It sounds to me like you've learned a valuable lesson and actually made money doing it!
This isn't an endeavor for everyone. It's not like cooking in the sense that your ingredients, if you destroy them, are pretty cheap. Even if you try to prepare a very fancy meal and destroy everything into a fetid mess, it would be hard to blow more than $50. You can always drink the wine afterwards. And, most cuts of meat will not blind you or destroy your lungs. Or cause you to become involved with the authorities such that they impose a huge fine. I guess one could eat badly prepared food and get food poisoning, but as uncomfortable as that may be, generally it passes.
I guess if you wanted to get into woodworking, there might be any number of ways you could cut off your hand or have a splinter injure your eye.
But this refining stuff, is quite a bit different and higher stakes. Your raw materials cost a lot, it is relatively easy to lose them, and the reagents can seriously injure you.
Like most buy-sell endeavors, I believe the money in refining originates at the buy side. It sounds like you have that reasonably down. The ability to refine IMO is another profit opportunity but the profit per (unit labor + chemicals + safety gear + waste disposal + exposure to legal liability) is a much, much smaller number than exchanging cash for intelligently bought raw materials. Myself, I have a modest background in chemistry and try as I might, I just cannot justify getting into the refining part, much as I would like to. I don't have a good space to do it. I don't see myself gathering enough raw mat'ls. The dangers of handling the reagents scare me. I have nothing but respect for those who are either professionally engaged in this or are high-functioning amateurs.
So congratulations are in order, I think. It doesn't sound to me like you've invested in any high-cost anything other than your raw materials and as you've seen, those are eminently salable as they are. There is no shame, as far as I am concerned, in deciding that refining is something you can't execute, for any of a number of good reasons. As we say in the stock market, it is better to be out and wish you were than be in and wish you were out.