There has been in Brazil for some decades religious groups which use in their rituals a hallucinogen, the ayahuasca. The União do Vegetal (UDV) and the Santo Daime congregate today around ten thousand people in different cities of the country. A scientific study which took place in a UDV church of Manaus AM, has conducted a psychiatric evaluation of fifteen people that have been taking the ayahuasca for more than five years. One of the main results were that eleven of these people had presented an abuse or a dependence of alcohol, which had remitted after some months participating in the rituals. The aim of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of the meanings and cultural processes specifically related to the outcome of men who had been alcohol dependent before coming into the UDV religious rituals. The subjective experiences of four individuals participating in UDV rituals in Araçariguama-SP was investigated through ethnographic interviews. Each of these people had presented severe alcohol dependence which remitted after a few months going to the rituals The altered consciousness state characteristics, joining a new social group, and the evidence that their alcohol compulsion was neither noticed in their use of ayahuasca nor in their relationship with the religious institution, were the main clusters resulting from the interview analyses and the participating observations.