Being charged an outrageous amount on a small loan

I had a full ride academic scholarship for the first 3 years of my college career. I transferred to a different college in my senior year and my scholarship that I worked so hard to earn didn't transfer. I fought it and got my school to agree to pay 90% and I ended up only owing a small amount. So, I received a loan for financial aid in the amount of about $1500. A few years later, I found myself in financial trouble and was forced to declare bankruptcy. This was in the early 90's when they gave out credit cards to anyone and everyone and I fell into the trap of thinking that I was getting "free money". I was so broke when I declared bankruptcy that I couldn't even afford a lawyer so I filed pro-se and completed the process on my own to the best of my ability. That was when it was still somewhat easy to file bankruptcy on your own as well. Unfortunately, I was misinformed about the student loan and that was the one loan I didn't realize that I still had to re-pay. I was told by a lawyer (beware "free" advice) to ignore all calls from creditors after the bankruptcy was final. So I did so until after a couple years I realized that I did, in fact, need to repay the federal student loan. At that time, the fees and everything had reached an outrageous amount and they said I owed over $8000. Over the last 10 years or so, I've continued to pay on this loan and have paid over $7000 towards a $1500 loan. I still owe $6000 or so. All my requests for help have been ignored and the loan companies have basically laughed this off explaining that the government can do what they want. So I'm paying thousands of dollars on a $1500 loan. After paying $7000 already, I'm hoping there is some sort of forgiveness that I can seek. Can anyone help me? Or am I truly just in debt to the government for an outrageous amount?