Aisling Goodwin, an actress hailing from Dublin, Ireland, found herself unexpectedly turning to alcohol following a tumultuous breakup that flipped her world upside down. At 41, Aisling had never been much of a drinker; her consumption was typically reserved for social events like film festivals and premieres, where she would limit herself to just a few glasses of red wine.
Prior to this life-altering event, Aisling preferred activities that promoted well-being and mindfulness, such as martial arts and meditation, over nights spent at the pub. Drinking was never a significant part of her lifestyle.
However, everything changed last year when a challenging romantic relationship came to an end. In the aftermath, Aisling found herself reaching for wine as a means to help her sleep. “It started with one glass a night,” she recounts. “My mind was in turmoil, and I was seeking something to help me unwind and drift into sleep.”
However, last year, after a difficult romantic relationship came to an end, things changed. Aisling says she began to turn to wine to help her sleep.
‘It started with one glass a night,’ she says. ‘My brain was a mess and I just needed some sedation to get to sleep.’
However, Aisling says her drinking became more intense. ‘One glass became two then three, then sometimes a bottle,’ she says.
Aisling says her alcohol consumption never got out of control but it was a crutch she quickly came to rely on. She also found that her diet worsened during this period, too, and she increasingly turned to junk food and snacked on crisps.
‘I didn’t want to tell anyone what I was going through,’ she says. ‘I tried to cut back but I always failed.’
Aisling Goodwin had never been much of a drinker until a break-up turned her life upside down
Just six months on, however, Aisling has made an astonishing change. She no longer drinks nor snacks – and it is all thanks to a £3 pill that has been described as the ‘Ozempic of alcohol’.
The tablet, naltrexone, eliminates cravings by blocking opioid binge-drinking receptors in the brain, making alcohol less pleasurable and curbing the desire to drink.
It means the brain ‘unlearns’ the link between alcohol and the production of feel-good chemicals that spark the urge to reach for a glass in the first place.
Studies show naltrexone has a near 80 per cent success rate at getting users to drastically reduce or eliminate drinking altogether.
In comparison, other rehabilitation methods – such as Alcoholics Anonymous’s 12-step programme, which relies on changing thoughts and behaviours and accepting responsibility for past harms – have success rates of less than 15 per cent, according to the World Health Organisation.
Yet, while naltrexone is available on the NHS, it is usually only prescribed to people to prevent relapse once they have already become sober – something experts say should change.
They argue that the daily tablet could help curb Britain’s excessive alcohol consumption.
NHS guidelines advise adults should consume no more than 14 units a week – roughly six pints of beer or ten small glasses of wine – yet around a quarter of British adults exceed this.
Nearly a fifth admit to binge-drinking in the past week, defined as consuming more than eight units in a single session. More than 320,000 people are admitted to hospital each year with alcohol-related conditions, and more than 10,000 die – mostly from liver disease.
Regular drinking is also a known risk factor for several cancers.
‘I think naltrexone should be more readily available as part of a broad approach to alcohol treatment,’ says Dr Peter McCann, medical director of residential rehabilitation centre Castle Craig.
‘It could be prescribed through primary care, provided GPs receive appropriate training and have access to support from specialist alcohol services.’
Many NHS GPs agree.
‘Alcohol has a high cost, not just to mental health but also physical health,’ says Dr Philippa Kaye, a London-based GP.
‘Improving access to medication that can help reduce how much people drink could prove useful, both to patients and to the NHS as a whole – provided they are used alongside other approaches like talking therapy.’
However, at present, most UK patients who take naltrexone pay for it at private clinics.
The most popular of these is The Sinclair Method UK, a clinic that advocates an approach which involves continuing to drink, but taking a pill an hour before the first drink of the day. This is combined with psychological and lifestyle support from a counsellor.
Many of its clients, such as Aisling, are often high-functioning professionals who would not describe themselves as alcoholics but are keen to cut down on their consumption.
Aisling says she came to this realisation on Christmas Eve last year.
‘I was sitting at home alone and just broke down in tears,’ she says. ‘I remember thinking “What am I doing? There has to be more to life than this”.’
Aisling says that over time her drinking became more intense: ‘One glass became two, then three, then sometimes a bottle’
That same night, Aisling was on the video-sharing app TikTok when she came across a woman who claimed to have quit drinking using naltrexone.
At first, she was suspicious.
‘I’d never heard of the drug before and it 100 per cent sounded too good to be true,’ she says. ‘She talked about how she would have just one glass of wine and wouldn’t feel like she wanted any more after that. I felt like if I gave it a go, it would just be a disappointment.
‘I also wondered whether I was overreacting. I wasn’t an alcoholic, so I wasn’t sure whether the drug was for me.’
However, Aisling decided to give naltrexone a go. She paid around £600 for a month’s supply of the tablets along with 12 weeks of coaching sessions.
She was instructed to take the tablet an hour before she planned to drink. The first night, Aisling had a glass of red wine and opened a pack of lentil crisps – her favourite snack.
‘I sat down on the couch and finished the glass of wine,’ she says. ‘But after that I felt tired and just went to bed. It was only when I got up in the morning that I realised I’d only eaten half the packet of crisps. I’d never done that before.
‘The next night, I did the same again. But this time, I took one sip of wine and it just didn’t taste nice in the same way. And I didn’t want any crisps at all.’
Experts say growing research suggests that naltrexone can also tackle compulsive behaviours beyond drinking, such as snacking.
‘Food and alcohol activate overlapping reward pathways in the brain,’ says Dr Peter McCann. ‘Which may explain why some people notice reduced snacking while taking naltrexone. However, the evidence for alcohol use disorder is much stronger.’
Aisling was surprised to find that this aversion to alcohol continued even on days when she hadn’t taken the tablet.
‘I was in the supermarket about a week later and I realised that, for the first time in a long while, I didn’t have a voice in my head telling me to buy a bottle of wine. It was just gone.’
Aisling says she had expected that she would need to keep taking the naltrexone indefinitely. Instead, since Christmas, she has only taken 12 tablets.
‘I still have the first batch that I bought then,’ she says. ‘I’ve taken it before going to work events where there will be alcohol, but my desire to drink at home – along with snacking – has gone. The tablets worked like a circuit-breaker on my brain.’
Aisling also says that, since she cut back on her drinking and snacking, she has lost weight.
‘I used to eat a lot of empty carbs after I had been drinking,’ she says. ‘Once I cut back on the alcohol, my diet improved and I had more energy to exercise.
‘I was a size 10 before I started taking the tablets. Within a few months I had dropped to a size 8.’
Experts say that there are many moderate drinkers like Aisling who could potentially benefit from naltrexone.
‘When most people picture a drink problem, they see someone whose life has visibly fallen apart and because that isn’t them, they tell themselves they’re fine,’ says Harvey Bhandal, managing director of The Sinclair Method UK.
‘The people we help are usually the opposite: holding down a job, running a home, looking completely in control from the outside, but privately uneasy about how much they’re drinking and quietly aware they can’t cut back as easily as they once could.
‘It’s a spectrum, and you don’t have to reach anyone’s idea of rock bottom to want a different relationship with alcohol.’
Aisling says she now recommends naltrexone to many of her friends.
‘I work in the film industry and it’s rife with addiction,’ she says. ‘I tell everyone to try the drug. It might not work for everyone, but it helped me get my energy and life back.’
