For some. If it works for you, you’re lucky. Especially if it’s the first drug you tried.

For others, depression treatment can be a gauntlet of bouncing around between different drugs and drug classes. Some drugs do the opposite of what’s intended. Some take weeks before you know if it’s working or not. if not, and you have to stop taking it, you either go cold Turkey risking bizarre withdrawal symptoms and worse issues, or its a slow taper of weeks or months to avoid those.

There are things with higher success rates, like ketamine, MDMA, and electroconvulsive therapy (which sounds scary, but it’s been and continues to be refined and modernized). Although these are known to work, they’re a lot more expensive if they’re even accessible, and patients (at least in my area) have to survive the drugs and talk therapy gauntlet first before they’re allowed to use them.