I agree with you. I was one of the few who were "contacted at the doors", began studying the Live Forever book and got baptised. The first couple of years were actually good (though I see now how much of a zombie I was already becoming). The next five years were miserable but I persisted, the following 12 years were even more miserable and my wife and I finally came to the realization that we could actually just walk away. And so we did.
In all my time in the religion I know that it was very unusual for someone to actually join the religion rather than be raised in it. Although I considered myself studious while I was in it, I was only studying what the WTS told me. Only at the end, and afterwards, did I actually start reading books by Franz, Penton and others and then went back to reading the stuff Russell and Rutherford wrote, and later delved into more recent WTs and read them with a completely different view. I wonder, "Did I really read that stuff? How could I not have seen through it?"
The recent comments by people going to the current DC are quite revealing -- people sitting with glazed eyes through the final talk as the new interpretation of the generation teaching is provided. No one is actually listening! Of those raised in the religion, NONE take any objective view of what they're being taught and all just plod along, not realizing how fraudulent the whole teaching is and not realizing what freedom there is outside this control system. Many don't even realize how much they are being controlled and would deny it if confronted with the evidence.
I go through stages of feeling a bit sorry for Witnesses, but for the most part I'm not. They all have the responsibility of examining their own beliefs and lifestyle (as the WTS tells them to do!!) and deciding who is control of their lives and why. They simply choose not to. The September 1 WT article on deception (page 10) should be a wake up call to them all, but for them it is easier to be part of the pack and follow lamely as they're told what to do next.
I find it very frustrating that former close friends in the org pity us for leaving. One condemned my wife for being a hypocrite for not going to the memorial after we left. She said she told another friend we'd left and that friend cried. That friend, needless to say, has done nothing to contact us to have a chat. Witnesses are too well trained by the fear and suspicion about "apostates" to do that. In the end, it's not so much sad as sick.