Are There Any Promising Alternatives to Painkillers?

There are two broad categories of painkillers right now. There's the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, NSAIDs,. things like aspirin and ibuprofen. And then the second category of pain medication are the opioids. What these do is to increase the signals coming back the other way from the brain. So what we have works but not without drawbacks, but also that alternatives are hard to come by.