Published: 01:46 BST, 19 August 2026 | Updated: 01:48 BST, 19 August 2026
Jesse Carrajat appeared to have everything a man could want.
There was the beautiful wife, two young children and a third on the way; the six-figure salary and senior job at a major US health insurance company; and the picture-perfect four-bedroom New Jersey home he and his wife had built from the ground up to raise their growing family.
It was, from the outside, the portrait of a man who had made it.
Yet behind the doors of that carefully constructed life, Carrajat was fighting a battle that almost no one could see. He could not stop drinking.
Carrajat traces the beginning of his problems to the Covid pandemic in 2020, when the boundaries between his high-pressure job and family life suddenly disappeared.
Like millions of Americans, he suddenly found himself working from home – and struggling to 'switch off' when the working day ended.
'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.'
Jesse Carrajat, now 41 years old, battled an alcohol use disorder after struggling with the strains of work and family life
At first, Carrajat, now 41, would slip unnoticed into the garage at the end of the working week and quickly drink an 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,' he told the Daily Mail.
Before long, the end-of-week release had crept into the rest of his life.
'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.
'At 5.15pm on a Tuesday I was reaching for a beer. Other times, I would pour myself a shot.
'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.
