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Getting into the field of Pharmacology/Chemistry?

chicken hoagie

Bluelighter
Joined
Jan 1, 2014
Messages
363
Location
Illinois
Let me make this simple..

What college classes should I look to take that focus on organic/biochemistry as well as pharmacology/neuropharmacology?

I just have no idea where to begin, but I want to begin my schooling for these subjects and make a career of it.

What are all of the possible options I have of making a career of this, where I can grow and learn the 'trade of arts' ?
 
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Basic Chemistry
Biochemistry
Molecular biology
Organic chemistry
Neuropharmacology
Neuroscience

In that general order pretty much. Of course there are other courses in maths, science & tech that you'll need too. If you're prepared to put in the work and you have a mind for it I'm sure you can pretty much do anything you set out to do. At least that's always what my mom told me ;)
 
Definitely start off with learning basic chemistry, followed by organic chemistry and then biochemistry if you want. I've made it up through my first year of o-chem with only having covered math up to trig/pre-calc and basic physics/biology. For me atleast, what order I went in depended a lot on what I was interested in at the time, so I found myself jumping around a ridiculous amount. Personally I started learning chemistry by stumbling through an o-chem book, before really getting down the fundamentals.What order you should learn, field wise, really depends a lot on your career path most of the time. For instance, if you're wanting to possibly end up working in the pharmaceutical development field (medicinal chemistry), it's more beneficial to major in organic chemistry, instead of medicinal/pharmaceutical chem. You can train an organic chemistry to be a good medicinal chemist, however someone with a 4year degree in medicinal chemistry will require a lot more work to become a competent organic chemist. Chemistry wise, look into getting an AP Chemistry study guide to learn from. "5 Steps to a 5" was a great guide for me. The books typically start off by covering basic chem and will cover everything you'd like in your college freshman chemistry class. Definitely take the AP Exam if you can, because you can get college credit for it. Just make sure to really do all the practice problems & tests that are included in the book, they help a lot. I got into organic chemistry next, which is really fun in my opinion; look around for torrents of "Organic Chemistry As a Second Language, by David Klein". There are two books, one for each semester of the class. They both double as workbooks too, so take advantage of that.The way I got started getting into neuroscience/pharmacology was really just by a spending a shit ton of time sitting at the computer reading through wikipedia, drug forums, and googling. I started learning what basic neurotransmitters there were, their functions, which drugs interacted with what receptors, what kind of effects/damages those drugs can cause to the brain, what subsequent psychological alterations those changes can cause, various psychological disorders and the neurological reasons behind them; what kind of things I could do to better my mind (like neurotroopics - seriously, if you dont already know, check out what benefits from taking stuff like magnesium supplements/nmda antagonists have); and harm reduction. I could go on for pages obviously, the general point was just that theres a vast amount of information you can easily learn from all those fields, and pretty efficiently.
 
Start with chemistry then go to organic chemistry lastly biochemistry. Those are three main derivative fields from there head to medicinal chemistry and structure activity relationships which encompass all of pharmacology etc at a more function level.
In order to understand fully and use concepts now you must go get a Chem degree pharmacology degrees are convoluted and fundamentals skipped.
Zedsdead
 
Urghhh..Now where do I get the money to start these classes? what kind of extra time am I going to need? Having a full-time job makes doing other things in life kinda difficult.
 
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