I just had this random thought while lying on my roof, listening to “Young Dumb & Broke,” and being in that same state.
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There’s two major factors.
Euphoria/high are caused by chemicals in our brains. It could be an event that causes our bodies to naturally release those chemicals, or it could be caused by taking drugs. Either way, they don’t persist in the body forever. Our bodies flush things through. Just like how if you eat, you’ll be full for a while, but you’ll eventually poop it out.
The second consideration is that our bodies have a baseline of “normal” that they want to return to. If something changes chemically, our bodies will adapt over time to it and make that the new baseline. For example, if I”m constantly drinking caffeinated drinks to wake myself up, eventually my body will decide that it doesn’t need to produce the chemicals to wake me up on its own, since it’s getting plenty already. It’s created a “new normal” with the caffeine. That means that caffeine that used to make me extra-awake now only makes me a normal amount of awake, and becomes *necessary* for me to feel a normal amount of awake. This is one of the reasons why drugs can be addictive–over time, they can become necessary to feel normal.
From a biological perspective, emotions are motivators. They’re the reason behind behaviors. If you had constant euphoria without variance in emotion, you wouldn’t be motivated to do anything. Perhaps you would be euphoric up to the point where you starved to death. From your perspective, achieving good emotions is the point, so that’s why you feel like we should be able to have constant euphoria. From an evolutionary perspective, your emotions are just the means to get you to do stuff and the stuff you do is the point. It may not seem intuitive in our modern world where our emotions motivate behaviors that seem counterproductive all the time, but that’s because the modern world is more complicated than the prehistoric world in which our brains evolved.
From a chemical perspective, you get that euphoria from the CHANGE in neurotransmitters, not the absolute amount of them. So going from low-high is what does it, not the absolute amount being high. High levels of neurotransmitters just cause mania and psychosis after a while. They need to return to a baseline so you don’t go stark raving mad.
ELI5: We need to feel all things, good and bad, in order to get through living. We need pain to help us know to heal or rest something so we don’t make problems worse. We need thirst to keep us healthy, hunger too. These discomforts teach us how to care for ourselves too.
Already good answers on here about some of the factors that influence ‘norms’ and variances. [Here’s another](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=homeostasis)
So, signals in your brain, good or bad, are there because they serve a purpose. While bad signals aren’t pleasant… that’s kind of the point. Often they’re a sign something is wrong, preparation for something threatening to your safety, or deterrent from things that aren’t in your best interest. We depend on them more than you think, and without “bad” signals, you’re actually pretty liable to mess up your emotional and physical health with ease.
Good signals are also important. Motivation and positive feedback are also just as critical–if this was absent, again you’re pretty much gonna lose your emotional and physical health quickly.
Balance is important. Being able to feel both sides is important. Your body is wired around this, so when one signal is coming through way too strong for way too long, this can be a sign something in the sensitivity is no longer working as intended, so your body compensates–whatever is supplementing the upturn will be eventually offset by your body essentially turning down your internal sensitivity. Now, if that supplement was removed, the lower sensitivity means a crash, but if it remains, it just means it becomes your new normal or baseline level (within reason/generally speaking).
when you live your whole life with a flesh body that isnt vibrating at high level eg buzzing and itchy all over. it will become difficult to adjust to that frequency because it will become unbareable.
its like an itch that you cannot scratch.
“sunny days wouldn’t feel special if it wasn’t for rain, joy wouldn’t feel so good if it wasn’t for pain” – 50 cent
Euphoria serves an evolutionary purpose. It’s to motivate you to do certain things. For humans, it generally is designed to reward you for eating certain foods, being productive in certain weather (you generally get euphoria when the sun comes out after a prolonged period of rain) and most importantly; having sex.
If you were always in a state of euphoria, you would have no motivation to do any of these things. You would simply sit around in a state of total bliss until you starved to death or got mauled by a saber-toothed tiger and the human race would be extinct.
Some of the answers have some of the right info, but I want to clarify something. Chemicals don’t “cause” emotions anymore than electricity “causes” video games on computers. The chemicals are necessary ingredients, but they don’t directly cause experiences. They’re just part of a complex process.
Your experience is better characterized as a complex electric-and-chemical process. E.g., the chemicals people say “cause” emotion are themselves caused by the brain choosing to release the chemicals. It’s very circular (the brain is what “decides” to release those chemicals in the first place).
The raw amount of ingredients matter less (until excess or not enough) than relative changes (i.e., processing). When you’re euphoric, there is a big change happening. This change takes energy to make happen. Spending energy is one of the ways you die. So you can’t just continuously spend that energy forever. Your body prefers going back to some stable baseline it can maintain comfortably (homeostasis).
In addition, the “physical machinery” wears out. You don’t have infinite chemicals. Your neurons can’t keep firing at a high rate forever. They get tired. They produce waste materials that are toxic (like almost all life doee). they need down time to clean up.
In addition to survival needs mentioned elsewhere (you need to feel motivated to do stuff, so you can’t just be satisfied all the time), we have to make do with limited resources.
Your behaviour is dictated by evolutionary survival. With cultural elements on top, yes, but avoiding death long enough to reproduce has been the main driving factor.
Turns out, reward and punishment are really useful mechanisms for survival. Outrun the bear, feel amazing. Get eaten alive by bear, feel like shit.
Euphoria is basically a reward, so how can you be rewarded if you’re in that state all the time?
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