Compared to practicing your instruments for 5+ years, getting along with a bunch of people, touring, etc, taking the piss for a few days in a studio is easy.

Perhaps most importantly the Manual explains that you won't get fame and fortune by this route.

Indeed, you almost certainly won't get fame and fortune by any route. Hence Steve Albini's treatise on a similar subject, often called by its last line: "Some of your friends are probably already this fucked".

It's all relative.