I do agree that there are some people who decide to seek ADs as a quick fix, or to avoid working on sources of emotional pain, avoid making changes. ADs don't really work that way though, in my experience.
Yes, and likewise, there are also people who will use recreational drugs (street drugs like Cannabis) to obliterate emotional problems, or to cover up the shortcomings and underdevelopment in their own character, rather than trying to work on the sources of those emotional problems, or to work on developing their mind.
If you are using recreational drugs to cover up or obliterate problems that you should really be facing squarely, that can that then can create a downward spiral of dependency on recreational drugs. Then they are no longer recreational, but become chemical crutches.
I occasionally dabbled in a few soft recreational drugs when I was younger, but I had strict self-enforced rule
never to take recreational drugs as a means to avoid emotional issues, or to act as a crutch for shortcomings and underdevelopment in my character. I would only take recreational drugs when I was feeling fine; I'd avoid taking them when feeling down. I wanted to squarely face the reasons and causes for feeling down, and try to address and fix the situation, not escape the problem with drugs.
When you are a teenager or in your early 20s, it's quite common to feel a lack of confidence socially, as you are still developing your mind and character at that stage. Just like when you first learn to drive, a lack of confidence is natural and a good thing, as it would be bad to have too much confidence when you have such little experience on the road.
But I had a friend who would say to me: don't worry about lack of confidence socially: just take a line of cocaine, and you will instantly feel very confident.
Sure that would work, but I totally rejected that approach, because I wanted to build confidence naturally. It's part of character building and growing up; it a slow but necessary process of maturing. I don't think you can properly develop your mind and character if you just produce confidence "synthetically" using cocaine.
But going back to antidepressants: there are lots of times when depression may not be psychogenically caused, but may be due to some physical organic cause in the brain or body. For example, both depression and anxiety
have been linked to cytomegalovirus infection — that's a physical cause, not a psychogenic one, and it may not help to address the life issues you think are causing depression if the depression has a physical biological cause.