Drug addiction is currently one of the acute social-psychological problems affecting adolescents. A large number of sociological, medical and psychological studies have been carried out on this topic. In the latter, the subject of study was mainly psychological differences between drug addicts and psychologically healthy adolescents. In these studies, however, little attention has been paid to the study of motivation of various types of social behavior, although drug addiction is one of such behavior types. Until now, there have been no studies of drugaddicted and healthy adolescents in terms of their development of motivation aimed at achieving success and avoiding failure. It became the subject of this study. Significant differences in these types of motivation between psychologically healthy and addicted adolescents have been found. Based on the results obtained, practical recommendations for the prevention of adolescent drug addiction are formulated.