Bily;
For what it is worth, you are asking the right questions.
My name is Richard and I am an alcoholic.

And I quote:
“how do you even get to the point where you want to give up?”
Pain will do it! Pain is the great motivator. If anything will get you to the jumping off point, it will be the kind of deep mental and spiritual pain you described when you said, “i feel like im barely hanging on by my fingertips”

You also said, “i simply can not imagine how i could live my life if i could never drink again.”
Bily for most of us, not only did we not imagine how we could live without alcohol, in the end, we couldn’t imagine living with it either.

But there is good news and there is bad news.
No matter how bad things are now, if you keep drinking, in a few years, you will look back on what’s going on in your life right now and you will call it the good old days. I guarantee you active alcoholism NEVER gets better on it’s own. It only gets worse.

Look at you own drinking career, it used to be fun, a choice you made, Now it is an obsession you can not control. Understand this Bily, you have no real control over your drinking any more. You, like so many of us have crossed that invisible line. We, all of us, are powerless over alcohol.

Yet the desperation you are feeling now is a good thing, it is your catalyst for change.

Use it!

Find an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, I will bet you there is one at the university you are attending. There you will find other people who drank just like you do, and are living a sane, sober and happy life. Stick around them, do what they did, and get what they got.

Of course, your other option is to keep drinking, and getting what you are getting now. It seems like a no brainer to me.

Richard