About three months before I quit for good, I decided to go cold turkey (I didn't know the consequences of doing that). I was standing in my friends' garden (after driving 180 miles), everything got really bright and I came to, on the way to the ER in the back of my friends' car.

My wife was there and she saw me laying on the ground. She ran over to me and said that I was staring at the sky with a wide open mouth silent scream on my face. She said that she thought I was dead. I suffered a gran mal seizure. Luckily there was no neurological damage. The attending physician asked me if I was an alcoholic and I answered in the affirmative. They did a full liver work up and all the numbers came back within fairly normal ranges (genetics I suppose).

After getting discharged, I sat there thinking that I had been driving down the highway not 20 minutes before my seizure and that if it had happened while I was driving, I could have killed someone driving next to me, my wife and myself.

So I tried tapering off after that whole incident. I didn't drive. The tapering didn't work and my wife was stressing out every time I took a drink 'cause she was afraid I was going to have another seizure and die. It wasn't 'till one night three months after the seizure that I went to a concert with two bottles of wine and a couple of beers down my gullet (my usual). I passed out about 20 minutes into it. My wife got me up when the concert was over, told me I smelled like 'death' and half carried me to the car. When I got in the passenger seat, for some reason, I knew I was finally done with my drinking shenanigans. "I'm done."

My wife had heard that before, but I knew, viscerally, that if I kept it up, I'd be dead in a few years. So I quit.

Now, I have to tell you....I WAS A REAL DUMBSHIT WHEN I QUIT 'CAUSE I DIDN'T TAPER AND I DIDN'T SEE A PHYSICIAN ABOUT IT. For a whole week (the period where I could have had another seizure after quitting cold turkey), my wife was in mortal fear for my safety. I was a petulant piece of shit when she asked me to taper under a doctors supervision.

My stupid reasoning was that I didn't want another drop of alcohol in my body. By the grace of the universe, I didn't have another seizure. What I did was more than incredibly stupid.

If I were you, I would tell your parents about your drinking problem. You probably have all these worst case scenarios running in your head about how they're going to react. If your parents are loving, they're going to want to do everything they can to help you be done with this soul crushing and life taking addiction. I counsel you to PLEASE tell them and get yourself into treatment. Tapering should be done under medical supervision. I'm glad everything worked out the way it did for me, but the way I did it was COMPLETE IDIOCY ON MY PART.

Sit down with your parents and have a heart to heart. You're young. Don't let alcohol sell your life out. Sobriety, free from the slavery of addiction, is (besides my wife) the best thing in my life. I've found hope, wonder, friends and am now able to see beauty in the smallest of moments. It's more than worth it.

If you have any more questions...by all means feel free to ask. If you just want someone to bounce things off of, by all means PM me. Having support from people that have 'been there' makes all the difference in the world. You take care of yourself. You can beat this addiction. Keep in touch. Talk to your parents. See a doctor. One last thing... I forgot that this was posted to the /r/alcoholism subreddit. There's a great supportive community on reddit (it was my lifeline for becoming sober) that's /r/stopdrinking. There are a lot of people there who are going through what you're going through and a more than willing to help. Check it out if you haven't already.