I think people come to forums such as this at their lowest. They often don't understand their illness and even if they are willing to tackle it they haven't really accepted the idea of a life without their drug of choice.
I know when I came here I used many of these rather hopeless phrases. I'm not suffering depression or any other mental illness and I tend to know my own mind, but I was just desperate for advice, some magic little nugget of information that would lead to sobriety. Such a thing doesn't exist of course and when you realise that it can make you feel worse, few people like the idea of serious work for what seems at times like a small reward.
I have only learned this in the last 2 weeks, that I need to stop focusing on the bad side of my addiction. When I fail and drink there is no point kicking myself again, it just leads to more drinking. It's better to start over, concentrate on the positive idea of not drinking again and moving forward.
I've always been described as a positive person and yet it took some real shifts in my attitude to see the positives rather than feeling like a failure, pathetic, useless etc etc.
I think the problem arises when you can't break out of that negative pattern. You need to move past it. But that's just one persons point of view and I know some people find the negative emotions help keep them away from drinking. I tried it that way but it didn't work well.
Seeing others who are going through it, posting my feelings and thoughts and getting feedback on them is just great, really useful. I couldn't do this kind of thing in a face to face group.