I'm probably not unusual among people who grew up watching The Simpsons and Family Guy in assuming that Homer and Peter are depictions of alcoholics. After having my own problems, I'm pretty sure that's not really right.
Both characters clearly have their own problems with alcohol and they clearly often don't know when to stop or how to be responsible with their drinking. Still, my experience with people stumbling around like drunken idiots is with people who usually drink in some moderation and go too far periodically. If Peter is plastered after seven beers, he has nowhere near the tolerance I developed.
Alcoholics tend to be people who can drink a full bottle of hard liquor in a day and not even be slurring their words.
Homer and Peter strike me as people who still occasionally end up throwing up because they drank too much while alcoholics are people who start throwing up if they haven't been drinking in a while.
Most people haven't become violently ill from alcohol withdraw. Most people have had one or two times in their lives where they've experienced violent nausea and vomiting either from a stomach bug or food poisoning or something like that.
So, since I've been dealing with a pretty bad stomach bug today, I was kinda thinking about how to really hammer home how awful alcohol can be and hopefully scare some budding alcoholics into quitting earlier than I did.
Most of these stomach bugs are over in a day. Surely enough, I started the day not being able to hold anything down; but, I'm already able to keep down fluids. If this were another withdraw, I'd already be on the bathroom floor with a blanket and a few pillows, throwing up every couple of minutes at least, and I'd have to be preparing for that to last for the next three days.
Bottom line, it's not worth it. Put down the bottle before you put yourself through that.