Well, I definitely had problems before I drank, I asked my parents for counseling when I was 14, unfortunately counseling just isn't done in my family (drinking on the other hand we do really well, or really bad depending on ones perspective).
And then, heaven, I found alcohol and all my problems disappeared, at least temporarily. I once read that your emotional growth essentially stops when you become an alcoholic, which sounds about right to me. The problem was the more I drank the more alcohol became the problem as opposed to the symptom, fueling my depression being the biggie, and boy did it fuel it, like dumping the oil from the Gulf on a camp fire.
In the almost three weeks I have been sober I have not been depressed once, which is unheard of for me.
Now that alcohol is no longer fuelin my problems I can get down to the hard work of addressing them.