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Preliminary studies suggest that ecstasy could decrease dopamine levels potentially causing diseases like Parkinson's disease in later life. The debate about the party drug ecstasy continues. The technical name for ecstasy is MDMA and it's related to the amphetamine family. Ecstasy reportedly gives you a nice glow and warm feelings towards others. It's supposed to work by flushing out a nerve messenger in the brain called serotonin - so much so that temporary periods of depression and lack of concentration are fairly common afterwards. The big question though is whether ecstasy knocks off your brain in a more permanent way? A small study in monkeys where researchers gave them similar amounts of ecstasy to those taken by partygoers in real life on a single evening, found that another nerve messenger - or neurotransmitter - called dopamine was reduced in the monkeys and didn't come back up again. There was also evidence of physical damage to the nerves themselves. In theory this could mean that people taking ecstasy are at higher risk of Parkinson's disease and schizophrenia - there are no reports yet of Parkinson's disease in ecstasy users but drug-induced psychoses do seem to be on the rise. It's an unconfirmed but ominous warning that ecstasy users may pay a serious price later in life, even after just one night of intense use.
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