Euphoria
mental and emotional condition in which a person experiences intense feelings of well-being, elation, happiness and excitement
Euphoria ( yoo-FOR-ee-ə) is the experience (or affect) of pleasure or excitement and intense feelings of well-being and happiness. Certain natural rewards and social activities, such as aerobic exercise, laughter, listening to or making music and dancing, can induce a state of euphoria. Euphoria is also a symptom of certain neurological or neuropsychiatric disorders, such as mania. Romantic love and components of the human sexual response cycle are also associated with the induction of euphoria. Certain drugs, many of which are addictive, can cause euphoria, which at least partially motivates their recreational use.
Hedonic hotspots – i.e., the pleasure centers of the brain – are functionally linked. Activation of one hotspot results in the recruitment of the others. Inhibition of one hotspot results in the blunting of the effects of activating another hotspot. Therefore, the simultaneous activation of every hedonic hotspot within the reward system is believed to be necessary for generating the sensation of an intense euphoria.
History
The word "euphoria" is derived from the Ancient Greek terms εὐφορία: εὖ eu meaning "well" and φέρω pherō meaning "to bear".
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Euphoria” as mental and emotional condition in which a person experiences intense feelings of well-being, elation, happiness and excitement. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q203994. The Library of Congress control number is sh85041526. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Euphoria” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.