You often hear people (myself included) claim that Dianabol has euphoric/antidepressant properties. I know when I take Dbol I definitely feel a mood-lifting sensation. But why does Dbol have such a pronounced effect on well-being compared to other AAS? Well, here's why.
When you take any AAS, the hormone is broken down into bi-products, and those bi-products are broken down into bi-products, and so on. The first two bi-products are estrogen and Dihydrotestosterone (DHT). We're going to focus on DHT for these purposes. DHT is then broken down even further to a hormone called 3α-Androstanediol (3α-diol). Dianabol happens to break down into this bi-product at a much higher rate than most other AAS resulting in much higher concentrations of 3α-diol in our system.
Now where does 3α-diol come into play?
Scientists and researchers believe that 3α-diol is the culprit behind Dianabol and other AAS's Euphoric effects.
There is a section in our brain called the nucleus accumbens (NA). This is part of the "rewards" center of our brain. This is the part of the brain that makes you feel good when you sit in a hot tub at the end of a long day, or when you take a bite of a warm brownie sundae. This is also where many drugs exhibit their euphoric effects. There are receptors in the NA called GABA/Benzodiazepine receptors (GBR) which many drugs interact with to activate the reward center of our brain to make us feel happy and at ease. Scientists believe 3α-diol exhibits it's effects somehow in this part of the brain.
HOWEVER...3α-diol is an androgen and typically interacts with androgen receptors (AR), and there are hardly any ARs in the NA part of our brain so 3α-diol must interact in another way unrelated to AR activity.
Through experimentation scientists were able to determine that 3α-diol actually interacts directly with the GBR's in the NA part of the brain. So essentially 3α-diol is able to stimulate the GBRs to signal the reward center of the brain to give you that warm fuzzy feeling that everything is fine and ok.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1857333/
