Rausch is a unique German word, that is really difficult to translate into English. A online dictionary suggest words such as frenzy, intoxication, rapture, rush, jag, inebriation, exhilaration, flush, ecstasy, rage, inebriety, drunkenness, high, transport, delirious state [1]. But all these word only grasp aspects of a Rausch (plural is: Räusche). If you change from German Wikipedia to English, you will be redirected to “Substance intoxication”. And on top of that, you get a completely different article. If you would try to translate the beginning from the German article in to English, you would end up with something like this [2]:
Rausch is a emotional state of exaggerated ecstasy or it is a intensive feeling of luck, which lifts somebody over his normal emotional state. In the medical sense, the definition of Rausch is not connected of feelings of luck and defined as a state after a intake of a psychotropic substance with disturbances of consciousness, cognitive abilities, perceptions, affect and behavior or other psychophysiological functions and reactions. The disturbances are connected to the pharmacological effect of the substance.
Before we try to explain anything of this, lets note how there is a reference made to a so called “substance”, also known as a drug. In this definition it is indicated, that a Rausch occurs after taking a drug. However, the word Rausch also covers emotional states that are not connected to any particular substances. For example in German you have the word “Kaufrausch” which could be translated into “buying frenzy”, it’s a certain state of mind and emotions you get into while buying things [3]. And in this particular case it can also refer to a compulsive buying disorder. As you can see, even in German the definition of Rausch has no clear borders.
For example Daniel Kulla argues, that Rausch is actually an ability from the nervous system of our brain to cope with certain situations [4]. It is a evolutionary strategy to survive or in other words: Rausch exists because species survived which has the ability for a Rausch. Kulla names some of the important brain states/Räusche: Euphoria, Alertness, Appetite, Realization, Dream and Dissolution. Euphoria in simple terms is “pleasure” and we know that we can induce it with certain substances like Opiotes [5]. But other substances are not necessarily needed for Euphoria, for example when we care to take a closer look at the practices of meditation [6]. Actually, Kulla says, Opiotes trigger Euphoria, because our nervous system already learned how to do it by it’s own. The list goes on with Alertness, that mode where the brain constantly tries to detect dangers and to evade them. In a life threatening situation your body releases Adrenaline and you find yourself able to do things you didn’t even know you can do [7]. But we also deliberately invoke this Rausch in non life threating situations like riding a roller coaster or watching a horror movie. Speed is one of the substances that increase this alertness, without having a real threat. I will skip Dream and Dissolution for now, but I highly encourage you to hear Kullas own explanations. Nonetheless, I think the point is made clear: Rausch is a state of the nervous system and our brain is just altering between them. This also indicates that there maybe isn’t even something like a sober brain.
It is important to notice that we have learned ways and invented tools of invoking and controlling a Rausch without any substances. I already mentioned meditation and Kulla mentions martial arts as a way of controlling a adrenaline Rausch. Attending a religious mass, everyone around you singing and exposed to bright light in a church can invoke a Rausch. Through breathing techniques, the lack of sleep or sensory deprivation [8]. There are many techniques and they are constantly used. Something we seem to oversee, because we mostly connect Rausch to a drug.
Kulla tries to find some very basic mechanics how a Rausch works and comes up with following: First of all the capacity of data processing in the neural system and the sequence of signals is changed. The neural capacity can be increased or decreased depending on the Rausch, basically meaning the capacity of the data that the brain can process and make sense of – a altered susceptibility and responsiveness of the nerves. A change of sequence in signals could mean that signals which the human brain normally synchronize are not any more. Consider this example: You see a dog and hear him barking. Actually what you see is him moving its jaws first and it takes a while till the sound travels to you, but fortunately our brain synchronizes these two signals together. That’s why in our every day life we rarely notice that the speed of light is faster than the speed of sound. Our brain has a limited capacity of data processing and to simplify things we could say, that it merges information into one frame. If you see a series of pictures of a figure going from right to left, you will eventually start to perceive it as a single motion when the process is speed up. Our brain simply can not process these pictures as individuals anymore [9]. Signals and information that belongs together are squeezed into one frame.
In a desynchronized state we happen to have gaps in the signal sequence and we have stacked signal, where several signals at once are coming in. The brain tries to fill the gaps with something, for example with a memory or an self-image of the optical nerve. Even in a synchronized state the brain tries to fill in the blank as you probably never noticed that your eye has a blind spot [10]. On the other hand stacked signals are merged to one new information, depending if we actually have the capacity to process these signals all at once (neural capacity). We actually find these informations stacks quite often in dreams, where we find somebody who we met yesterday is also representing a long term friend.
I find this whole mechanic of Rausch highly interesting because it enables us to connect informations we wouldn’t normally have connected before. Most of the connections probably makes not much sense but some of them do giving us a new perception of things.
[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rausch
[3] https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/Rausch
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyognyfSDbY
[5] http://psychonaut3z5aoz.onion/w/index.php?title=Opioid&_=
[6] http://psychonaut3z5aoz.onion/wiki/Meditation
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epinephrine#Strength
[8] http://psychonaut3z5aoz.onion/wiki/Sensory_deprivation
[9] http://nerdist.com/your-brain-has-a-frame-rate-and-its-pretty-slow/
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_spot_%28vision%29