Bottle vs draft

Before anyone redirects me, I have diligently searched through the whole forum looking for answers. Some have partly answered my question but not to the point where I understand it beyond a shadow of a doubt. I have been bottling for about 10 years now and I must admit that I have not really looked into the kegging part of home brewing too much due to the Military moving me around the world every couple of years. Bottles are easy to find in foreign countries, CO2 is not. So can someone please tell me why my bottles take longer to be ready to drink than someone who kegs. Same recipe, 7 days primary, 7-10 days secondary, 2 weeks in bottle OR 2-3 days in keg and ready to drink. Why? Does the CO2 some how speed up the maturation period of beer or what? I don't mean the carbonation either. I mean the actually drinkability of the beer. If I was to drink one of my bottles 2-3 days after, it would be horrible. Please help me understand this.

It doesn't speed up the maturation. You're right. Most of us keg and wait the 2-3 weeks for it to carb at serving pressure. Some styles can be drank sooner than others, but if people are force carbing like you say, they haven't planned enough ahead imo.

I'm sure carbonation level subtly effects drinkability, but that aside...
Your bottle conditioned beers are undergoing another mini fermentation with the priming sugar, which partially resets the clock because you get another bunch of fermentation byproducts spat out after bottling. The yeast has to clean these up on top of the conditioning of the originally primary fermentation, so it takes a bit more time.
That's my guess anyway, make sense?

...though most people on here would argue that it's a pointless question - kegged after 3 days might taste marginally better than bottled after 3 days, but both will taste terrible compared to either after 3+ weeks