Jesse Carrajat seemed to have everything a man could want.
There was the beautiful woman, two young children, and a third on the way; the six-figure salary and a higher job at a major US health insurance company; and the perfect four bedrooms New Jersey the home he and his wife built from the ground up to raise their growing family.
From the outside it was the portrait of a man who had made it.
But behind the doors of that carefully constructed life, Carrajat waged a battle that almost no one could see. He couldn’t stop drinking.
Carrajat traces the beginning of his problems to the Covid pandemic in 2020, when the boundaries between his busy job and family life suddenly disappeared.
Like millions of Americans, he suddenly found himself working from home — and struggling to “switch off” at the end of the workday.
“I would be working and dealing with all the stress that comes with it,” he said. “And as soon as I was done, I was walking down the hall and I had to be in dad mode, holding the kids, wrestling with them, calming their tantrums. There was no break, no pause.”
Alcohol began to provide one.
Jesse Carrajat, now 41 years old, struggled with alcohol addiction after struggling with the stresses of his work and family life
Initially, Carrajat, now 41, would sneak into the garage unnoticed at the end of the work week and have a quick IPA before returning to his family.
“It started as one to take the edge off on a Thursday or Friday, but soon my tolerance went up so it became two, then three,” he told the Daily Mail.
Before long, the release at the end of the week had crept into the rest of his life.
“Alcohol became a daily ritual for me,” he said. “Sometimes I’d buy a four-pack of IPAs on Wednesdays, thinking I had enough for four days, and drink them all.
‘On a Tuesday at 5.15 pm I felt like having a beer. Other times I gave myself an opportunity.
‘As I started drinking more and more, I felt weak and ashamed. I am a man who prides himself on discipline, having everything in order and standing up for my wife and children, and I failed at that.
“I also didn’t want to get help because I didn’t want to be held accountable for what I did and I didn’t want to feel judged.”
When he returned to the office, Carrajat said he never drank at work — or drank excessively around coworkers. Instead, drinking remained a largely secret habit, carried out surreptitiously at home.
He kept sneaking into the garage to drink, crushing the empty beer cans under his foot and hiding them under piles of cardboard so his wife wouldn’t find them.
Soon the deception became more elaborate.
“I bought drinks with cash so my wife couldn’t see it on the bank statement,” he said. “And then I started hiding whiskey bottles in obscure places, like the back of the pantry. I thought if my wife found them, it would look like they had been bought and lost ages ago.”
Carrajat said at his worst he drank 11 or 12 alcoholic drinks on both Friday and Saturday, and several each weeknight.
Like approximately 28 million Americans, he had quietly developed an alcohol addiction.
Medically known as alcohol use disorder, or AUD, it is not defined simply by how much someone drinks, but by losing control over alcohol – continuing to drink despite the damage it causes to health, work or relationships.
There is no set number of drinks that means someone has AUD. Instead, doctors look for a pattern of behavior: intense cravings, drinking that begins to interfere with work or family life, and giving up activities one used to enjoy in order to drink.
For Carrajat, the consequences became increasingly difficult to hide. After his secret weekend binge came mornings of battling hangovers while trying to play the role of husband and father.
Carrajat is speaking out to show others a method that can help curb their drinking
“I felt tense all the time,” he said. ‘On Saturday morning I spent the first five hours pretending, being anxious and wanting to go somewhere to clear my head, when I should have been enjoying myself with my family.
‘On Sunday morning I could barely make it through church service.’
The turning point came in 2023, when Carrajat decided he was “tired of being sick and tired all the time.”
He had tried to quit several times, promising himself not to drink for a week, but on the first day he had to give in.
“I remember there was a moment where I crushed another beer can and threw it in the trash this time, and I thought to myself, ‘Wow, you’re in trouble here.’
“The 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, “Yes, no.” Obviously I wasn’t hiding things as well as I thought.’
At first he tried using an app to track the days he didn’t drink. But within two weeks, he found himself falling back into the same familiar pattern: convincing himself that just one beer wouldn’t hurt, only to find that it quickly turned into several.
While scrolling through Instagram, he came across an influencer talking about a treatment he had never considered: naltrexone.
Above you can see the page about the new guidelines with detailed recommendations for alcohol consumption
Although naltrexone is better known as a drug for opioid addiction, it is also approved by the FDA for the treatment of alcohol use disorder.
It works by blocking opioid receptors involved in the brain’s reward system, reducing some of the pleasurable effects of alcohol and, in some people, dampening the urge to keep drinking.
Naltrexone is available in two main forms: a daily oral tablet and a long-acting injection, which is usually given once a month.
It costs about $3 per pill and is called “Ozempic for alcohol” because of its ability to dramatically reduce cravings in some patients. It is available by prescription and is not addictive.
Carrajat was skeptical. But after contacting telemedicine provider Oar Health, he received a prescription and took his first tablet that evening. The effect was almost immediate.
Because the effects of oral naltrexone vary throughout the day, patients may be advised to take their daily dose shortly before the time when their cravings are typically strongest – in the case of Carrajat, in the early evening.
“I took it right before dinner the first time,” he said. “I remember sitting at the table and looking at the wine, but I didn’t care.
“I stared at it and thought, ‘I should want that.’ And I didn’t. It was so wild that such a small pill could do that.”
Carrajat, now 41, has gained about 25 pounds during his drinking. He is pictured above when he first reduced his alcohol consumption, left, and today
He continued taking naltrexone daily for three months and said his desire to drink virtually disappeared.
There were some initial side effects. During the first two weeks, he said he sometimes felt anxious and noticed a dip in his energy levels, but both effects quickly disappeared.
During those three months he didn’t drink at all. But on the day he stopped taking the drug daily, he carefully poured himself a glass of wine.
For perhaps the first time in years, once was enough.
Today, Carrajat can have the occasional drink with his wife or friends without retreating into the patterns that once dominated his life. He still takes naltrexone, but now only on social occasions where he expects to drink.
The transformation extends far beyond just alcohol.
Around the time he started tackling his drinking, Carrajat left his high-powered corporate career and launched Stronger Weekly, a podcast focused on health, fitness and self-improvement. New episodes are released every Wednesday and the YouTube channel now has approximately 5,000 followers. It has also become his main source of income.
The change also helped revive his interest in fitness. He says he has lost 25 pounds, taking him from 220 pounds to 195 pounds, and is now in the best shape of his life.
Most importantly, the man who once spent weekend mornings anxious and hungover, wishing he could escape his family, now says he can be present for them again.
And for the first time in years, he’s excited about what comes next.
