As others have said, prednisone is a necessary evil in the beginning of a PMR journey and tapering too quickly is not a good idea. It might actually have the opposite effect. 20mg as a starting point is not too high. As Rosette said, your body weight has something to do with the effective dose. I was started at 15mg but had to increase to 25mg for any relief, but I'm 6'3" and 245#. Dropping from 20mg to 12.5mg needs to be done incrementally. The 5mg decreases every 3 weeks that my doctor suggested were too much for me so I did 2.5mg every 10 days. Your body will guide you.