It's not difficult to understand the appeal of clubs, you get drunk, maybe do drugs, potentially make new friends or pickup a girl/guy. Personally I have never understood clubbing for all the reasons you've listed, also I find that the 'great memories' people talk about weren't really great at all, they were just drunk/high off their ass at the time so everything appeared to be hilarious. Going clubbing with a close-knit group of friends is probably okay but when I did it at university, I quickly realized that it was just a bunch of miserable strangers who drank so they could tolerate each other and be fake happy. It was genuinely a miserable experience and I'll never do it again.