Suffering teaches you lessons just about universally (not that all the lessons you learn are true... but that's another question).
As a child, for instance, if you touch a hot pan, you learn not to do that anymore because it hurts.
I was told time and time again about going to college, saving money, and accepting help when it was offered... but until I actually lived on my own without doing those things and felt a sense of frustration and purposelessness, I never truly learned anything.
What suffering is more generally is learning to prioritize... I used to smoke pot. Eventually I decided that it was not as good as I once thought and that it was a waste. So I dropped that priority.

When you suffer in a way similar to how you did, it is like that... except not as concrete. Your lessons become more abstract ones about meaning and spirituality and a million whys.
What it all eventually comes down to is prioritizing your options. Why dispose of a belief system if it ultimately helps comfort you? It is better to adapt that system to whatever new information or suffering has altered in your life. The mind is quite good at that. Religion has always been a tool for humans to keep their feet on the ground with (though it may not always seem that way).

But all in all, the more experiences you have, mental or physical, the more wisdom you will acquire... provided you pay attention to all of them rather than just those that reaffirm your old data. Suffering is just one of the more noticable experiences... the hardest one to ignore. Thus it tends to teach you a lot... Though too much of it can crush hope and warp your perspective.
So I don't recommend a steady diet of suffering. The occasional suffering you are bound to have is substantial.

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And I do not need to know.