Do you count leftover tablets or calendar days?
Count days. A 60-count fill is a pharmacy quantity, not homework to finish. When the acute discomfort eases with rest, the course ends even if tablets remain.
Leftover 500 mg in a desk drawer next to a drink is how short courses become bad nights. The spasm-course signal covers leftovers and red flags. This scan stays on 48-72 then 4 g.
What happens in the first 48 to 72 hours?
Six grams a day are recommended for the first 48 to 72 hours of treatment. On 500 mg tablets that is three tablets four times daily. Severe conditions may use 8 g a day in that same opening window.
Those hours are when fog is worst for many people. Park the car. The sedation signal rates keys. This page only dates the grams.
What changes after that window?
Thereafter the dosage can usually be reduced to approximately 4 grams a day. On 500 mg tablets that is often two tablets four times daily. The drop is part of the course, not a bonus for 'toughing it out' at 6 g.
If day ten still looks like twelve tablets, someone never stepped down. Ask the prescriber. Do not invent a third week at the opening total.
Is there a labelled chronic daily 500 mg row?
The indication is acute, painful musculoskeletal conditions as an adjunct. There is no 'take 500 mg every night for months' row on the tablet file. Chronic tightness is a different visit.
Spasticity from an upper-motor-neuron disease is not this indication. Do not borrow a strain bottle for that job.
What if the clinic already wrote a shorter, lower plan?
Follow the paper. Many clinicians never use the full 6 g burst because sedation is the effect. A five-day 500 mg tid plan is still a short course. It is not a failed label.
Do not extend that plan for weeks because the bottle is large. If spasm is still loud after the written days plus rest, go back. Full opening math: 1500 mg qid then step down.
When does the calendar actually stop?
When the acute spell eases and rest plus other measures are carrying the week. Stopping is not a taper protocol on this tablet the way some gabapentinoids write one. Do not invent withdrawal theatre after a five-day course.
Adjunct versus cure: methocarbamol does not replace rest and therapy.