Last Updated on September 6, 2026
Sunnyside Med is the best naltrexone program for women because it combines online clinical care and naltrexone, when appropriate, with ongoing behavioral support. There is no established women-specific naltrexone protocol, so look for continued clinical oversight, support for your drinking goals, and tools that help you stay engaged with treatment.
Maybe you’re drinking more than you used to. Maybe that one drink per evening has slowly become two or three, or maybe you’ve noticed that stress, poor sleep, or changes in your routine make it harder to stop drinking once you’ve started.
You don’t have to wait until drinking reaches some arbitrary level of severity to take action. Naltrexone can be used by people who want to quit, but it can also be part of a plan to drink less.
For women looking for that kind of support, the best program isn’t necessarily one marketed specifically to women. It’s one that provides good clinical care, helps you stay engaged with treatment, and provides practical support.
Why Sunnyside Med Is Our Top Pick for Women
Sunnyside Med is a 100% online alcohol health program for people who want to cut back or quit drinking. A licensed clinician reviews each application and determines whether naltrexone is medically appropriate.
The medication is paired with an ongoing behavior-change program rather than offered as a prescription alone. (If you’re new to the medication, our guide to how naltrexone works covers the basics.)
What’s included:
- Compounded naltrexone
- Ongoing access to licensed clinical care
- Human coaching via text seven days a week
- Habit-change app with drink tracking and weekly goal setting
- Weekly group Zoom calls
- Private member community
Sunnyside Med costs $99 per month, billed quarterly, plus a one-time $50 intake fee. It’s HSA/FSA eligible, available in all 50 states, and doesn’t require insurance.
What Sunnyside Med Members Report
Sunnyside’s own member data suggests that people who stay engaged with the program can make substantial changes to their drinking. Among active Sunnyside Med members, 78% achieved a meaningful reduction in drinking over 12 weeks. Active members averaged a 45.6% reduction in daily drinks.
These are observational figures from Sunnyside Med members, not results from a randomized clinical trial, and individual results vary.
“I wish I would have discovered it sooner, like in my 40’s. I’m 55 now,” said one Sunnyside Med member. “I wasn’t a huge problem drinker, but I was someone who couldn’t have ‘just one drink.’ I’m proud to say that I am now.”
Another shared, “I was drinking 1.5 bottles of white wine every evening before I started naltrexone. I am not going back there.”
What to Look for in a Naltrexone Program for Women
There is no established women-specific naltrexone protocol. So rather than looking for a program that claims to offer a special version of the medication for women, focus on the quality and continuity of the care around it.
Women-specific research is limited, but it does raise questions about differences in tolerability and response. A good program should give you somewhere to take those questions after treatment starts.
Clinical Care That Continues After the Prescription
Look for evaluation by a licensed clinician and a clear way to access clinical care once you’ve started treatment. If you experience side effects or have questions about how you’re responding to naltrexone, you should be able to discuss them with your prescribing clinician.
That’s simply part of good naltrexone care, not an indication that women inherently need more medical supervision than men.
Why the Prescription Isn’t the Whole Program
Medication can help change your response to alcohol, but it doesn’t automatically change the routines and triggers you’ve built around drinking.
That’s where behavioral support can help. Depending on the program, that might include human coaching, drink tracking, goal setting, habit-change tools, or group and peer support.
Staying connected to treatment matters, too. Real-world research has found that many people stop filling oral naltrexone prescriptions within the first several months, which we’ll look at in more detail below.
A Program That Supports Your Actual Drinking Goal
Taking naltrexone doesn’t necessarily mean committing to lifelong abstinence. It can be used as part of treatment for people who want to quit drinking as well as those who want to reduce how much they drink.
If your goal is moderation, look for a program that explicitly supports it rather than treating abstinence as the only successful outcome. You can learn more about using naltrexone to cut back on drinking.
Care That Leaves Room for the Rest of Your Health
Alcohol use doesn’t happen in isolation. Sleep, stress, mood, major life transitions, and other factors can all be relevant to how and why you drink.
