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From the Roxbury Court Clinic in Boston, the authors offer a psychodynamic classification of youthful drug users, designed to aid in planning of interventions. Their thinking often parallels and draws upon the work of Wieder and Kaplan (cf., The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, Vol. XXIV). Three groups are discussed: experimental, depressive, and characterological drug users. The authors stress that the last group is the 'tiny minority', a view not in agreement with many workers in the field. The experimental users are more or less normal adolescents reacting to common pressures, internal and external; drug need is not a meaningful motivation. With the exception of the potential school dropout, most of this group can be dealt with by educating their parents and teachers. The depressive group, numerically large, use drugs in response to multiple factors—intrapsychic, familial, and social. For them, our familiar therapeutic modalities are indicated: psychotherapy, rehabilitation, community based goal-directed group activity, etc. The characterologic diagnosis should be made with extreme caution, as many of the depressive group at first seem to fit this category. These are the ego impaired, with histories of severe developmental trauma and pathology. For them, drug use serves both gratification of regressive needs and, temporarily, to 'prop up' ego functions. Treatment for this group requires prolonged protective settings of the self-help Synanon type. Methadone is a possible alternative.