What is a drug half life?
The half life is the amount of time for a drug to be eliminated from the blood stream. Say the half life of a drug is 10 hours for example: After taking for example 20 mg then after 10 hours it would decrease to 10 mg and then 10 hours later to 5 mg and then 10 hours after that 2.5 mg, then 1.25 mg and so on until the drug is undetectable. In terms of drug withdrawal, the shorter the half life, the more quickly and intensely withdrawal symptoms will be experienced upon dosage reduction. Also short acting drugs can produce interdose withdrawal where withdrawal symptoms are experienced inbetween doses as the previous dose begins to wear off.
