Jesse Carrajat, a 41-year-old former senior health insurance executive from New Jersey, has overcome a secret alcohol addiction that threatened his family life after discovering a 3 dollar prescription pill known as naltrexone.
Carrajat, who built a picture-perfect four-bedroom home in New Jersey with his wife Meg for their growing family, had spent years secretly drinking up to 12 alcoholic beverages a night while hiding empty cans and bottles from his spouse.
After failing to quit on his own using tracking apps, Carrajat learned about naltrexone on Instagram in 2023 and received a prescription through a telemedicine provider. Dubbed "Ozempic for alcohol," the daily oral medication eliminated his alcohol cravings almost immediately.
Carrajat traces the beginning of his drinking problem to the Covid pandemic in 2020, when the boundaries between his high-pressure job and his home life abruptly collapsed.
As a father whose children are now aged eight, six and two years old, he struggled to transition from work to parenting at the end of each day. "I'd be working and dealing with all the stresses of that," he said. "And the moment I finished, I would walk down the corridor and have to be in dad mode, holding the kids, wrestling them, calming their temper tantrums. There was no break, no pause."
Secret drinking habit in New Jersey home
Alcohol provided that missing pause. At first, Carrajat slipped unnoticed into his garage at the end of the working week to quickly drink an India Pale Ale (IPA) before returning to his family.
"It started as one just to take the edge off on a Thursday or Friday, but pretty soon my tolerance went up, so that became two, and then three," Carrajat told the Daily Mail.
The weekly release soon expanded into a daily routine. "Alcohol became a daily ritual for me," he said. "Sometimes on a Wednesday, I would buy a four-pack of IPAs, thinking I had enough to last four days, and drink them all."
He added: "At 5.15pm on a Tuesday I was reaching for a beer. Other times, I would pour myself a shot."
Despite earning a six-figure salary and maintaining a senior job, Carrajat felt overwhelmed by shame. "When my drinking picked up in frequency, I felt weak and ashamed. I am a guy who prides myself on discipline, having it all together, and showing up for my wife and kids, and I was failing at that," he said. "I didn't want to reach out for help either, because I didn't want to be held accountable for what I was doing and I didn't want to feel judged."
When he returned to working in the office, Carrajat never drank at work or to excess around colleagues. Instead, his drinking remained a secret habit carried out furtively at home, where he crushed empty beer cans under his foot and hid them under piles of cardboard in the garage.
To prevent his wife from discovering his addiction, he devised more elaborate tactics. "I would buy drinks with cash just so my wife could not see it on the bank statement," he said. "And then I started to hide whisky bottles in obscure places, like at the back of the pantry. I thought if my wife found them it would look like they'd been bought ages ago and misplaced."
Alcohol use disorder and impact on family
At his worst, Carrajat drank 11 or 12 alcoholic drinks on both Friday and Saturday, along with several drinks every weeknight.
Like roughly 28 million Americans, Carrajat had quietly developed alcohol use disorder (AUD). Medically, AUD is defined not simply by the volume of alcohol consumed, but by a loss of control over drinking despite negative consequences to health, work or personal relationships. Doctors diagnose AUD based on patterns of behavior, including intense cravings, interference with family or job responsibilities, and giving up previously enjoyed activities to drink.
For Carrajat, secret weekend binges resulted in mornings spent faking normal behavior while struggling with hangovers. "I constantly felt on edge," he said. "On Saturday mornings, the first five hours would be me faking it, being anxious and wanting to go somewhere to clear my head, when I should have been enjoying myself with my family." He added: "On Sunday mornings, I could barely make it through the church service."
The turning point arrived in 2023 when Carrajat decided he was "sick and tired of always being sick and tired." Though he had tried to quit several times by promising to go a week without alcohol, he invariably gave in on the first day.
"I remember there was a moment where I crushed a beer can again and put it under the garbage this time, and just thought to myself, 'Wow, you are in trouble here,'" he said. "The very next thing I did was go to my wife and say, 'Hey, Meg, I think I need help drinking less.' And I remember her response was like, 'Yeah, no s***.' Clearly I wasn't hiding things as well as I thought I was."
Carrajat initially used a mobile app to track non-drinking days, but relapsed within two weeks. Shortly afterward, while scrolling through Instagram, he saw an influencer discussing naltrexone.
How naltrexone blocks alcohol cravings
Although primarily known as a treatment for opioid addiction, naltrexone is approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat alcohol use disorder. The non-addictive prescription drug blocks opioid receptors in the brain reward system, reducing the pleasurable effects of alcohol and dampening cravings.
Naltrexone is available as a daily oral tablet or as a long-acting injection given once a month. Costing approximately $3 per pill, it has earned the nickname "Ozempic for alcohol" due to its ability to significantly curtail alcohol urges in certain patients.
Carrajat contacted a telemedicine provider and received a prescription. Because oral naltrexone efficacy varies over the day, patients are often advised to take their daily dose shortly before peak craving times, which for Carrajat was early evening. "I took it that first time just before dinner," he said. "I remember sitting at the table and looking at the wine, and I just didn't care about it. I was staring at it thinking, 'I should want that.' And I didn't. It was so wild that such a tiny pill could do that."
Carrajat took naltrexone daily for three months, during which his desire to drink completely vanished. While he experienced mild anxiety and lowered energy levels during the first two weeks, those side effects quickly subsided, and he abstained from alcohol entirely throughout the three-month period.
Career change, weight loss and life today
When Carrajat stopped taking naltrexone daily, he cautiously poured a glass of wine and found that one drink was sufficient. Today, he drinks only occasionally with his wife or friends and takes naltrexone solely prior to social events where alcohol is present.
Alongside overcoming his addiction, Carrajat left his executive role at the health insurance company to launch Stronger Weekly, a podcast centered on health, fitness and self-improvement. New episodes of Stronger Weekly air every Wednesday, and its YouTube channel has accumulated roughly 5,000 followers, becoming his primary source of income.
Carrajat also rekindled his passion for physical fitness, losing 25 pounds as his weight dropped from 220 pounds to 195 pounds and giving him a rippling six pack. Most importantly, he is fully present for his wife Meg and their three young children, feeling energized and optimistic about his family's future.
