It's a failure of empathy to assume that one's own experience can in any way define another person's experience. Other people's experiences are their own, just as yours are your own.
That said, it's true -- and I've said it before -- that making an effort to detach emotionally from PAWS symptoms, as well as taking action to relieve them, can be helpful.
However, the same can be said of any symptoms of any malady, and has nothing to do with how "real" the malady might be.
The bottom line is that some brains and nervous systems heal more quickly in the aftermath of alcohol and opiate addiction than others. For a few of us, it takes a very long time indeed, and can be a frustrating and demoralizing experience to go through no matter how determined an attitude we have or what action we take to combat the symptoms. Allow those people the right to feel what they feel, OK? And they'll extend the same courtesy to you.