I used to get gout regularly when I was a drinker and if you have experienced it yourself, you will know just how painful and debilitating it can be.
What I now have is not gout, is not caused by drink, but is still enough to have left me in intense pain all last night, and crippled enough today that I have had to cancel a swim, a shopping trip with my wife and a concert at the Southbank this evening.
I am not writing this as an appeal for sympathy, but as a reminder of how much drink can wreck your life by destroying your health. When I think how many days, evenings, weekends and even holidays were wrecked by my gout, and all avoidable as it was always caused by drink, what a waster I was not to have woken up and quit booze far earlier than I did.
If you get gout, there is a 99% chance drink is either the cause or that drink makes it far worse. Why suffer and make others suffer because of something you can fix yourself – quit alcohol, it is as simple as that!