Test is injected into muscles, usually once every 2-4 weeks. It can't be taken orally. This makes dosage control difficult. The long half-life also means that your body's control systems are slow to act (if they reacted quickly then you'd risk ending up with too much, and be unable to get rid of it).

There are plenty of other anabolic steroids. Some are oral, and many have the same primary effect with fewer side effects. There's even a new class of drugs that can work for women.[1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_androgen_receptor_mo...

IM injection is one of the best ways to get correct dosage control (apart from IV controlled delivery of course).

Also there are several steroids with different half-lives, so you can pick the best for your case.

It has been recently found that you can inject it subcutaneously using insulin needles, which makes taking it much easier. Works just as well as intramuscular.

more current test treatments are recommending much more frequent injections to more closely mimic the 'constant' production your body actually creates. Rather than injecting once a week, injecting multiple times a week eliminates a lot of the really highs and lows from injecting on schedules like you recommend.

The issue is compliance - nobody really wants to inject themselves every day or every other day.

I’m surprised that doctors are prescribing TRT, with testosterone enenthate, but then only having the patient inject once a week. That half-life is really sputtering out by the end of the week.

(Well, I know why—like you said, compliance. But c’mon, left cheek on Monday, right check on Thursday, easy enough.)

I think a lot of it has to do with Doctors relying on old knowledge and not investigating too closely.

Exogenous testosterone in any quantity will make the body stop producing natural test. If the goal is to have the body produce natural testosterone again tapering off will only delay and make it more difficult for that to happen.