Max, Danny, Zero and Derek are four alcoholics who struggle to come to terms with their addiction. The four meet at a hospital, where they are each undergoing psychotherapy to help them beat the booze. They soon learn to depend on each other in their fight against the bottle.

Derek is a gentleman farmer whose wife has been having an affair with a farmhand. Max, on the other hand, just cannot handle reality. He is well placed to have a job, a wife and a steady home life, but the thought of it is just too much. Danny, the Irishman, is a dreamer whose life went downhill when the girl he loved, Mary Malone, failed to notice him, while the fourth addict, Zero, his marriage to Doris in tatters, feels "washed out by life".