It was a good thing that I was already on my back in a hospital bed when the doctor told me I could never drink again, or her words would have knocked me flat. Drinking was the most fun thing on earth. Not drinking was inconceivable. How could one possibly survive the day without the carrot of an evening snifter?

I'd just been transferred to a ward after a month in intensive care, apparently breaking the hospital record - if you didn't recover after a week, I was told, you usually died.

I later heard the elderly were often moved out after just a few days to make way for someone with a better chance of survival. Happily, I contracted pancreatitis at the comparatively young age of 34. More importantly, I had a wife and two young children: reason enough for the hospital to let me take up precious bed space for so long.

For much of my month's intensive care, I was in a coma, induced to stop me pulling out the catheters, drips and other tubes entering my body. For extra safety, my arms were strapped to my sides. Occasionally, I'd drift back to consciousness and notice someone in the next bed, often a mangled road accident victim who would usually die as I looked on deliriously.

I "died" twice myself, the doctors told me. The first time was when my tortured pancreas digested itself, the second after contracting pneumonia. "Your lungs caught at the last moment," exalted a young doctor as the medical team trailed the consultant out of the door. "You were technically dead. Well done, mate."

A tracheotomy allowed nurses with suction tubes to clear the phlegm continuously clogging my windpipe, but I still seemed to spend most of my waking hours under a plastic breathing mask.

Dreams were many, vivid and often scary. One even revealed to me the "meaning of life". This must have happened around the second time I "died". I was in a Norman castle where a golden thread lay tangled under thick glass. Two men dressed as Saxons, with ancient Midlands accents, explained that the secret of my existence lay within the thread. Untangle it, they said. With trepidation, I slid the silken fibre through my fingers. To my relief, the thread didn't end but ran continuously, in a golden loop.

It was working in advertising, I think, that did for me, with the long liquid lunches and the drinks after work. Alcohol was an essential social lubricant and, along with my contemporaries, I drank five or six pints nightly. As I'd got older, I had added wine to my nightly beer intake. By my early 30s, I was aware I was a heavy drinker, but anticipated having to cut down only when I was older.

My month in intensive care started with what felt like a pulled muscle deep in my stomach. I drank brandy to soothe the pain, but after a few days my wife took me to hospital. The first night was spent in agony, on a stretcher in a draughty corridor because of a lack of beds. For what seemed a lifetime, the pain went unrelieved, until the doctors found its cause. I'm told even childbirth isn't as painful as pancreatitis in full flight, which doctors measure on a scale of one to 10. My pancreatitis, apparently, was a 10.

Of course, you can't eat or drink in intensive care. All nourishment goes through tubes into one's body. Without water, my thirst was intense. The highlight of the day became my evening ice cube, looked forward to in the same way as I once anticipated a drink. I would savour the freezing cube as it stuck to my lips and tongue. The cube was far too precious to suck, so I sat it in my mouth, rationing its icy residue in occasional, lingering trickles down my parched throat.

Back on the ward, it was still hard to believe my drinking days were over, especially when others around me were allowed beer or wine with their dinner. I would think enviously, why them and not me?

I realise, now, it was because they were elderly alcoholics at the end of their lives, and I was still young enough to have a future.

Giving up drinking has since let me watch my children grow up through sober eyes. I used to think I couldn't sleep without alcohol. On the rare occasions I only had a few drinks, I would lay awake all night. What I never expected as a teetotaller was to get to sleep so easily. Life, I've realised, is truly more rewarding when not viewed through the bottom of a glass.

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