Want to Take a Drug Holiday?

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]Want to take a drug holiday? Well, no, I don't mean recreational drugs. What's a drug holiday? A drug holiday is a planned temporary pause in a medication under the guidance of a health care provider. So, it's not stopping a medication randomly. It's a deliberate break to achieve a specific goal. It's commonly used with medications that can build up tolerance. Kind of like sometimes it's pain medications or medications that can cause side effects over time. We do it to reduce the side effects because as I said, some medications can cause sedation, nausea, constipation, even some confusion. And if you take a break, you can allow the body to reset and recover.

[00:00:48]It also helps us to look at the doses that are being used and maybe a decrease can be warranted.

[00:00:55]Taking a break from a medication can actually restore the effectiveness of some drugs, including certain pain medications. The body develops this accommodation or tolerance and so the drug holiday can make the medication more effective again when it's restarted or allow again a lower dose to work even better. Um we always often need to reassess the need for a medication, too.

[00:01:23]Sometimes it's unclear if you still need it. So, a pause helps determine that. Is the symptoms still present? Is the medication still helping? You know, in hospice, families sometimes get so worried when a comfort medication is added and a patient gets sleepy, they think the patient is being over medicated and sometimes they really do insist that it is decreased or stopped.

[00:01:46]And that's okay. If the patient's pain or their shortness of breath returns, it really proves to that family or the caregivers how important that medication is in the comfort of their to the comfort of their loved one.

[00:02:02]Um sometimes when we do this, it helps us reduce the medication burden. There's just fewer medications that need to be taken. Reduces that burden and improves the overall comfort. Remember, in hospice, drug holidays may be considered when the medication is no longer there to improve the comfort and the side effects are outweighing benefits.

[00:02:25]Remember, a drug holiday should never be done without guidance from a health care provider and the drug holiday isn't about taking something away. It's about making sure every medication is truly helping your loved one feel as comfortable as possible.

[00:02:42]That's a drug holiday. Get our booklet, The Hospice Care Plan. Watch more of our videos at The Hospice Care Plan on YouTube because we're there to help you understand hospice care.