Mostly a waste of time. A lot of wasted energy too, trying to live up to impossible or just stupid standards. Yeah, some experienced gained. But one can say that about almost any difficult/challenging experience one goes through: a divorce, losing money in the stock market, serving in the military. As someone born in the trooth who got out at about 27 years old, any of the other previously mentioned challenging situations would have yielded experience gained in a much shorter time frame. So bottom line, gained some experienced, but not enough to justify the time lost. I DO NOT recommend it to any of my friends.