Study findings indicate that drug use was a common behavior among respondents who had experienced sexual victimization, physical victimization, or other victimization. As predicted by the developmental hypotheses of general strain theory, respondents who had experienced sexual victimization used five types of drugs (hallucinogens, amphetamines, barbiturates, heroin, and cocaine) more frequently during their late teens and early 20s than in other periods of their life course. Sexual victimization was most likely to be reported by women, who were also more likely than men to report relatively frequent polydrug use. Compared to the impact of physical victimization and other types of victimization, the strain of sexual victimization had the strongest association with polydrug use. Future research should use more sophisticated measures of drug use in order to clarify the role of typical victimization on various drug-using behaviors. Study data came from seven waves of the National Youth Survey, a longitudinal survey of youth ages 11 to 17 years old when the study began in 1976. Based on identical items on the survey instrument for all seven waves, the study constructed several time-varying variables. Two variables described substance-use frequency; one measured delinquency; and three described type of victimization. 2 tables, 7 figures, and 68 references