lever tops are near horizontal. Less than this near-extreme position lead to both pain and numbness during and after rides. Now I don't notice either.
My advice - try dropped handlebars. Go to a bike coop and get some used ones. Don't tape them. Just tape the cables in a few places with electrical tape. Lay a yardstick on the drop flat and mark where it hits the seatstay with a piece of tape. Also note how far the brake lever tip is from the yardstick. Put the wrenches for your stem, brake levers and handlebar clamp in your pocket and go ride. Adjust bars and levers as needed. Note how you feel, during and after. Repeat as needed. You may see a trend and want to go back to the coop for that other bar. Don't spend the big bucks for a nice one until you are certain what you want. (Big $$ spent has an amazing ability to get us to rationalize that "this" must be good and right. We only get attached to $10 cheapies when our wrists keep saying "yeahhhh!!")
Oh, after you feel you have dialed in those cheapies, tape them with cheap cloth handlebar tape, going form the bottom up to th e stem. Finish with a wrap of electrical tape. Reason? It is really easy to unwrap down to the brake levers and do another lever move and rewrap. Keep doing this until you know the bars are set up right. Only then - new bars if you wish and new fancy handlebar tape/
If your bike stem is 31.8 mm, you can get shims so you can use the 26.0 bars far more common used. A soda can will make a nice shim to bring a 25.8 to 26.0.
Ben