I don't want to sound too argumentative.
I know LaTeX is generally used for e.g. writing textbooks where formatting tables, formula, etc. can be a bit of a nightmare.
From what I've seen though, markdown only has basic support for tables and no real support for formula, and IIRC images / images with links differed depending on implementation.
If you're say, writing a book like a novel, either sounds terrible. Word is perfectly adequate for writing. In fact my formatting is quite simple in Word. I have space between paragraphs and I use Heading 1 for chapters. All formatting is done after the writing. To which, you can use Word since you already have it, or you can use a third party tool like Vellum. But in the mean time, your writing experience wasn't miserable.
Also if you care less about grammar and more about organization, tools like Scrivener provide even more functionality.
I've seen one interesting tool that tries to bridge the gap somewhat for writing books, and it does that by being its own software with a split-panel view built-in and bolting extra syntax on top of markdown: https://github.com/vkbo/novelWriter
I tried it, and the experience was still miserable.