Maybe I'm overoptimistic about people's intelligence, but my impression is that no one in the history of ever has thought the song is uplifting. There's a reason why it's been used so often in television and film to accompany heartbreak and tragedy and the like.

(I don't really see "a tale of hedonism" in it, either. I mean, it has sex in it, for sure, but that's not the same thing. It's a song of damaged and broken relationships, not of consequence-free one-night stands.)

[EDITED to add:] That last sentence is an oversimplification. There are lots of versions of the song, even if you consider only Cohen's own ones, with different balances between the religious and the sexual/romantic elements; the original 1984 version isn't "a song of damaged and broken relationships", or at least not only that. You could even, kinda-sorta, call it "uplifting". Later versions, Cohen's and others, not so much.

But none of them, so far as I know, is a "tale of hedonism" in any useful sense.