The attempt to definitely quit alcohol consumption, in contexts marked by a normalization of high consumption levels, leads to difficulties that contribute to the harshness of withdrawal. In the socio-cultural context, which was the empirical reference of this anthropological research and in which not consuming alcohol socially isolates men from others and faces them with the tediousness of a dull life that, according to Gregory Bateson, prevents them from correcting “the defective abstinence”, few of them approach Alcoholics Anonymous, where they can find peers in the struggle along the path of the sobriety process.