The USE OF DRUGS for all these young people, who wander their miserable existence in streets and squares, becomes a game of Russian roulette, a constant confrontation with death. They desperately seek their dose, knowing that every dose could be the fateful one. They persist not out of pleasure, as many believe, but out of necessity. The addiction itself is merely a tyrannical compulsion that transforms their lives into hell.

Death dominates the mental scene. It seals their everyday life, for it has already sealed their inner psychological world. Within it often lies a beloved deceased person whom they could not mourn, encased in a 'crypt' within the self. The mourning of this deceased was impossible within the circumstances that led to the profound loss.

The onset of drug use is generally placed after the traumatic experience of the death of a loved one, the impossible mourning, and the creation of the crypt. The deeper desire of this person, usually during adolescence, is to replace drugs with what they have permanently lost, the irreparable loss, which they completely deny.

The book presents fourteen clinical cases of drug addicts, demonstrating the impossible, the unfulfilled mourning, and the crypt. The topic has tremendous clinical interest and can play a decisive role in the process of detoxification.