That can be particularly important for women whose drinking changes during perimenopause or menopause. A naltrexone program doesn’t replace appropriate care for menopause symptoms, mental health conditions, or other health concerns, but your clinician should be able to consider the broader health picture when evaluating whether naltrexone is appropriate.
What Research Tells Us About Naltrexone in Women
Most naltrexone research hasn’t been designed specifically around women. The evidence we do have suggests some possible differences in response and tolerability, but it isn’t strong enough to support a separate treatment protocol.
Does Naltrexone Work as Well for Women?
A 2017 review focused specifically on women found that naltrexone may modestly reduce drinking and lengthen the time to relapse. However, the authors also found that the evidence in women was limited and mixed (Canidate et al., 2017).
That’s an important distinction. There is evidence that women can benefit from naltrexone, but far less research has examined women specifically than the broader population of people taking the medication.
Women May Experience Side Effects Differently
One real-world study of people receiving long-acting injectable naltrexone found that women reported larger decreases in alcohol cravings than men, but also more naltrexone side effects early in treatment (Herbeck et al., 2016).
The study looked at injectable rather than oral naltrexone, so it isn’t direct evidence about Sunnyside Med’s formulation. It also can’t establish that sex itself caused the differences researchers observed. Still, the findings are another reason access to clinical care can be useful when you’re figuring out how you respond to treatment.
Could the Menstrual Cycle Affect Naltrexone Response?
There’s some intriguing early research here, but nothing totally conclusive.
In a study of healthy volunteers, women’s short-term response to naltrexone varied across the menstrual cycle, with subjective side effects strongest during the luteal phase (Roche & King, 2015).
A separate analysis found that menstrual-cycle phase might influence the added benefit of naltrexone. But the study was small and highly specific: it examined women who drank heavily and smoked, and naltrexone was combined with another medication (Green et al., 2022).
Earlier laboratory research also found interactions among alcohol, naltrexone, and hormonal responses in healthy women (Teoh et al., 1988). Again, this was a small mechanistic study, not evidence for changing how naltrexone is prescribed based on menstrual-cycle phase.
What Should Women Take From This Research?
For now, there isn’t evidence that women need a separate naltrexone protocol. Much of the research on potential sex and hormonal differences comes from small studies, specialized populations, healthy volunteers, or injectable naltrexone.
What it does suggest is that individual responses can vary. Instead of seeking out an unproven “naltrexone for women” protocol, prioritize a program that gives you continued access to clinical care and support as you figure out what treatment looks like for you.
Perimenopause, Menopause, and Changing Drinking Patterns
Some women notice their relationship with alcohol changing in their 40s or 50s. Perimenopause can bring sleep problems, anxiety, low mood, and other changes that may overlap with the reasons someone drinks.
That doesn’t mean hormones explain every change in midlife drinking. But for some women, they’re part of the picture.
When Drinking Turns Into Coping
A 2025 study of midlife women found that drinking motives sometimes changed after the onset of perimenopausal symptoms. Some participants described drinking more to manage stress, anxiety, low mood, sleep problems, or other symptoms (Davies et al., 2025).
The study relied on self-reported, cross-sectional data, so it can’t tell us that perimenopause causes heavier drinking. What it does show is that drinking and the physical and emotional changes of midlife can overlap in complicated ways.
Alcohol Can Make Sleep Problems More Complicated
Sleep, stress, mood, and alcohol use can feed into one another. A drink might feel relaxing or sedating in the moment, while alcohol can also interfere with sleep later in the night.
Behavioral support can help you notice patterns like pouring a drink when you’re stressed or using alcohol as your cue to wind down at night. Naltrexone isn’t a treatment for perimenopausal anxiety, insomnia, or other menopause symptoms, so those concerns may need to be addressed separately with an appropriate healthcare provider.
