Coping mechanisms can bring comfort, that's true. My view is they were tools to create the alter-ego, Neo, which felt to him like a truer representation of himself than the matrix offered when he followed the rules. He also uses them to endlessly search for answers to why he feels like something is wrong with the world -

I know why you hardly sleep, why you live alone and why, night after night, you sit at your computer. You're looking for him.

His normal reaction to a party invitation is to say no, which he did, until he saw the white rabbit. The only reason he went out was in the pursuit of answers.

To visually distinguish between the real world and the matrix, the filmmakers gave scenes inside the matrix a green tint, a la the old school green tint of Neo's command line.

I'm not being argumentative I just feel the need to discuss the finer plot points of the matrix in a shitpost. It's just my programming...