I never thought of contacting customer support to try and restore my old account. I lost all of my playlists when they "helpfully" suggested that I delete my "unused" channel. The popup said this would have no effect on my youtube experience.

But it did. It deleted all the playlists I had created, and I couldnt re-create them without linking a Google+ account to my youtube account and creating a public channel. I didn't do that because that account is the one I don't associate with my real name. It was a very frustrating user experience, and has added to my list of reasons to get away from google services.