Why Staying Engaged With Naltrexone Matters
Getting a prescription is the beginning of treatment, but not necessarily the most challenging part of the endeavor. One of the challenges with oral naltrexone is simply continuing to take it over time.
A Prescription Only Helps if You Stick With Treatment
A claims analysis of 1,138 people who started oral naltrexone found that only 14.2% continued filling enough prescriptions to meet the study’s definition of persistence over six months. People who weren’t persistent also had higher use of inpatient detoxification, emergency care, and hospitalization (Kranzler et al., 2008).
That doesn’t prove stopping naltrexone caused those outcomes. Prescription fills also can’t tell researchers whether someone actually took the medication. But the study illustrates a basic problem with treatment that ends at the prescription: many people don’t stay on it.
Support Can Be A Vital Part of Naltrexone Treatment
Large reviews support oral naltrexone as a medication for alcohol use disorder (2023 JAMA systematic review). Research also shows that it can work in the context of relatively straightforward clinical support.
In the large COMBINE trial, participants receiving naltrexone with structured medical management had better drinking outcomes than those receiving placebo with medical management (Anton et al., 2006). That medical management included regular appointments focused on medication adherence, side effects, and drinking progress.
COMBINE didn’t test Sunnyside’s particular combination of coaching, tracking, group calls, and community. But it does show that naltrexone doesn’t have to be delivered in isolation from ongoing care.
Why Sunnyside Med Is Our Best Overall Pick for Women
There’s no established “women’s version” of naltrexone treatment, and we don’t think there needs to be one for a program to serve women well.
Sunnyside Med stands out because the prescription is only one part of the program. Members get ongoing access to licensed clinical care, human coaching seven days a week, drink tracking and weekly goals, habit-change tools, weekly group calls, and a private community. You can work toward moderation or abstinence rather than having that goal chosen for you.
That combination can be especially useful if drinking has become tangled up with stress, sleep, changing routines, or a midlife transition. Sunnyside doesn’t claim to treat menopause or hormonal symptoms. Instead, it gives you clinical and behavioral support for the part of the picture it does treat: your relationship with alcohol.
As Sunnyside CEO Nick Allen puts it: “Sunnyside provides scaffolding around the medication to allow folks to be as successful as possible.”
Want to learn more about Sunnyside Med? Get started with a short online quiz.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ): Best Naltrexone Program for Women
What is the best naltrexone program for women who want to drink less?
Sunnyside Med combines naltrexone, when medically appropriate, with ongoing clinical care and behavioral support. Members get human coaching, drink tracking, weekly goal setting, group calls, and a private community. It also explicitly supports moderation, so quitting alcohol entirely doesn’t have to be your goal.
Does naltrexone work differently for women than men?
We don’t know for sure. Research specifically examining naltrexone in women is limited, and studies comparing outcomes by sex have produced mixed results. Some have found possible differences in side effects or treatment response, while others have found no meaningful difference. There is currently no established women-specific naltrexone treatment protocol.
Can naltrexone help if my drinking increased during perimenopause?
Potentially. Naltrexone can help reduce heavy drinking and may be used whether your goal is cutting back or quitting. But it doesn’t treat perimenopause itself or symptoms such as anxiety, low mood, or insomnia.
If your drinking changed alongside other symptoms in your 40s or 50s, talk with a clinician about the bigger picture rather than assuming alcohol is the only issue that needs attention.
Why might women experience naltrexone side effects differently?
Some research has found differences in side effects between women and men, while small studies suggest women’s short-term responses to naltrexone may vary across the menstrual cycle. The evidence isn’t strong enough to support different prescribing guidelines for women, but it does reinforce the value of having access to a clinician if side effects become a problem.
Do you have to quit drinking to take naltrexone?
No. Naltrexone can be used as part of treatment for people who want to stop drinking or reduce how much they drink. If abstinence isn’t your goal, a moderation-focused program can help you use medication alongside realistic drinking goals.
Naltrexone is a prescription medication. This content is educational and should not be taken as medical advice. A licensed clinician reviews every Sunnyside Med application.
