What you will be able to do
- Explain the difference between pharmacodynamics (what the drug does to the body) and pharmacokinetics (what the body does to the drug), and why both are necessary for understanding drug effects.
- Distinguish between agonists, partial agonists, and antagonists at a receptor, and explain the clinical significance of each (using opioids as a working example: morphine, buprenorphine, naloxone).
- Define therapeutic index and explain why narrow therapeutic index drugs are more dangerous — connecting this to overdose risk and the fentanyl crisis.
- Describe the four pharmacokinetic processes (absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion) and explain how variation in each affects drug response.
- Identify common drug interaction mechanisms (enzyme inhibition, enzyme induction, protein binding displacement) and explain why polypharmacy increases risk.
- Articulate how pharmacological knowledge functions as harm reduction infrastructure — why understanding half-life, potency, and bioavailability makes rational risk management possible and why withholding this knowledge costs lives.
Prerequisites
- No formal prerequisites. The introductory curriculum is self-contained.
- Familiarity with basic cell biology (cell, receptor) is helpful but not required.
Reference documents
- Introduction to Pharmacology — the introductory lesson
- How Drugs Work — receptors, enzymes, ion channels
- Dose-Response Relationships — potency, efficacy, therapeutic window
- Drug Metabolism and Clearance — CYP enzymes, genetic variation
- Pharmacology and Harm Reduction — applied pharmacology as survival infrastructure
- Harm Reduction — the communal practice that pharmacological literacy supports
Scope
This skill covers pharmacological literacy — the conceptual foundation for understanding how drugs interact with living systems. It does not cover:
- Prescribing or clinical pharmacotherapy (dosing, drug selection, monitoring)
- Pharmacology of specific drug classes beyond those used as examples
- Organic chemistry or molecular biology of drug-receptor binding
- Herbal pharmacology or TCM formula composition
Verification
You have this skill if you can: (1) explain why buprenorphine is safer than methadone for opioid use disorder treatment using pharmacodynamic concepts; (2) explain why naloxone must be followed by emergency care using pharmacokinetic concepts; (3) identify a potential drug interaction mechanism given two drugs and their metabolic pathways; and (4) articulate why pharmacological literacy is a harm reduction issue, not merely a clinical one.