Therefore, you are more likely to win the National Lottery jackpot than you are to die from taking an ecstasy tablet. And we all know how long those odds are. Compare these statistics with the equivalent for the drugs we use legally. A further 20,000 die alcohol related deaths. This does not include those people who die in accidents or alcohol fueled violence.
Ecstasy acts on the serotonin system - the part of the brain that controls our sense of wellbeing.
Just how it does so, and whether it causes long term damage, is still unknown. We know that MDMA causes neurotoxicity in monkeys and rats, but this doesn't necessarily prove that it does so in humans. Still, a lot of evidence suggests that in the longer term, moderate and heavy users may be putting themselves at risk. Conclusive evidence is scarce, because human surveys have had to depend on external observation, rather than intrusive examination of brain tissue. As research has advanced, so new methods for measuring serotonin neurons have been developed, and with more and more people using the drug, there's no shortage of test subjects.