Joy is different. There is a calm and bright joy that gives us transparent happiness, and there is a violent, unrestrained joy, overflowing with pleasures and euphoria. So, these two different joys are made by two different hormones. Joy is bright and calm — this is the hormone serotonin. Unbridled joy and euphoria is the hormone dopamine.
Interestingly, dopamine and serotonin exhibit a reciprocal relationship: high dopamine levels lower serotonin levels and vice versa. Let me translate: self-confident people are not prone to unbridled joy, and those who like to rage joyfully are more often not completely self-confident.
Dopamine is responsible for creativity, the search for novelty, the tendency to break the generally accepted rules. High concentration, quick switching between thoughts, good learning ability, quick search for new strategies — these are all the qualities that dopamine is responsible for. It pushes us to exploits, madness, discoveries and accomplishments, a high level of this hormone turns us into donquixotes and manic optimists. On the contrary, if we lack dopamine in the body, we become apathetic, dull hypochondriacs with a low level of exploratory activity.
Any activity or state from which we receive (or rather, look forward to) sincere joy and delight provokes a powerful release of the hormone dopamine into the blood. We like it, and after a while our brain «asks to repeat.» This is how hobbies, habits, favorite places, adored food appear in our life … In addition, dopamine is thrown into the body in stressful situations so that we do not die of fear, shock or pain: dopamine alleviates pain and helps a person adapt to inhuman conditions. Finally, the hormone dopamine is involved in important processes such as memory, thinking, regulation of sleep and wake cycles. Lack for any reason of the dopamine hormone leads to depression, obesity, chronic fatigue and dramatically reduces sexual desire.
The easiest way to produce dopamine is to eat chocolate and have sex.