Safari tabs taking up too much memory on m1 iMac Monterey

It appears that Google Drive is using an enormous amount of RAM.

And, to make matters far worse, you have that awful thing called "cleanmymac", so you are shooting yourself in both proverbial feet...

You should uninstall cleanmymac (it is not just as simple as dragging to the trash, you have to follow their instructions).

Then you will probably need to do a clean install of the OS, since cmm could have already damaged your system.

Re: "So something screwy there"

And yet you contend CMM is causing no problems? This forum universally (as far as I can tell) encourages users to uninstall CMM because it does cause "screwy" things to happen.

It's your machine and you can do as you wish with it, it may not be the cause of your problems. But the vast amount of experience represented by the volunteers here don't like it or trust it. Just sayin'

After all, you can always reinstall it if you find it is of benefit to you.

Your mac, your call.

The very concept of "clearing RAM" shows how poorly they understand the OS (at best).

Ever since Mac OS X Mavericks (that is 10.9, several years now), any program that "clears RAM" is actively fighting the way the OS itself manages RAM - and in doing so is making your mac slower, if not crashing. If they peddle their wares as, among other "features", "clearing RAM", then they are either ignorant or ... .