Deprescribing: How to Safely Reduce Unnecessary Medications

When you take too many drugs at once, it’s not always helping—it might be hurting. Deprescribing, the planned process of reducing or stopping medications that are no longer needed or may be doing more harm than good. It’s not about quitting pills cold turkey—it’s about making smart, step-by-step changes with your doctor’s help. This isn’t just for older adults, though they’re often the most affected. People on five, ten, even fifteen meds a day—many of them for conditions that changed or disappeared—are at risk of side effects, falls, confusion, and hospital trips. Polypharmacy, the use of multiple medications simultaneously, often without clear benefit is the quiet problem behind many avoidable health crises.

Deprescribing isn’t magic. It’s a checklist. You start by asking: Is this drug still doing what it was meant to? Has my condition improved? Am I taking it because someone else prescribed it years ago? Some meds lose their value over time—like proton pump inhibitors taken for years after heartburn cleared up, or statins continued after a stroke risk dropped. Others, like benzodiazepines or anticholinergics, can wreck your balance, memory, or digestion with long-term use. Drug withdrawal, the physical and mental symptoms that can happen when stopping certain medications too quickly is real—but it’s manageable. Tapering slowly, tracking symptoms, and swapping in safer alternatives are all part of the plan. Pharmacists, geriatricians, and care teams who specialize in deprescribing use tools like the Beers Criteria and STOPP/START guidelines to spot red flags. They don’t just remove drugs—they replace bad habits with better ones: movement over sleeping pills, hydration over laxatives, therapy over antidepressants when the cause isn’t chemical.

What you’ll find in these posts isn’t theory. It’s real-world examples: how to safely come off corticosteroids without crashing your energy, why stopping certain antifungals matters if you’re on statins, how to handle withdrawal from long-term pain meds, and how to spot when a medication you’ve been taking for years is no longer necessary. These aren’t generic advice pieces—they’re guides written by people who’ve seen patients improve after cutting back. You’ll learn how to talk to your doctor without sounding like you’re questioning their judgment, how to track side effects over time, and when to push for a review. Deprescribing isn’t about taking less—it’s about taking only what truly serves you. And that’s a powerful step toward real health.