Euphoria
This is an accepted version of this page Euphoria (/juːˈfɔːriə/ ⓘ yoo-FOR-ee-ə) is the experience (or affect) of pleasure or excitement and intense feelings of well-being and happiness.
[1][2] Certain natural rewards and social activities, such as aerobic exercise, laughter, listening to or making music and dancing, can induce a state of euphoria.
[20] Robert S. Woodworth's 1921 textbook Psychology: A study of mental life, describes euphoria as an organic state which is the opposite of fatigue, and "means about the same as feeling good.
"[22] 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.
[23] However, in 1957 British pharmacologist D. A. Cahal did not regard opioid euphoria as medically undesirable but an effect which "enhance[s] the value of a major analgesic.
"[24] The 1977 edition of A Concise Encyclopaedia of Psychiatry called euphoria "a mood of contentment and well-being," with pathologic associations when used in a psychiatric context.
[12] Many different types of stimuli can induce euphoria, including psychoactive drugs, natural rewards, and social activities.
[36][37] This research suggests that increased dopamine neurotransmission acts as a sine qua non condition for pleasurable hedonic reactions to music in humans.
[41][42][43] The major psychoactive ingredients – arecoline (a muscarinic receptor partial agonist)[42][44] and arecaidine (a GABA reuptake inhibitor)[45][46] – are responsible for the euphoric effect.
[47][48] Certain depressants can produce euphoria; some of those drugs in this class include alcohol in moderate doses,[49][50] γ-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB),[1][51] and ketamine.
[63] Characterized as opioid-like but less intense,[clarification needed] it may occur at supratherapeutic doses, or in combination with other drugs, such as opioids or alcohol.
[64][65][66] μ-Opioid receptor agonists are a set of euphoriants[5] that include drugs such as heroin, morphine, codeine, oxycodone, and fentanyl.
By contrast, κ-opioid receptor agonists, like the endogenous neuropeptide dynorphin, are known to cause dysphoria,[5] a mood state opposite to euphoria that involves feelings of profound discontent.
[94] Euphoria is also strongly associated with both hypomania and mania, mental states characterized by a pathological heightening of mood, which may be either euphoric or irritable, in addition to other symptoms, such as pressured speech, flight of ideas, and grandiosity.
[95][96] Euphoria may occur during auras of seizures[97][98] typically originating in the temporal lobe, but affecting the anterior insular cortex.
[110] Related euphorias have also been recorded in studies of alignments between sexual identity and social recognition such as support in schools for lesbian and gay people, and experiences of intersex variation and their diagnoses such as receiving a diagnosis of congenital adrenal hyperplasia which explained physical differences for example.
