Here is my assessment on the situation about "joy": When I first learned the "truth", I had no Bible knowledge. I thought this was going to be different from all those other religions, and that it was the only true one. No longer would I have to worry about the Catholic church being the truth (I was already a born-in Catholic, with limited exposure and an instinctive dislike for the mysticism and ritualism of the church). Thus, I was happy to be set free from that. That was the "joy" in its entirity, never to be repeated at a later time (even if I later re-learn the same thing).
However, once I quit going, I had two different events that gave me more of the same "joy" of new knowledge. The first was joining a "secret society" that the Washtowel Slaveholdery condemns (no, not the Freemasons or Illuminati, either). They taught me that most of the Old Testament was about a God that was a complete value destroyer that needed to stoop to initiatory force, threats of force, and fraud to get His way. Jesus was striving to set man free from that God, even using God as a metaphor to give people the tools needed to break free. Paul got confused and took it literally (at least he did try his utmost to obey his own rules, suggesting strongly that he was only errant and not malicious in doing that). And the Catholic church edited the Bible to make it look like Paul's version was correct--that really untangled the mystery of the Bible for me.
The second event was clicking onto my first apostate Web site. There, I learned that the whole Washtowel Slaveholdery is a complete scam. They were not even founded on the truth, and Boozerford just rendered it even further away from the truth. Raymond Franz tried to bring the religion back to the Bible, but was cut off without being able to do that. Both of those events were like having the lights coming on--rather than waiting for that Almighty Lowlife Scumbag Jehovah to release it.