Ecstasy Rising: A Special Report

April 1 -- No other drug has ever spread as fast as Ecstasy.

In the 1990s, Ecstasy seemed to come out of nowhere to join marijuana, cocaine and heroin as one of the four most widely used illegal drugs in the country. If current trends continue, 1.8 million Americans will try Ecstasy for the first time in 2004; only marijuana will attract more new users.

According to Mark Kleiman, a drug policy analyst at the University of California, Los Angeles, this is a rare phenomenon. "Having a new, major drug arrive on the scene is something that happens every half-century or so," he told ABCNEWS. "This is a major event in drug history."

So how did this happen? How did an obscure compound with the chemical name MDMA, and the street name Ecstasy, earn a place among the pantheon of major, illicit drugs?

"After I used Ecstasy, I just felt like a whole new person, like it changed my life completely," said one user who preferred not to be named.

"The drug makes you feel empathy, empathy for other people, empathy for situations," said another user who also didn't want his name used. "You just look at everything in the most positive light."

Good for You?

Overwhelming, positive word-of-mouth is often cited as the cause of Ecstasy's explosive growth.

"There is an evangelical fervor with Ecstasy," says Robert MacCoun, a drug policy analyst at the University of California, Berkeley. "People who experience it tell their friends to try it."

This has never happened before, said Kleiman: "I have never heard anybody say to me methamphetamine improved my life. I know people who like to use cocaine, but I have never heard anybody try to claim that cocaine is good for me. But with MDMA, lots of people think that the drug has improved their life."