Lidocaine euphoria

Lidocaine euphoria is a rather unusual side-effect to the administration of lidocaine as either a local anesthetic, a nerve block or more rarely, intravenously. Pharmaceutically speaking, this is considered to be a potential side-effect of the usage of lidocaine; however, prior (or current) users of cocaine appear to be more susceptible to this potential side-effect.

Though chemically relatively dissimilar (lidocaine (C17H21N04) / cocaine (C14H22N2O)), it is hypothesized that the mechanism of CNS activity may be the cause for the similar euphoric-producing side-effects of each drug.

This is entirely different than lidocaine induced anxiety, a side effect of epinephrine in products containing both lidocaine and epinephrine.