Colchicine or Colgout

Colchicine is an extract from a plant alkeloid known as a treatment for gout for nearly 2000 years. 

Colchicine was first manufactured 200 years ago by French chemists, and is a popular gout treatment because it has both pain relieving and anti-inflammatory effects. It helps sooth the acute pain of gout, and it reduces the joint swelling which gout causes... thus Colchisine reduces the cause of the pain as well.  

Nowadays Colchicine is often referred to by its most famous manufacturer's name, Colgout, which happens to be my own preferred gout medication. I have a pharmacist's bottle in front of me, containing 100 tablets of 500 mcg (or 0.05 mg) of Colgout.

My physician's instructions, typed on the label, are as follows:

Take TWO tablets initially, then ONE tablet every three hours until relief. Afterwards, take ONE tablet twice a day.

The Colchicine alkaloid is highly toxic, and a high overdose can kill you. The symptoms in such a case are similar to arsenic poisoning.

But at normal doses you'll know when you've taken enough Colchicine. It gives you diarrhea!

I was once staying with a friend in country Queensland Australia - way out in the boonies - and I was suffering a gout attack at the time. I went into town and got Colgout from the phramacy. The Chemist asked me if I was aware of the unwanted side effects, and I said sure, I knew. I'd known for 10 years and never had the problem.

But this time it happened. I was running back and forth to my friend's toilet, that he became worried about all the water which was being used to flush the 'loo each time. The place was in the middle of a big drought, and still is. Every time I flushed, he lost one gallon of drinking water from his rainwater tank. And there was no water mains supply there. 

He banished me to go and use the outside pit toilet instead.

Next: Ibuprofen