> Who is to say that SSRI antidepressants simply correct brain chemical imbalance to healthy levels rather than letting one substitute a chemical high for real life changes?

SSRIs do not result in anything resembling a "high". Neither do tricyclic antidepressants, lithium salts for bipolar disorder, and so on.

I have long since lost it, but many years ago a friend of mine wrote down his experience of temporarily stopping his bipolar medication in order to do a burst of work during the hypermanic phase. It made it very clear that, for him, _not_ taking the drugs resulted in a dramatic and sometimes hazardous high/low cycle with a frequency of days, in a way that resembles the experience other people have with recreational drugs.