One of the ways that the General Medical Council will try to pin you down is if you appear blasé in any sense about your own behaviour, or lack insight into its repercussions.

I have a psychiatrist in West London who oversees my recovery. I am a barn door alcoholic now in recovery. One of the wisest things he has ever said to me is that it is impossible to ignore the distress I caused to friends, family and others. I think about this every day of my life in fact. It has left an indelible trace on Google, which I do not wish to forget. That’s why I have never asked for it to be removed.

I get upset that the BBC considers my tragic case of erasure from the Medical Register as ‘entertainment’. Behind this titillating story was someone who was in massive distress, and to some extent continues to be in distress.

I have learnt the General Medical Council (GMC) is only doing its job. Reports, like the latest damning one by Civitas on how the GMC treats sick doctors badly, come and go. And nothing really changes.

But I remember all too well what happened to me. I repeat that I find my behaviour then, as a different person, disgusting and unacceptable. But things came to a head when I was blue-lighted in at the beginning of June 2007 with an asystolic cardiac arrest which I was very lucky to be resuscitated out of. I then spent six weeks in a coma. I was fighting for my life, with drips, a central line, and the full army of Intensive Care machinery. The Consultant at the Royal Free warned people I was not expected to leave the hospital. I was clearly a very sick man.

My late father came to visit every day when I was learning how to walk and talk again at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. That’s where I had spent six happy months, while healthy, learning about general neurology and dementia. It’s where I developed a lifelong interest in neurodegenerative disease, which pervades through my post-doctoral fellowship at the Institute of Neurology thereafter, my mention in the Oxford Textbook of Medicine, and my own book on wellbeing in dementia.

I am happy now that, having learnt how to walk and talk, I was invited to the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Copenhagen last month, and I went to the Alzheimer’s Show in Manchester and London this year.  My friends include people living with dementia, and they tell me what’s important in policy now.

I remember though the days of having to hide my name on blogposts or my Twitter account. I remember how I was frightened to show myself in public in the last few years. I remember how my circle of friends completely collapsed, though I am happy with the very small number of very close friends I have now. I still continue to get trolled, like no tomorrow, with words like “Disgusting” and “How do you live with yourself?”

I do also remember how the General Medical Council took years with their investigations. I remember the torrent of newspaper articles explaining how likely it would be I would be struck off. I remember thinking how this was an inglorious end to my ten years training to be a Doctor, a profession which I still feel honoured to have been in once.

But the General Medical Council protracts out their investigations. The GMC never got round to appointing a clinical supervisor (very odd) even though my independent clinical examiners had concluded that I had a severe alcohol problem. So it rumbled on for a few years with my mental health in free fall. Dynamite.

This is extremely risky – dangerous – for the sick doctor. If you lack insight or if you’re in denial you can be finished (as indeed the numbers of people reported to have committed suicide while waiting for their Fitness to Practise sessions show).

I remember how I totally ‘lost it’ in 2005 a year before my final hearing. I had long left a medical job, but I just fell apart while still waiting for my GMC hearing. I went on a massive bender sat alone sobbing into my drink in a pub in Notting Hill very close to Portabello Road, ended up being sectioned, and then was suspended by the GMC.

A year after I was erased, with no job and no family or friends virtually, my life really did take a nosedive. I sat in pubs all day from opening time to closing time. I was done for drunk and disorder offences.

But I woke up after a six week coma, newly disabled, but with a new purpose. I did three books on postgraduate medicine, and I became regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. I have three degrees, my Bachelor of Law, my Master of Law, and my Master of Business Administration, as well as my pre-solicitor training.

I didn’t get very far when I bothered going up to Manchester for my restoration application. The GMC hadn’t bothered to do a basic conflicts session, so the meeting was adjourned after one day. My friend Martin Rathfelder made it to support me. He like Jos Bell and Kate Swaffer are true friends.

It’s a miracle that I didn’t have a relapse being in the City where I had been with my late father, where I was erased, with plenty of bars and restaurants, with plenty of memories. It’s like you’re being set up to fail by the GMC – or else they are incredibly incompetent when it comes to dealing with people with mental health issues.

But I did get as far as asking the panel if I could hold the hearing in public this time. I want to explain to the whole world why and how alcohol destroyed my life, and caused distress to others.

I think the GMC did the right thing in getting rid of me from the medical profession, but I am still bemused why one consultant in West London asked me to sort it out by giving me a phone number of the Priory, did not refer me to Occupational Health, and did not offer me sick leave. I am bemused why various consultants described me as looking dishevelled and alcoholic, and yet allowed me to finish my medical jobs in London, without referring me to Occupational Health. I even ran a number of cardiac arrests successfully, while being allowed to finish that job where the consultants complained some years later, because I had obtained my Advanced Life Support qualification. The practical thing to do would have been to refer me, give me sick leave, assess me, and get me back to work, if conceivably possibly. The alternative was a vindictive complaint, albeit a correct one, years after the event.

By the time I was erased, the GMC had been given five reports from five independent doctors stating clearly that my primary problem was a severe alcoholic dependence disorder, and that I desperately needed help.

I never received this help until the NHS saved my life a year later.

The GMC will wish to ‘win their case’ and I strictly speaking am not allowed to bring any of this up in case it reaks of bitterness.

The GMC opposed my application to explain all this and my recovery in public. The panel rejected the GMC’s case.

In my view, Clare Gerada’s “Practitioner Health Programme” is a necessary lifeline for those are sick Doctors, and who fall under the London jurisdiction.

Prof Gerada is a true inspirational NHS leader.

Needless to say, I’ve never had an alcoholic drink for more than seven years, since my coma. I’m one of those guys who has no off switch after one drink, such that I’ll either end up in A&E or in a police cell.

My case will now be held in Manchester beginning August 20th 2014. If you want to begin to understand how sick doctors cope, or do not cope, please feel to come along.