People who seek out drugs are not a good proxy for the general population
After trying at least 7 antidepressants over the years; I sometimes wonder exactly how much over Placebo do they work.
My doctor finally came clean one day. Antidepressants at their best might give you a bit more energy.
I noticed he started prescribing bupenorpine off label for treatment resistant depression. I understand why. I think he got tired of seeing patients not responding to traditional antidepresssants.
Most psychiatrists will not deviate from the old standbys though, even the progressive doctors.
(I can offer this. With time you will start to feel better. Everyone's biology is different. My depression when it hits sometimes takes a few weeks/months to lighten up, but it always lightened up, and wasen't tied to situational circumstances.)
The vast majority of them these days are SSRI, which effectively raises the level of serotonin that your body (not just brain) functions under. If anything, they will tend to make you more tired and blunt mood swings.
Bupropion, on the other hand, is a wonder drug for me that seems to effectively remove the bottom of my depression without really causing any other side-effects (except maybe a subtle positive effect on ADHD symptoms).
except for that whole class of drugs called benzodiazepines
They are not an average anything, i.e. not representative of anything really, which is the OP's point.
Second, people who receive medicine for their ailments are not 'drug seekers' by any stretch of the imagination. People do not 'seek' blood thinners arbitrarily, people seek drugs which provide some kind of physical or psychoactive experience i.e. cocaine, opiods, thc. Very few prescription drugs fit that category.
I certainly do seek out blood thinners, antidepressants, antibiotics, ect, if I am suffering from illnesses that they provide relief for. Nobody seeks out drugs "arbitrarily" whatsoever. You seem to think that people who use narcotics to address their pain aren't worthy of a medical definition that is reserved for people who obtain their medication from a pharma company.
It's plain cognitive dissonance.
There's that puritanism again. Both classes of people are seeking relief, you can simply touch one class of illness but not the other. It's the human condition to seek relief, not some pharma company buzzword that segregates acceptable pharmaceutical use and unacceptable use.
Your classification of narcotics users as plain hedonists - in no way empathizing with that user's need to have some form of relief from whatever is plaguing them - is the dissonance.