Euphoria

Euphoria is also a symptom of certain neurological or neuropsychiatric disorders, such as mania. Affective disorders such as unipolar mania or bipolar disorder can involve euphoria as a symptom.

Although mania is often conceived as a "mirror image" to depression, the heightened mood can be either euphoric or irritable; indeed, as the mania intensifies, irritability can be more pronounced and result in violence, or anxiety.

Euphoria is the experience (or affect) of pleasure or excitement and intense feelings of well-being and happiness.

It includes more specific mental states such as happiness, entertainment, enjoyment, ecstasy, and euphoria.

Hedonic hotspots – i.e., the pleasure centers of the brain – are functionally linked.

The reward system is a group of neural structures responsible for incentive salience (i.e., motivation and "wanting", desire, or craving for a reward), associative learning (primarily positive reinforcement and classical conditioning), and positively-valenced emotions, particularly ones which involve pleasure as a core component (e.g., joy, euphoria and ecstasy).

Sigmund Freud's 1884 monograph Über Coca described (his own) consumption of cocaine producing "the normal euphoria of a healthy person", while about 1890 the German neuropsychiatrist Carl Wernicke lectured about the "abnormal euphoria" in patients with mania. Dopaminergic stimulants like amphetamine, methamphetamine, cocaine, MDMA, and methylphenidate are euphoriants.

Mental effects may include loss of contact with reality, an intense feeling of happiness, or agitation.

It is semantically opposite to dysphoria.

The opposite state of mind is known as euphoria.

Affective disorders such as unipolar mania or bipolar disorder can involve euphoria as a symptom.

Bipolar disorder, previously known as manic depression, is a mental disorder that causes periods of depression and abnormally elevated moods.

Many different types of stimuli can induce euphoria, including psychoactive drugs, natural rewards, and social activities.

Psychoactive substances often bring about subjective (although these may be objectively observed) changes in consciousness and mood that the user may find rewarding and pleasant (e.g., euphoria or a sense of relaxation) or advantageous (e.g. increased alertness) and are thus reinforcing.

Exercise is known to affect dopamine signaling in the nucleus accumbens, producing euphoria as a result, through increased biosynthesis of three particular neurochemicals: anandamide (an endocannabinoid), β-endorphin (an endogenous opioid), and phenethylamine (a trace amine and amphetamine analog). Dopaminergic stimulants like amphetamine, methamphetamine, cocaine, MDMA, and methylphenidate are euphoriants.

Amphetamine is also used as an athletic performance enhancer and cognitive enhancer, and recreationally as an aphrodisiac and euphoriant.

Euphoria is the experience (or affect) of pleasure or excitement and intense feelings of well-being and happiness.

Happiness in its broad sense is the label for a family of pleasant emotional states, such as joy, amusement, satisfaction, gratification, euphoria, and triumph.

A decade later, finding ordinary feelings of well being difficult to evaluate, American addiction researcher Harris Isbell redefined euphoria as behavioral changes and objective signs typical of morphine. µ-Opioid receptor agonists are a set of euphoriants that include drugs such as heroin, morphine, codeine, oxycodone, and fentanyl.

Activation of the MOR is associated with analgesia, sedation, euphoria, physical dependence, and respiratory depression.

Dopaminergic stimulants like amphetamine, methamphetamine, cocaine, MDMA, and methylphenidate are euphoriants.

It is rarely prescribed over concerns involving human neurotoxicity and potential for recreational use as an aphrodisiac and euphoriant, among other concerns, as well as the availability of safer substitute drugs with comparable treatment efficacy.

Exercise is known to affect dopamine signaling in the nucleus accumbens, producing euphoria as a result, through increased biosynthesis of three particular neurochemicals: anandamide (an endocannabinoid), β-endorphin (an endogenous opioid), and phenethylamine (a trace amine and amphetamine analog).

These neurons are activated directly or indirectly by euphoriant drugs (e.g., amphetamine, opiates, etc.) and by participating in rewarding experiences (e.g., sex, music, exercise, etc.).

Dopaminergic stimulants like amphetamine, methamphetamine, cocaine, MDMA, and methylphenidate are euphoriants.

