My friend has killed himself. I mean, he wasn't even really my friend. He was just some doctor I used to know. I can't even remember if I really liked him. But he killed himself, because of his job, because he was a doctor and because he felt awful and alone.

And because I know - from those times when I've been up all night, and I can hardly speak or walk properly from fatigue, and some relative is being rude to me, and I'm on the verge of tears, and some nurse is acting like I'm lazy because I went to see a patient on some other ward first instead of theirs, and I've got no senior support, and my boss is on my case, and I can see my whole career disappearing before my eyes unless I pull something superhuman out of the bag, and nobody understands - because I've been there, and I know exactly, exactly how he felt. I feel right now that I know him all too well.

Doctors are really quite butch. I'm simply telling you that in case you hadn't already worked it out. We're butch because, a lot of the time, everything in our lives is hellish, and we deal with it: if it's someone else's hell, we try to sort it out; if it's our hell, we just deal with it.

Maybe it's partly because we feel that our problems can't possibly be as big as our patients', and maybe it's partly because we think problems are things that other people have and that we solve, and maybe it's also because there's just a spirit of "chin up, stiff upper lip, firm resolve, and don't make a fuss". And then, maybe it's just because there's simply no time in the days and the nights to make a fuss.

For example, this is how I found out that this guy was dead. "Did you hear?" No. "Tim Forth's dead." Really. I raise my eyebrows, like it's clinical data. "Killed himself." Really? I nod my head, sagely. We are with two girls. They are non-medics, as we call them.

So we hold forth, as amusingly as we can, about the daily hell of our jobs, the ridiculous abuse we get, and the crazy working hours, and laugh about it as we compete for the most nightmarish on-call anecdote. They don't believe the bit about the working hours, because no one ever does, so we have to explain, and do so with undisguised relish and pride, as their eyes widen. No, we're not making it up. And don't ever expect me to explain it to you again, because I'm bored of it.

"And I heard about someone else who killed themselves recently," he says. I nod impenetrably, as if only we could understand the pain but it didn't really touch us. "Apparently, a few days before it happened, he lost it one night in A&E; went out into the waiting room and said, 'Right, who here's in pain?' And only about half the waiting room put their hands up. And then he said, 'OK, hands up. Who's taken a painkiller?' " I smile at the prospect. "And then, when only half of them kept their hands up, he announced, 'Right, those of you who haven't taken painkillers can go home right away. And for everyone else, I'm sorry about the wait, but we're doing our bloody best.' "Cool. "And he glared - menacingly."

I nod sagely to myself. How can this man be dead? He was clearly blessed with a vital insight into the lameness of the human condition, and a strength of will far beyond the call of a poxy career in medicine. But he is, utterly dead: some bloke my age who felt awful and alone like I do half the time, but happened to have no mates that day. Was it pushy parents, barbaric working conditions or accidents of brain chemistry? Your guess is not as good as mine.

So if you're a doctor, and you think it's all over, and your whole world has gone irretrievably pear-shaped, I say this: Bail out. Don't kill yourself. Leave your job. Blow it out. Go on the dole. Do a few locums. Teach English abroad. Get a job in the city. Get a good night's sleep. Skive off sick. Reclaim your life: have it over again. You're young. You'll make new friends.

So anyway, I'm off to have a nice hot bath with a bottle of wine and the toaster. And even if I was never really friends with either of these two dead colleagues: here's to you both, you poor, poor bastards.