I've had to tinker and tweak the tapering ever since I dropped below 10 mg. And 5 mg was a real threshold into a new level of difficulty. I seem to need, and my Dr who is a rabid dog about getting me off Prednisone as long as I can function reasonably well while doing it, realizes that there is a need to allow time to destabilize at the new starting dose, whatever it is that I'm returning to - usually 5 mg. The last drops to 4 then 3 went surprisingly well. My personal lessons are: 1. Toggling between doses (like 5 mg and 4 mg) is helpful for a few days. 2. The 5 to 4 and 4 to 3 drops both seemed, in hindsight, to need a first trial that fails, then a pause at the higher dose for 3 weeks then a successful drop. 3. The 4 to 3 drop benefitted from my first effort with .5 mg doses - I dropped 4 to 3.5 mg for 3 days, felt the mounting symptoms and did a single day at 4 then BOOM dropped to 3 and didn't have any symptoms at all. I can only guess that my adrenal need a little bit of gentle jiggling and poking and shaking to cajole them into working harder.