Certain depressants can produce euphoria; some of the euphoriant drugs in this class include alcohol in moderate doses, γ-hydroxybutyric acid, and ketamine.

Among other effects, alcohol produces a mood lift and euphoria, decreased anxiety, increased sociability, sedation, impairment of cognitive, memory, motor, and sensory function, and generalized depression of central nervous system function.

A decade later, finding ordinary feelings of well being difficult to evaluate, American addiction researcher Harris Isbell redefined euphoria as behavioral changes and objective signs typical of morphine.

The ability to induce euphoria is sometimes/often considered to be a component of addiction liability.

Certain depressants can produce euphoria; some of the euphoriant drugs in this class include alcohol in moderate doses, γ-hydroxybutyric acid, and ketamine.

When depressants are used, effects often include ataxia, anxiolysis, pain relief, sedation or somnolence, and cognitive/memory impairment, as well as in some instances euphoria, dissociation, muscle relaxation, lowered blood pressure or heart rate, respiratory depression, and anticonvulsant effects, and even similar effects of General Anaesthesia and/or death at high doses.

Certain depressants can produce euphoria; some of the euphoriant drugs in this class include alcohol in moderate doses, γ-hydroxybutyric acid, and ketamine.

Ketamine can produce euphoria and dissociative hallucinogen effects at higher doses, and thus has an abuse potential.

Exercise is known to affect dopamine signaling in the nucleus accumbens, producing euphoria as a result, through increased biosynthesis of three particular neurochemicals: anandamide (an endocannabinoid), β-endorphin (an endogenous opioid), and phenethylamine (a trace amine and amphetamine analog).

A clinical study from January 2019 that assessed the effect of a dopamine precursor (levodopa), dopamine antagonist (risperidone), and a placebo on reward responses to music – including the degree of pleasure experienced during musical chills, as measured by changes in electrodermal activity as well as subjective ratings – found that the manipulation of dopamine neurotransmission bidirectionally regulates pleasure cognition (specifically, the hedonic impact of music) in human subjects.

A clinical study from January 2019 that assessed the effect of a dopamine precursor (levodopa), dopamine antagonist (risperidone), and a placebo on reward responses to music – including the degree of pleasure experienced during musical chills, as measured by changes in electrodermal activity as well as subjective ratings – found that the manipulation of dopamine neurotransmission bidirectionally regulates pleasure cognition (specifically, the hedonic impact of music) in human subjects.

The sensation commonly occurs as a mildly to moderately pleasurable emotional response to music with skin tingling; piloerection and pupil dilation do not necessarily occur in all cases.

Occurring in a small percentage of individuals at recommended doses, euphoria is increasingly frequent at supratherapeutic doses (or with intravenous- or nasal administration).

Intentional misuse leading to overdose can include using prescribed or unprescribed drugs in excessive quantities in an attempt to produce euphoria.

µ-Opioid receptor agonists are a set of euphoriants that include drugs such as heroin, morphine, codeine, oxycodone, and fentanyl.

Heroin, also known as diamorphine among other names, is an opioid most commonly used as a recreational drug for its euphoric effects.

Dopaminergic stimulants like amphetamine, methamphetamine, cocaine, MDMA, and methylphenidate are euphoriants.

The symptoms of a moderate acute overdose on methylphenidate primarily arise from central nervous system overstimulation; these symptoms include: vomiting, agitation, tremors, hyperreflexia, muscle twitching, euphoria, confusion, hallucinations, delirium, hyperthermia, sweating, flushing, headache, tachycardia, heart palpitations, cardiac arrhythmias, hypertension, mydriasis, and dryness of mucous membranes.

Pregabalin induces dose-dependent euphoria.

Certain gases, like nitrous oxide (N 2 O, aka "laughing gas"), can induce euphoria when inhaled.

Its colloquial name "laughing gas", coined by Humphry Davy, is due to the euphoric effects upon inhaling it, a property that has led to its recreational use as a dissociative anaesthetic.

µ-Opioid receptor agonists are a set of euphoriants that include drugs such as heroin, morphine, codeine, oxycodone, and fentanyl.

Serious side effects of oxycodone include reduced sensitivity to pain (beyond the pain the drug is taken to reduce), euphoria, anxiolysis, feelings of relaxation, and respiratory depression.