Given the clinical and social problems caused by the consumption of alcohol in most industrialised countries, there is a strong need to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of integrated care programmes. In this study, the authors describe the results observed in 124 sequentially admitted subjects at various points throughout the course of the first year after their discharge from the Southern Regional Alcohol-Abuse Treatment Centre (CRAS) in Lisbon, Portugal. An inpatient stay at this unit of CRAS lasts for between 5 and 7 weeks and implies that the patient must submit him/herself to a therapeutic model which has been adapted from the Minnesota model. At the end of the year under study 44.3% of the patients were still abstinent, 40.3% were consuming alcohol and 15.4% did not reply. 51 patients (41.1% of the initial sample) were still in regular contact with CRAS for further treatment at that point. The variable that was found to possess the most significant association with a favourable outcome was adherence to the therapeutic programme over the course of that year.